Kindle, Sony May Get Biggest Payoff From Textbooks (Update3) - Bloomberg.com

Kindle, Sony May Get Biggest Payoff From Textbooks (Update3) - Bloomberg.com: "Within five years, textbooks will be the biggest market for e-book devices, dwarfing sales to casual readers, predicts Sarah Epps, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc. in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Corning Inc., which is developing glass screens for e-readers, expects textbooks to fuel about 80 percent of demand for those components by 2019. “Print will expire faster in the textbook world than in the trade book world,” Epps said. “The technical barriers will disappear and five years is enough for the content to catch up with demand. The potential is there.”"

Why the Kindle Won’t Have a Dramatic Impact on College Course Materials for at least Five Years (Part 1 — College Textbook Publishers) at XplanaZine

Why the Kindle Won’t Have a Dramatic Impact on College Course Materials for at least Five Years (Part 1 — College Textbook Publishers) at XplanaZine: "Finally, and most important, while the Kindle will be extremely attractive to students, they are not currently significant decision makers in the textbook adoption process. College textbook publishers sell their product to instructors and institutional representatives."

Why the Kindle Won’t Have a Dramatic Impact on College Course Materials for at least Five Years (Part 1 — College Textbook Publishers) at XplanaZine

Why the Kindle Won’t Have a Dramatic Impact on College Course Materials for at least Five Years (Part 1 — College Textbook Publishers) at XplanaZine: "Another consideration is that e-books for textbook publishers also represent important contextualized learning tools that support their homework management products (LMS solutions). This use of e-books favors online e-books that can be integrated seamlessly into a BlackBoard, Angel, Moodle etc. LMS platform. The Kindle could certainly be used for this but that would require a significant change in the current workflows and processes for textbook publishers."

Professional and Scholarly Publishing Leads the Market for Ebooks by a Wide Margin « The Scholarly Kitchen

Professional and Scholarly Publishing Leads the Market for Ebooks by a Wide Margin « The Scholarly Kitchen: "Of course, as Niels Bohr said, “prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.” But even if Greco’s forecasts for the trade sector are dramatically short and trade ebook revenues grow by as much as 200% through 2013, trade books will still account for less than 20% of the ebook market. Which makes me wonder why the media is so fixated on the trade sector of the ebook market."

York region - Student-led schools not far off, marketing expert says

York region - Student-led schools not far off, marketing expert says:

"Textbooks are expensive, out of date and “unbelievably heavy”, he said. Now, it is possible to download a textbook, instantly update it, read newspapers or magazines, have an embedded dictionary and delve further sources with hand-held technology.

“This is increasingly how our young people are going to want to learn,” Mr. Valiquette said.

Those who are 25 years or younger have never known a world without free constant global source of information at their fingertips on the Internet, he said."

York region - Student-led schools not far off, marketing expert says

York region - Student-led schools not far off, marketing expert says:

"Modern schools must change or be changed by the young people they teach, a youth culture expert told an international conference of educators in Thornhill this week. Max Valiquette, founder and president of marketing firm Youthography told 600 educators that student-run — even student-owned — schools are not that far in the future, thanks to a world where young people control their lives more than ever."

Turbulence Ahead: Smarter Schools

Turbulence Ahead: Smarter Schools:

"I've blogged about this before, and I'm not the only one thinking this way - so is Arnie. The idea has been around a while. Indeed, some Irish schools are experimenting with this - including several in South County Dublin. So I was staggered to find that the Department of Education's/ICT Ireland's Smart Schools = Smart Economy report doesn't contain a single reference to ebooks. Not even one. Surely the smarter thing to do would be to align ourselves with the next generation of pedagogic technologies and to enable a cluster of supporting Irish businesses to grow up around them? Laptops and projectors won't do it."

High School Ditches Textbooks for eBooks - Digital Camera Reviews, Digital Photography Tutorials, Best Digital Cameras - Photoxels

High School Ditches Textbooks for eBooks - Digital Camera Reviews, Digital Photography Tutorials, Best Digital Cameras - Photoxels:

"TORONTO, Nov. 17 – Embracing the benefits of electronic reading, students at Blyth Academy are today beginning the transition from using traditional printed textbooks to digital textbooks read on the Sony(R) Reader Digital Book. Blyth Academy is the first high school in the world to announce that each student will be supplied with an e-Reader in place of printed textbooks."

