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...

Today's posting is about Fonts - their color, size and shape. I am always surprised that people don't change their display to what works best for them in the situation that they are in. Many times dealing with people I've seen situations where they want the text to look in a way that makes it harder for them to read. For example a recent situation with a person who was having trouble reading from the screen. I did a basic change to the display size to 120%. She thought it looked great and was much easier to read, but when I explained what I had done, she changed it back to 100% - making it harder for her to read again as she wanted for it to look just how it was going to be when printed. I've seen this too with ebooks. Some people want it to have the same page appearance as their paperback books with the font using Times and the size being between 10 and 12 points. One of the great thing about ebooks is that you are not limited to the display being preset, instead you...

Florida is one of the first states stepping forward to shift their educational texts to a digital format. Governor Rick Scott signed SB 2120 on May 23, 2011 which starts the move to have Florida schools adopt digital textbooks by the 2015-2016 school year. Right now the public schools are to be working on pilot programs to identify the devices, books, services, etc that will work best.  Of course a big question will be how can schools afford this? But if you start to consider the open source options now available, using digital textbooks can actually be a cost savings. Consider the case of just math and science texts, the average textbook can cost close to $100, but the CK12 (www.ck12.org), makes a number of open source textbooks in all areas of high school math and science, meaning that with just two subjects, a Kindle as an interactive text purchased in bulk at an estimated $100, would actually be a savings of $100 per student. Then too there are other costs w...

To me the idea digital textbook will most likely be a hybrid of the new pad devices and the e-ink readers. The iPad is a great device and able to run multiple ebook formats, it is highly intuitive in operation, and the touch color LCD display works great, but that said, at best you could get maybe a day's worth of battery life. The latest version of e-ink devices now runs for between two weeks and a month on a charge. So when students were just doing reading, taking notes from a book, etc, it would be better done with the low power option, and then switch to the more active display for other things. I just remember when I introduced a set of digital cameras for my students to use in my science class, even though I was using long lasting rechargeable batteries, I was amazed at how quickly students could drain them, often in just one class period. I think it is a great idea to start replacing textbooks with digital versions, such as could run on an iPad. For schools th...