TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for the ‘K-12’ Category

By David Rothman

A detachable keyboard for a small portable—the idea is hardly new. Elonex has one already with a spalshpoof keyboard you can separate. That’s also a form factor I envisioned for TeleReaders back in 1992, and surely others had gone before me. You could always arrange for hinges or a stand to prop up the screen.

The results might even be nicer for extended typing than a laptop since you could separately vary your distances from the screen and keyboard.

So what do you think of Freescale Semiconductor’s smartbook reference design, ready for CES. If reality, the design might mean a $200 machine with a seven-inch screen. Actually the price might be just for the screen and CPU alone. Not sure. Sounds too high to me and others. But maybe it’s a hint of better things to come.

Certainly, for K-12, I like this approach much better than just a Kindle-style tablet or a netbook. I’d also like the screen a bit larger. And perhaps the unit could use retractable legs and notch the screen into the keyboard, for a true netbook when you wanted one.

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By Joanna

School-supplied video.

A prep school in Massachusetts created an uproar by saying e-books would replace paper books in its library.

Now a private high school in Toronto says it is tossing out p-textbooks in favor of Sony e-book readers. The school has deployed at least 110 readers already and is ordering hundreds more.

“Our student survey shows that they are twice as likely to read a book available in an e-book format as in hard copy form," says Sam Blyth, chair at Blyth Academy.

Catnip for students raised on tech

There has been a growing emphasis among schools to engage student interest through technology, and this initiative appears to be, in part, a response to that. A comment from Sam Blyth is of special interest:

"When they were told they would be able to download books free, we asked them ‘Would you be more likely to read outside of school?’ they came back with a yes, and that clinched it."

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By Robert Kingett

Walk into my school library early in the morning. Look all around at the new large print books and audio books, shelved so neatly. Then marvel at just how quiet it actually is.

No, people aren’t caught up in some romance novel, a thrilling mystery, a somber story, a dark satire, or a new novella. Rather, just one library user is in this vast empty space.

What can we do to encourage more people to enjoy books?

Here are two ideas—one pertaining to young people in general, and one for students with vision problems.

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By Joanna

TeleRead welcomes stories of other professionals using e-reading devices in special ways. E-mail Co-Editor Paul Biba. – D.R.

My Sony Reader is a teacher’s pet. Mine. I’m the teacher, and it’s a valuable classroom tool.

How? Well, I don’t just use my Reader for “reading” in the traditional sense. It’s also as a way to take long or important files with me for reading on the go.

My instruction manuals, recipes message board threads, magazine articles and anything text-based—I can easily save them all in HTML. Then I can import the files into Calibre and tag them to group into collections, which I can then load into my Sony.

Please note that the Sony isn’t the only reader useful for taking along professional materials and personal documents. You might be able to do the same thing with your Kindle, for example, or Cybook, iLiad or Be Book. If the material isn’t in digital form, perhaps you can scan and OCR it.

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By Michael Cairns, former President, Bowker

All educational publishers know the holy trinity of textbook publishing: California, Florida and Texas. And winning or losing one out of three of these states in an adoption can tip the economic balance of any program.

If California goes free, the economics for education publishing companies will radically shift. Also, it is then likely that Florida and Texas and many other states will follow California’s lead in sourcing free educational content. Most immediately, California’s migration toward the provision of free textbooks has been driven by the state’s precarious financial situation. An effective moratorium on new textbook purchases is expected to last until 2014—see KABC-TV video.

California’s approach may seem either drastic or innovative, depending on your perspective, but the state is actually following a movement toward free textbooks that has been gaining steam over the past several years, with Georgia Tech among the leaders.

How California is going “free”

That said, California appears to be the first state to specifically identify free electronic texts that may be used in the classroom.

In May, Governor Schwarzenegger established a "Free Digital Textbook Initiative" to review free digital high school textbooks to determine which met the state’s established academic standards. State education officials asked content developers to submit content. Then the California Learning Resource Network (CLRN) facilitated the review of the submitted content.

Most of the free textbooks scored highly. The results were not an official endorsement by the state, but even as a “dry-run” or experiment, this effort is likely to both encourage other suppliers of free content and local decision makers to consider adopting free content as part of their curriculum. Which is the intention.

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By David Rothman

Will children fare better as readers if they can pick their own books?  Yes, say Nancie Atwell and some other reading gurus.

The New York Times has the details. The key, as I see it as an ex-child, is balance—between the compulsory assignments and the joy-of-it books that can build the reading habit.

A little Jules Verne to go along with Jane Austen, please.

I know: Austen books may be more “literary.” But Verne himself excels as a story-teller. Good teachers can introduce students to both kinds of writing and try to point out the difference. Some sprawling major literary classics—masterpieces by today’s definitions, such as Moby-Dick—would probably have appalled Austen. (Update, 11 a.n.: No anti-Austen slam intended. Here’s to variety!)

One justification for the TeleRead vision of a well-stocked national digital library system is that it would put online a greater variety of books to match students’ precise needs and interests. TeleRead would be in line with S.R. Ranganathan’s Five Laws of Library Science, including “Every reader his book” and “Every book its reader.”

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By David Rothman

“At Empire High School in Vail, Ariz., students use computers provided by the school to get their lessons, do their homework and hear podcasts of their teachers’ science lectures,” says Tamar Lewis’s story in the New York Times.

But guess what they’re not using, or at least not as often? Traditional textbooks.

