Interactive learning takes root in Norwich - Norwich, CT - Norwich Bulletin

Interactive learning takes root in Norwich - Norwich, CT - Norwich Bulletin: "The Community Foundation of Eastern Connecticut presented a $10,000 grant to Kelly Middle School at the Board of Education meeting earlier this week. They money will be used to purchase three laptops and 12 iPads."

Interactive learning takes root in Norwich - Norwich, CT - Norwich Bulletin

Interactive learning takes root in Norwich - Norwich, CT - Norwich Bulletin: "Sixth-graders in Jamie Bender’s science classes at Teachers’ Memorial started using iPads and laptops as enhancements to textbooks late last month, thanks to a $140,000, 21st Century Learning Grant for interactive technology."

Google eBooks Paves The Way For Ad-Supported Publishing | Forrester Blogs

Google eBooks Paves The Way For Ad-Supported Publishing | Forrester Blogs: "But the ultimate effect of Google eBooks, if Google knows what's good for it, will be the creation of an ad-supported publishing model. This is where the anger starts. Because I'm putting words in Google's mouth -- words they may or may not be thinking but certainly words they don't want to say out loud -- but mostly because I'm proposing something that is so counter to the philosophy and mindset of the publishing industry that I may be shunned for even suggesting it."

Google eBooks: The good, the bad, and the ugly | ZDNet

Google eBooks: The good, the bad, and the ugly | ZDNet: "My fingers, however, are doubly crossed (it’s making it hard to type, but it’s important) that Google eBooks will be integrated sooner than later with Google Apps, such that corporate or school libraries can make use of purchased works from within Apps. If anyone can sort out the DRM of shared book collections in a school and make them accessible from a collaboration platform, it’s Google."

Students' use of Kindles increases reading, brings fame to Chambersburg Area School District libraries - Chambersburg Public Opinion

Students' use of Kindles increases reading, brings fame to Chambersburg Area School District libraries - Chambersburg Public Opinion: "Chambersburg Area School District library leaders Joanne Hammond and Susan Berrier discussed E-readers, in this case Kindles, during a presentation to the school board Wednesday. The electronic devices were purchased as a way to interest students in reading books and provide them technology to work with. The school has 30 Kindles and a cart to charge and store them in.

The devices have increased the number of minutes students have spent reading and also the number of books that have been read.

Now the library is receiving national recognition."

More News on E-Readers - Digital Education - Education Week

More News on E-Readers - Digital Education - Education Week: "A report released by Scholastic today found that although a third of 9- to 17-year-olds said an e-reader would encourage them to read more books, only 16 percent of parents plan to purchase one in the next year."

Google Android showdown: Battle of the eReader Apps | ZDNet

Google Android showdown: Battle of the eReader Apps | ZDNet: "there is no functionality to read public domain books or other titles you add manually."

New Study on Reading in the Digital Age: Parents Say Electronic, Digital Devices Negatively Affects Kids' Reading Time | Scholastic Media Room

New Study on Reading in the Digital Age: Parents Say Electronic, Digital Devices Negatively Affects Kids' Reading Time | Scholastic Media Room: "The report found that the power of choice is a key factor in raising a reader. Nine out of ten children say that they are more likely to finish book they choose themselves. And parents don’t try to overly influence that choice toward award winners or classic literature. Nine out of 10 parents say 'As long as my child is reading, I just want my child to read books he/she likes.'"

Kindle | Clearwater High School Students Trade Textbooks For Kindles | Which Kindle

Kindle | Clearwater High School Students Trade Textbooks For Kindles | Which Kindle: "“I can have them write reports without having to go to library and research. They can do it in my classroom,” says Mary Koning, English teacher at Clearwater High School. Mary says the Kindles offers a teacher the tool to speak a language students understand today. Mary says, “These kids have grown up with cell phones and computers. I’m a bit older than them and I didn’t grow up with all that. I think it will help them be more interested and engaged in what they are learning and want to read.”"

Will the Kindle Change Education? | Scholastic.com

Will the Kindle Change Education? | Scholastic.com: "Kindles stocked with well-chosen e-books would also allow teachers to flex new teaching strategies, according to Cornelia Brunner, the deputy director at the Center for Children and Technology in New York City. “You could have a very nicely selected group of readings. . . . Kids could read, annotate, and actually clip and be asked to make connections among those clippings,” says Brunner."

