eBook News

Back in 1997 Charles Sheffield and Jerry Pournelle (in the style of R.A. Heinlein) wrote a "juvenile" science fiction series with the central characters being young adults. These books used real science as did the R.A. Heinlein ones. In one of the books, Higher Education, a large part of the focus on the education system. As part of that story the students in school didn't read their books, instead, they watched videos and had electronic readers read the books aloud to them. So it looks like to some extent we are now approaching that science fiction waypoint, as now less than half prefer to read a textbook versus watching a video of the content. This could also mean that we need to work harder to make the books more enjoyable and understandable. I can say that as a science teacher, especially when teaching in middle school, I and my students would become frustrated with our textbooks, as most science textbooks were written two grade levels above the grade that they were...

“A textbook can do much more than be on the one hand a mere statement of the results of reasoning such as the ordinary geography or German grammar is, or on the other hand a mere statement of problems, such as the ordinary arithmetic or German reader is” (Thorndike, 1912, 165-166)   Historically textbooks have been fixtures in education. Stein, Stuen, Carnine, and Long estimate that "textbooks serve as the basis for 75 to 90 percent of classroom instruction" (2001, p. 6). This is understandable in the times before the information as often the textbook was the only resource, outside the teacher that delivered content, as content area information was so scarce. Still today f or many courses, textbooks are a default part of the curriculum's instruction often provide the facts learned in most subjects. For many students, textbooks are sometimes only content area reading, leading many to think of them as the authoritative tool, a font of accurate information and necess...

Textbooks usually have a structure, and it doesn't matter if it is an electronic textbook or a paper printed one, the people who put the textbook together usually make it have a structure to help you better understand what you are reading and learning. Textbooks are usually a type of text known as informational or expository text - this is text written to inform, and can be things like textbook chapters, newspaper and magazine articles, and other reference materials like encyclopedia items. The other kind of text that you usually encounter in school is narrative text, where a story is being told - which could be fictional or non-fiction. And while textbooks are informational text, many will also have narrative text, usually as stories to help you better understand the concept, although in an English or literature class the stories are often more the focus of the learning. Textbook Elements With an electronic textbook it might be hard to see the structure, because you cant riffle...

With digital text the bookmark changes too. No longer is it the placeholder for where you stopped reading - they system will remember where you stopped and if you sync options are on, it should remember where you stopped reading that text on all your devices. Instead the bookmark is more like a flag - marking places in the text where you find something interesting that you might want to come back to. The bookmark will add a symbol or dog ear the page. This way when you are reviewing your chapter, you will know when you come to a page that you found important before and that you wanted to review or seek assistance for. One good way to use a bookmark is for something that can't be otherwise highlighted or noted, like an image. So for example you might find a good formula that is important, but in the text it is shown as an image. Here in the image above for example is the Combined Gas Law formula, but in the text it is an image, so it can't be highlighted by itself (althoug...