I am happy to share that I have a new focus for the remainder of our e-learning pilot. I'm going to research electronic textbooks. It feels like this topic has been popping up a lot lately, in the news and in our shared eCircle resources. Some examples that will warrant further investigation:
- 2011 Horizon Report - One Year or Less: Electronic Books
- Washington 2-year college and the Open Course Library Project) (More information here: Washington's 2-year colleges out to beat high cost of textbooks)
Some questions I have:
- What trends are happening right now or are just around the corner? (open access, new business models)
- What obstacles prevent wide scale adoption of electronic textbooks?
I'll also be testing out some existing e-textbooks on the iPad (and other apps).
Also, I read an eBook from the public library and I will eventually post about that.
Great idea...if I could add a couple of questions:
ReplyDelete--What social aspects will e-texts have built in that will allow readers to connect and collaborate? I know on the Kindle, I can already see what the most often highlighted passages from other readers are.
--To what extent will e-texts allow readers to mark them up, add to them, and remix them? For instance, O'Reilly has a publishing arm that allows you to construct your own book by taking chapters from many different works and collecting them into your own.
To me, the big question is how will the interactivity change our relationship with the text? Could be a fascinating study.
Hi Will - thanks for your input! I also think the social aspects and interactivity features could be a fascinating study. It seems like publishers are trying to offer these kinds of features to add value to an e-text versus making it an exact replica of the print. Would also be interesting to see what features students prefer.
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