Surplus to Requirement | TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Surplus to Requirement | TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home: "When it comes to teaching children then yes, we absolutely need to indoctrinate every last one of them into the specific skill of absorbing large swathes of written information, not because it’s essential or somehow noble, but because any one of them might go on to lead a life where they will need it. Early pedagogy is about providing the fullest range of likely options for valuable later use that we can muster."

MLive.com : West Michigan schools catch up to 'digital kids' with new technology

MLive.com : West Michigan schools catch up to 'digital kids' with new technology: "Blended learning will grow rapidly in K-12, as it has at the college level. Two area districts, Coopersville and Grandville, just added staff to increase online offerings. Kentwood has two full-time and one part-time educational technologists consulting teachers how to integrate it, Superintendent Scott Palczewski said. Districts like Caledonia and Hopkins paid for new technologies through recent bond campaigns, and buy inexpensive netbooks for about $300 each. Other districts, including Grand Rapids Public Schools, used federal stimulus funds for new technologies. Some administrators also see blended instruction as a way to cut costs long term.

Even so, technology evolves so fast that it's continual challenge for resource-strapped Michigan school districts to stay current, said Dan Takens, superintendent at Byron Center. The district's student-to-computer ratio is almost 2-to-1, but most of the technology is six years old.

Rockford Public Schools will debut six new Smart classrooms this fall -- two at each level -- with state-of-the-art hardware, software and furnishings. These 'classrooms of the future' are sponsored by Steelcase, Microsoft and Custer Furniture, who will use them to gather data on how the new bells and whistles affects student achievement."

ACLS Humanities E-Book: White Paper No. 3

ACLS Humanities E-Book: White Paper No. 3: "HEB's initial findings in this study indicate that titles formatted for existing handheld devices are not yet adequate for scholarly use in terms of replicating either the benefits of online collections—cross-searchability, archiving, multifarious interactive components—nor certain aspects of print editions that users reported missing, such as being able to mark up and rapidly skim text. A turnaround is underway once a common and more robust format optimized for handheld readers is determined and devices themselves evolve, adding improved display options and better and more intuitive web-access, searching and other interactive use of content."

ACLS Humanities E-Book: White Paper No. 3

ACLS Humanities E-Book: White Paper No. 3: "About 88% of our 142 survey participants expressed overall satisfaction with the appearance and functionality of the three remaining handheld samples, although roughly half reported some level of frustration with the search function using either format, and only 26% felt they would have an easy time citing and referencing these editions. Satisfaction with other interactive features, such as adding notes, bookmarking and highlighting, was noticeably higher; however, the “n/a” option was also selected frequently for these categories, and it appears that a large number of participants were unable to perform the tasks in question due to confusing or insufficient instructions from the device manufacturer. As formats evolve, future satisfaction with these features may increase. Irrespective of specific limitations, 75% of participants were interested in potentially downloading additional similar titles for free or if priced below $10."

ACLS Humanities E-Book: White Paper No. 3

ACLS Humanities E-Book: White Paper No. 3: "During its in-house assessment phase, HEB experienced some navigational difficulty with both formats and found that annotation and other interaction with the text was difficult using a number of popular e-readers. (Specifically, the sample titles were tested by HEB on the Sony Reader PRS-700, Amazon's Kindle 2 and the Stanza application on the Apple iPhone.)"

Joe Wikert's Publishing 2020 Blog: "iBookstore vs Kindle Bookstore" & "Which Device Wins?"

Joe Wikert's Publishing 2020 Blog: "iBookstore vs Kindle Bookstore" & "Which Device Wins?": "So although the iBooks app is nice, I refuse to paint myself into a corner and be limited to a single platform. Gee, that sounds like what I used to say about the Kindle platform, which leads me to the second question... I'm lumping all dedicated e-readers (e.g., Kindle) as well as multi-purpose devices (e.g., iPad) into my thinking. Sure, eInk is great in the sun, but as I like to say, if it's a sunny day I'd rather be doing something other than sitting around reading! With that in mind, my answer to the 'which device wins' question is...Android."