The Democratic Leadership Council’s problematic Kindle proposal talks about electronic textbooks, but there’s a little problem. More and more educators and students are put off by the very term “textbook.” What’s more, many would prefer to decouple education from reliance on specific companies and specific products.

By David Rothman

6 Lessons One Campus Learned about E-Textbooks is the headline over Jeffrey R. Young’s article in the Chronicle of Higher Education. But perhaps it should read instead, “E-textbooks not ready for college students yet, at least in many cases.”

Northwestern Missouri State University used the Sony Reader in a pilot study and, according to Young, found that students demanded printed books instead because of navigation problems with E.

Mind you, this wasn’t with the new PRS-700, which lets you use a stylus to move around. So maybe the results would have been different.

Kindle DX: Will lack of a stylus hurt it on campus?

But remember, the new Kindle DX lacks a stylus, so I’ll be curious if similar navigation issue arise. We’ll be finding out soon enough since the DX is officially shipping June 10.

Another issue could be the lack of color, a capability which might be handy for charts, not to mention other illustrations. At least the Northwestern Missouri students shown above are using laptops, with color screens.

Meanwhile here’s a list of the six lessons:

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By David Rothman

Peter Wayner—author of a smart survey of the e-book scene, mentioning our Paul Biba—is out with another good read.

A Book Author Wonders How to Reduce Piracy is the new headline in the New York Times.

Pete is vexed that students are pirating his tech-related books—for example, Disappearing Cryptography—and I sympathize. Here’s my advice: Go after the schools, from K-12 through the post-graduate level, but use the carrot, not the stick.

I agree with Pete that justifications for piracy are off-target. Screen tech keeps improving, for example, so pirated e-books will be less and less viable as a means of advertising p-books. This is fine now in many situations, but it’s hardly a sustainable approach for the long term. And what to do if you don’t want to write a series—and if you doubt that your particular readers will want as high a level of interactivity as the readers of SF books might? You lack the same range of extras to sell beyond the basic text. It’s the main show, with nothing directly related to follow, especially if your next books may be on different topics! Reader loyalty to authors extends only so far.

Does this mean you should be a copyright hawk? No. In the case  of textbooks and others used by schools at all levels, I would not recommend an RIAAish approach of turning these educators into copyright cops. But there is a better option. Why not push for federal legislation that in one way or another would encourage schools to build textbooks into the cost of tuition? Perhaps they would get more federal aid.

Unwittingly Pete himself may have made an argument for such an strategy. In his blog he wrote:

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By David Rothman

The more books in your home, the better your kids will fare in school. That’s the line in Freakonomics. And now Virginia Heffernan, the "Medium" columnist for the New York Times, is asking a related question about her son.

"Will Ben benefit if I load my Kindle with hundreds of books that he can’t see? Or does he need the spectacle of hard- and softcover dust magnets eliminating floor space in our small apartment to get the full ‘Freakonomics’ effect? I sadly suspect he needs the shelves and dust.

"Anyway, Ben doesn’t distinguish between my Kindle and a BlackBerry. My immersion in the Kindle is not (to him) an example of impressive role-model literacy. It’s Mom e-mailing, or texting, or for all he knows playing video games. In fact, the only time he describes what he and I do together as ‘reading’ is when we’re sitting with a clutch of pages bound between covers, open in front of us like a hymnal."

At odds with standard wisdom among moms and literacy experts

But wait. Ben is just three years old, and I wonder what would happen if the Kindle had a color screen and if Mom regularly read illustrated stories to him from the machine. Contradicting more than a few mothers and literacy experts, Freakonomics’ authors doubt that reading aloud to kids will boost their test scores. But wouldn’t this if nothing else associate the Kindle with The Joys of Reading? Meanwhile, yes, color laptops and tablets have been known to exist. The convertible OLPC machine can be both.

I also wonder if decorating the Heffernan apartment with scenes from books—in some cases, maybe illustrations downloaded from sites like Wikipedia, my source of the image from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland—would help get the e-versions on the minds of kids.

The right books

Finally, as long as we’re comparing E and P, how about the touchy little question of how relevant the P or E books will be to the children? Shouldn’t that count, too, not just the sheer numbers of books?

Via E, parents and children can obtain a wide variety of free or low-cost books that match the kids’ interests. Shouldn’t that be a factor, too?

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By David Rothman

Barack Obama wants a huge investment in infrastructure here in the States—both the highway and electronic varieties. America’s broadband penetration would be improved. And every child could tap away at a computer.

In the rush to modernize, however, Obama and his team should also press for sufficient resources for:

1. E-books and other items for schools and libraries—and creation of more—while respecting the First Amendment and allowing for a robust private sector. That means money for books from traditional  publishers, as well as creation of wikis, blogs and the rest by teachers, with help from content experts. Textbook publishers might find new contracting opportunities here. Let’s remember all the obsolete textbooks still in use. In other areas, keep in mind the extent to which students can benefit from a wide variety of recreational reading items, including novels. Consider Norman Mailer’s wisdom on the benefits of linear narrative. Meanwhile, in this recession, let’s not forget the economies of e-books compared to paper.

2. Money for training of teachers and librarians to use the new technology—and maybe funds for student aides to help them out. Even many younger teachers are still baffled how to weave technology into their lessons. Librarians need training in e-book technology, as well as in Wikis and interbook linking. If the International Digital Publishing Forum won’t address the K-12-related  interbook and shared annotations issues, then maybe Washington can offer a little push for e-book standards for the non-disabled (current federal requirements include the disabled). Remember, the IDPF’s ePub format is itself a descendant of standards encouraged by the National Institute for Standards and Technology.

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