The Tartan Online : Bookless libraries increase accessibility

The Tartan Online : Bookless libraries increase accessibility: "James Tracy, the headmaster of Cushing Academy, explained his decision to replace his school’s books: “When I look at books, I see an outdated technology, like scrolls before books.”"

The Tartan Online : Bookless libraries increase accessibility

The Tartan Online : Bookless libraries increase accessibility: "“Rare books [can be] scanned and delivered via the World Wide Web to scholars in places such as Argentina and Germany who could not visit the books,” Mary Catharine Johnsen, the special collections and design librarian, said. “Electronic versions save wear and tear on using the physical book, which is important if you are a book from 1755 and your leather spine is dry and cracking.”"

The Tartan Online : Bookless libraries increase accessibility

The Tartan Online : Bookless libraries increase accessibility: "We are working towards a hybrid of an online and paper-based library,” computer science librarian Missy Harvey explained."

Top News - SETDA forum illuminates key ed-tech trends

Top News - SETDA forum illuminates key ed-tech trends: "Participants heard about what's now the norm (interactive whiteboards, or IWBs), what's hot on everyone's list (digital textbooks), and what's on the horizon (national high school reform)."

News: Bookless Libraries? - Inside Higher Ed

News: Bookless Libraries? - Inside Higher Ed:

"he is the CIO who said that libraries are just big air conditioners for books"

News: Bookless Libraries? - Inside Higher Ed

News: Bookless Libraries? - Inside Higher Ed: "“Now, in the fourth generation, we’re really seeing the library as a place to connect, collaborate, learn, and really synthesize all four of those roles together,” said Luce. “How do you do that without bricks and mortar?”"

News: Bookless Libraries? - Inside Higher Ed

News: Bookless Libraries? - Inside Higher Ed: "Certain major research universities, she noted, have even begun moving their books to off-campus storage facilities due to space issues and a diminishing need for on-site hard copies. Libraries everywhere are eliminating pricey subscriptions to printed academic journals, often opting for less expensive digital versions."

Beyond the Book — The Late Age of Print

Beyond the Book — The Late Age of Print:

"I’ve been raising similar concerns recently in my speech about the Amazon Kindle. The device automatically archives detailed, even intimate, information about what and more importantly how people read on the Amazon server cloud. This kind of information is subject not 4th Amendment/search warrant protections but can instead be subpoenaed by prosecutors who are anxious to dig up dirt on suspects. The question I raise in the speech, and the question that also seems to emerge in the case of Google Books and the coming Editions service, is, what happens to a society when privacy is no longer the default setting for reading?"

Beyond the Book — The Late Age of Print

Beyond the Book — The Late Age of Print:

"In some ways the distinction Liu draws harkens back to the difference between “intensive” and “extensive” reading. The intensive mode refers to the deep reading of a small amount of texts, often multiple times, while the extensive mode designates a more cursory type of engagement with a significantly larger amount of texts. The claim among book historians is that the coming of print ushered in a new age of extensive reading, which in turn set in motion a mindful, but ultimately thinner, relationship to books and other types of printed artifacts. Could it be that in emphasizing “peripheral” attention, e-books are not breaking with but rather carrying on the legacy ushered in by print?"

The Right to Read — The Late Age of Print

The Right to Read — The Late Age of Print:

"I’m rather taken with the idea of a right to read given the ways in which new e-book systems, such as the Amazon Kindle, tether reading to corporate custodians who in turn mine the machines for intimate details about how people read. As these devices become more prevalent, I worry about the effects they might have on how people practice and conceive of reading. Until now it was relatively difficult to monitor closely how and what people read. What will become of reading, and people’s relationship to it, once that freedom is definitively diminished? Indeed, a right to read seems to me of paramount importance in a context where someone is looking over your shoulder every time that you open an electronic book or periodical."