The view from Down Under: why China’s knockoff devices will drive ebooks | TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

The view from Down Under: why China’s knockoff devices will drive ebooks | TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home: "So is a flood of cheap devices of all creeds and colours good for ebooks? A resounding yes. Certainly in Australia, at this stage of ebooks adoption, I’d say that quantity trumps quality when it comes to both ebooks and ereaders. Those in the US and Europe (in patches) are still in the same boat, although their ebooks markets are more advanced, and I think are past their tipping point."

Pattern Recognition » Blog Archive » eBooks, filetype, and DRM

Pattern Recognition » Blog Archive » eBooks, filetype, and DRM: "There are two different things going on when someone tries to open an eBook file on an eReader. One is filetype…how the file itself is organized internally, how the information contained within is encoded. This is analogous to the difference between a Word file saved as a .doc file, a Word file saved as a .docx file, and an Powerpoint file (.ppt). All are different filetypes…the program involved in the creation, editing, and display of those files describes the information contained inside. Right now, there are two main filetypes being used to describe eBook files: the Amazon eBook standard, or .amz file, and the ePub file (.epub) that is used by just about every other eBook vendor."

Politics K-12 - Education Week

Politics K-12 - Education Week: "The results are in, and the list of Race to the Top winners in Round Two includes an eclectic mix of 10 states that had put together very different kinds of applications in their funding bids for the $3.4 billion in remaining federal funds. The winners in this second and final round announced by the U.S. Department of Education today: the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, and Rhode Island. They join first-round winners Delaware and Tennessee."

Textbooks slip as learning tools | tennessean.com | The Tennessean

Textbooks slip as learning tools | tennessean.com | The Tennessean: "But Gary Cowan, Metro's director of instruction for middle schools, said the culture of teaching is changing as educators learn to share ideas and open themselves to new techniques. 'At one time textbooks drove the curriculum. Students were very dependent on them and did most of their work from textbooks. That's no longer true,' he said. 'Now that we have state standards that is the curriculum, and the textbook becomes a resource.'"

Textbooks slip as learning tools | tennessean.com | The Tennessean

Textbooks slip as learning tools | tennessean.com | The Tennessean: "The industry is big business. This year Metro schools alone will spend $5.7 million buying and repairing books for students. Publishing companies are making efforts to offer more materials electronically, but some teachers and experts say they're slow to evolve into a new platform." Nashville.

Dance Review: Irons, Santos create a Latin dance party | The Portland Press Herald / Maine Sunday Telegram

Dance Review: Irons, Santos create a Latin dance party | The Portland Press Herald / Maine Sunday Telegram: "Just watching Irons was a lesson in classical jazz technique, especially in her slow-motion sequences. In bends, she seemed to find extra vertebrae, progressing from one to another in incredibly smooth transitions. Her shoulder rolls and isolations were similarly impressive and expressive. In addition to Irons and Santos, dancers included Chloe Bergman-Ray, Sasha Campbell, Emily Delamater, Erin Hamlin, Kim Hamlin and Karianna Merrill, performing in an array of multicolored costumes, designed by Kim Hamlin."

Audiobooks on the Kindle

Kathy Schrock's Kaffeeklatsch: Amazon Kindle 2 Thoughts: "I chose a title, Bill Bryson's 'In a Sunburned Country', to use for determining the answer to this question. Bryson's print book is 352 pages in length. Audible's format-2 of his book is 46mb in file size, format-3 is 86mb, and format 4 is 172mb. That seems to indicate that, on the Kindle's 2GB storage drive, you could have forty-five format-2 Audible recordings, twenty-four format-3 recordings, or twelve format-4 recordings. (And of course, various numbers of the combination of the formats.)"

Personal Technology: Digital books are changing our reading patterns | The Jakarta Post

Personal Technology: Digital books are changing our reading patterns | The Jakarta Post: "A few weeks ago, I wrote about the emergence of the digital book, and how, basically, we should get over our love affair with its physical ancestor"

Blog U.: Digital Tweed - Inside Higher Ed

Blog U.: Digital Tweed - Inside Higher Ed: "eBooks/eTexts will remain one of those wished for/ever-arriving technologies. Last fall, more than three-fourths (76.3 percent) of the CIOs and senior campus IT officers participating in the annual Campus Computing Survey agreed that “eBook content will be an important source for instructional resources in the next five years.” Two-thirds (66.0 percent) also agreed that “eBook readers (hardware) will be important platforms for instructional content in five years.”"

Doubts About Digital - Brainstorm - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Doubts About Digital - Brainstorm - The Chronicle of Higher Education: "Here’s an important story in the New York Times about the academic benefits of digital tools, with the headline “Computers at Home: Educational Hope vs. Teenage Reality.” And here is a story in Science Daily with a similar theme under the title “College Undergrads Study Ineffectively on Computers, Study Finds: Students Transfer Bad Study Habits from Paper to Screen.”"

iPad on Academic Probation

iPad on Academic Probation: "At the Illinois Institute of Technology, all incoming freshman will be provided an iPad pre-loaded with all the texts and software required for first year classes. 'We can ensure everyone has the same hardware an software, and it makes it easier to integrate into the curriculum,' Evan Venie the associate director of media relations at IIT told wired.com."

iPad on Academic Probation

iPad on Academic Probation: "Oklahoma State University announced earlier in the year that this fall students in the School of Media and Strategic Communications and the Spears School of Business would receive iPads as part of the required material for those disciplines. Students will use the devices as personal study tools, as well as to research ways they may be more effectively implemented in the workforce. 'This limited pilot will be focused on the fields of study where we believe we can best determine the higher education value of the iPad,' explained Bill Handy of the School of Strategic Communications."

iPad on Academic Probation

iPad on Academic Probation: "According to one high school administrator quoted in a recent Business Week article on the topic, to achieve an acceptable return on investment (ROI), half of the textbooks used in any school would have to be available in e-book format before the iPad or other such readers will make good economic sense for schools that already pinch pennies just to provide the basics to their students."

iPad on Academic Probation

iPad on Academic Probation: "Ryan Lawson, the director of technology at Brother Rice High School in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, purchased 700 iPads, one for every student at the all-boys Catholic school. While the boys were understandably excited by the new technology's place in the curriculum, Mr. Lawson fears that the lack of remote monitoring makes the iPad vulnerable to misuse by young people and thus more of a burden than a blessing in the quest for academic excellence."

Palo Alto Online : Stanford School of Medicine turns to iPads

Palo Alto Online : Stanford School of Medicine turns to iPads: "Incoming medical students at the University of California, Irvine are set to receive fully loaded iPads at a ceremony Friday for new students. But iPads aren't just being embraced by medical school staff. A pilot program at Oklahoma State University will provide students in certain communications and business courses with the devices, and all 550 incoming freshmen at the Illinois Institute of Technology will receive iPads loaded with introductory course material this fall."

How four models of e-readers stack up - dailypress.com

How four models of e-readers stack up - dailypress.com: "Many in the halls of higher learning are taking a wait-and-see approach to e-readers. As director of academic information services for the College of William and Mary, Gene Roche advises professors on how to integrate technology into their teaching and research. He said e-readers have great potential. But right now, it's just that, potential. 'Many of us on the faculty are kind of skeptical,' Roche said. 'Our students are reading long passages and keeping track of detailed arguments. That's not something the [e-book] format is really good for … But the iPad is likely to change that because the display is so nice.'"

Simba Information: Market Research for the Publishing & Media Industries Group News | LinkedIn

Simba Information: Market Research for the Publishing & Media Industries Group News | LinkedIn: "Priced at just $149, the new Nook Wi-Fi includes the same features of the Nook 3G—including color touch screen for navigation, an E-Ink display and Wi-Fi connectivity—but lacks 3G connectivity. The price is also identical to that of Borders’ recently introduced Kobo eBook reading device, which, according to the company, saw its original batch sold out with new products set to ship on July 2."

Kindle Use at the University Level Takes a Step Backwards | Fordham RETC

Kindle Use at the University Level Takes a Step Backwards | Fordham RETC: "College and University programs that promote using Kindles or like e-reading devices are being suspended by the U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Department of Education."

Jakarta’s e-book policy misses target by a mile | The Jakarta Post

Jakarta’s e-book policy misses target by a mile | The Jakarta Post: "The government, through the National Education Ministry, allocated Rp 20 billion for the program, The fund was to be used for, among other things, buying the copyrights of widely used school textbooks and uploading them in digital form to the Internet. It was expected that the students would be able to download the books for free and easily print them.
Initially, the program was launched with around 400 books on various subjects. Ninety-five of the books were for elementary schools, 72 for junior high schools, 24 for senior high schools and 216 for vocational schools."

Joe Wikert's Publishing 2020 Blog: The Rapidly Shifting Ebook Retailer Landscape

Joe Wikert's Publishing 2020 Blog: The Rapidly Shifting Ebook Retailer Landscape: "I believe Amazon will completely abandon the Kindle hardware space by late 2012. The only adjustment I'd like to make to that prediction is that the iPad (and the upcoming flood of Android-based tablets) will cause it to happen even sooner."

Joe Wikert's Publishing 2020 Blog: The Rapidly Shifting Ebook Retailer Landscape

Joe Wikert's Publishing 2020 Blog: The Rapidly Shifting Ebook Retailer Landscape: "Google Editions is said to be cloud-based and hardware agnostic. Great so far. After all, I often worried about being locked into Amazon's Kindle platform each time I bought another $9.99 book for it. To Amazon's credit though, they're heading away from their original locked-in hardware model where you had to own a Kindle to enjoy a Kindle ebook. Most of the books I read on my iPad now are from the Kindle store, so kudos to Amazon."

50% of US college students plan to buy an e-reader before autumn term - House & Home, Life & Style - The Independent

50% of US college students plan to buy an e-reader before autumn term - House & Home, Life & Style - The Independent: "Although currently only 2% of students own an e-reader device, 50% of those surveyed plan to buy one within the next year. Other electronic purchases expected to be popular before the start of the new school year include smartphones and portable gaming consoles. The number of students who own a smartphone is expected to rise by 26%, and 73% of male students plan to buy a handheld games console, while 67% intend on buying a non-portable version."

Google’s Do-It-Yourself App Tool - NYTimes.com

Google’s Do-It-Yourself App Tool - NYTimes.com: "“The goal is to enable people to become creators, not just consumers, in this mobile world,” said Harold Abelson, a computer scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who is on sabbatical at Google and led the project."

Department of Ed Lays Down Law on Kindle E-Reader Usage -- THE Journal

Department of Ed Lays Down Law on Kindle E-Reader Usage -- THE Journal: "The United States Department of Education and Department of Justice have just issued a reminder calling for colleges and universities--as well as K-12 school districts--to make sure devices such as e-readers that are required in the classroom comply with accessibility laws. The federal action came on the heels of a settlement agreement made by Justice with five institutions that were running Amazon Kindle e-book readers as pilot programs. According to the agencies, Kindle devices aren't accessible to students who are blind or have low vision. 'If we don't consider individuals with disabilities when we integrate new technologies into the educational environment, students with disabilities can and will be left behind as their non-disabled peers gain the benefits of learning that are enhanced by technological advances. This result would be inconsistent with our civil rights laws,' said Russlynn Ali, assistant secretary for civil rights for the Department of Education."

A review of Amazon’s enhanced audio/video Kindle books by Chris Walters | TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

A review of Amazon’s enhanced audio/video Kindle books by Chris Walters | TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home: "the best designed apps for iDevices are fast, fluid, and a pleasure to use. I didn’t find the enhanced Kindle book sluggish, but I also didn’t see any reason to choose it over a regular app. For one thing, a dedicated app can cull all the video clips or audio files and put them in an easy-to-reach menu for quick access, whereas on the Kindle book I have to jump to the correct page. I’m not convinced yet that a book metaphor is the most efficient approach when it comes to multimedia consumption."

Reuters BreakingViews - Will the iPad Undercut Digital Readers? - NYTimes.com

Reuters BreakingViews - Will the iPad Undercut Digital Readers? - NYTimes.com: "After all, iPad users have already downloaded more than five million e-books. It may be that many people prefer a more versatile device that allows them to browse the Web, watch videos, read e-mail and download games and other applications — and act as an e-reader as well. That’s a potential nightmare for Amazon and other purveyors of e-readers. Think how jack-of-all-trades mobile phones have pushed out initially successful dedicated personal digital organizers."

Reuters BreakingViews - Will the iPad Undercut Digital Readers? - NYTimes.com

Reuters BreakingViews - Will the iPad Undercut Digital Readers? - NYTimes.com: "Pricing trends seem to support the thesis. E-reader sellers slashed their prices this week, some by a quarter. But even corporate clients with giant orders for iPads can’t expect to score any discount. Basic e-readers now go for well under $200 and will almost certainly be offered for less than $100 by Christmas, according to Gartner."

Education Week: Libraries Fading as School Budget Crisis Deepens

Education Week: Libraries Fading as School Budget Crisis Deepens: "Unlike the overflowing bookshelves of wealthier families, 61 percent of low-income families own no age-appropriate books, according to a 2009 study commissioned by Jumpstart on 'America's Early Childhood Literacy Gap.' They depend on libraries to keep them from falling behind in school."

Education Week: Libraries Fading as School Budget Crisis Deepens

Education Week: Libraries Fading as School Budget Crisis Deepens: "No one will know exactly how many jobs are lost until fall, but the American Association of School Administrators projects 19 percent of the nation's school districts will have fewer librarians next year, based on a survey this spring. Ten percent said they cut library staff for the 2009-2010 school year."

Textbooks ditched at Clearwater High as students log on to Kindles - St. Petersburg Times

Textbooks ditched at Clearwater High as students log on to Kindles - St. Petersburg Times: "John Just, assistant superintendent for the district's management information systems, said Kindle officials told the district that no other high school had embarked on such an effort. Schools elsewhere have used e-readers, but mostly on a per class basis. A Massachusetts boarding school recently made waves by completely digitizing its library."

Deconstructing NAEP Reading Scores for Cities - Bridging Differences - Education Week

Deconstructing NAEP Reading Scores for Cities - Bridging Differences - Education Week: "The districts in which 50 percent or more of 4th grade students are 'below basic' are Atlanta, D.C., Chicago, Baltimore, Fresno, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Detroit. In Detroit, a depressing 73 percent of students in 4th grade are 'below basic.' Nationally, 34 percent of students in this grade are 'below basic.'"

E-Textbooks: “An Interesting Ride” (EDUCAUSE Review) | EDUCAUSE

E-Textbooks: “An Interesting Ride” (EDUCAUSE Review) | EDUCAUSE: "On the one hand, we want to create incredibly lush, rich, virtual environments in which students learn — environments that are all hyper connected. But when students get so engaged in where they can go and what they can do and how many things they can do, the notion that they're actually paying attention to anything that's in the content driven portion of the program is pretty much suspect. Will any of this allow for the deeply immersive humanistic reading that English professors like me really, really like? Bayne: In other words, how do you get them to settle down and really read?

Schulze: Yes. I think it's very important for academics all over the United States to start taking the hardware issues of reading and learning more seriously. We're ceding a lot of important developments to people who are really entertainment engineers. And if we want students to learn and to think in the ways that we, as academics, want them to learn and to think, this is a hardware issue."

Individual Knowledge in the Internet Age (EDUCAUSE Review) | EDUCAUSE

Individual Knowledge in the Internet Age (EDUCAUSE Review) | EDUCAUSE: "Indeed, the single best method of getting a basic education is to read increasingly difficult and important books."

Individual Knowledge in the Internet Age (EDUCAUSE Review) | EDUCAUSE

Individual Knowledge in the Internet Age (EDUCAUSE Review) | EDUCAUSE: "Perhaps the perennial nature of the classics, the fact that they have been loved and learned from for generations, does not matter, because in the new publishing and societal paradigm they will be replaced by an 'upstart literature' — literature that is more realistic about the capabilities of attention-challenged students."

Short reads versus long reads.

Individual Knowledge in the Internet Age (EDUCAUSE Review) | EDUCAUSE

Individual Knowledge in the Internet Age (EDUCAUSE Review) | EDUCAUSE: "* Similarly, you may get tremendous help solving problems in your math and science classes by working in groups, online or off, but ultimately the knowledge and skills developed are your own. After you have engaged in a study session with others, you had better make sure you can do the problems by yourself. If you cannot, you probably do not understand the material. These four activities — reading, writing, critical thinking, and calculation — should make up the vast bulk of a liberal education. Social learning could not replace these individual, 'Cartesian' activities without jettisoning liberal education itself."

These posts from Larry Sanger's article in EduCause are pertinent to ebook education because so many pundits see the sine qua non of e-anything as collaboration and crowd-sourcing. If a device doesn't permit or encourage collaboration, then it doesn't pass muster with the average commentator. Sanger picks this argument apart in a very solid fashion.

Individual Knowledge in the Internet Age (EDUCAUSE Review) | EDUCAUSE

Individual Knowledge in the Internet Age (EDUCAUSE Review) | EDUCAUSE: "You can find the Decameron online, you can even listen to another person reading it to you, but you must mentally process it yourself. No one else, certainly no group, can do your reading for you, no matter how helpful they may be in discussing it or summarizing it. Either you read/process it or you don't."

Individual Knowledge in the Internet Age (EDUCAUSE Review) | EDUCAUSE

Individual Knowledge in the Internet Age (EDUCAUSE Review) | EDUCAUSE: "This is an old argument of many educationists: the ever-changing nature of science and technology in the information age makes it unnecessary to amass a lot of soon-to-be-out-of-date knowledge. Since an ever-expanding amount of information and research is frequently updating our understanding of disciplines, there is no reason to insist on memorizing facts and figures — and no reason to insist on a core of basic knowledge and books that should be mastered. But this argument seems fallacious. It implies that the new information has either replaced or made trivial the old information. And this is obviously not so in most subjects. Think of all the things typically taught in primary schools: reading, writing, mathematics, basic science. How much of this has changed in the last one hundred years?"

Ames Tribune > Archives > Ames Tribune > News > Ames educators may shrug off Texas textbook standards

Ames Tribune > Archives > Ames Tribune > News > Ames educators may shrug off Texas textbook standards: "Whaley said most textbook publishers have modified textbook production with an “emphasis on customized textbooks that are specific to the curriculum of a particular district or area,” often used with multiple technologies, like iPods, Kindles and the Internet. “It’s important to realize that local educators should control the content of curriculum they teach,” Whaley said. “A board of elected non-educators should not be making those decisions without multiple reviews and checks and balances.”"

Darden Shares Results of Kindle Experiment

Darden Shares Results of Kindle Experiment:

"The project was initiated as part of the School’s effort to give students the opportunity to test out a leading edge eBook Reader in the Darden environment, as an added convenience helping students prepare more easily for classes and to help the Darden School continue to track toward its aggressive environmental sustainability goals."

Sustainability, less printing, less paper--that is the real value proposition.

Darden Shares Results of Kindle Experiment

Darden Shares Results of Kindle Experiment:

"Koenig learned of the dissatisfaction from a mid-term survey that concluded with two key questions: Would you recommend the Kindle DX to an incoming Darden MBA student? A total of 75 to 80 percent answered “no,” says Koenig. The other survey question asked Kindle-using students: Would you recommend the Kindle DX to an incoming MBA student as a personal reading device? A total of 90 to 95 percent said “yes,” says Koenig."

The device just isn't open enough to support academic use...?

Darden Shares Results of Kindle Experiment

Darden Shares Results of Kindle Experiment:

"The concern with the electronic reading devices is that they are too rigid for use in the fast-paced classrooms of the Darden School where the Socratic method and case-based pedagogy means students have to be nimble. “You must be highly engaged in the classroom every day,’’ says Koenig, and the Kindle is “not flexible enough. … It could be clunky. You can’t move between pages, documents, charts and graphs simply or easily enough compared to the paper alternatives.’’"

The Kindle killer for education: poor navigation of documents.

eBook restrictions vex users | Policy | eSchoolNews.com

eBook restrictions vex users | Policy | eSchoolNews.com:

"Corbett said the proprietary Kindle DRM has actually “worked very well for us in the short term; however, it may not work as well in the long term.” He explained: “The Kindle DRM allows all of our 68 devices to be grouped under one account, which isn’t true with the Adobe-based DRM devices. This means we can move content around the Kindles very easily and not worry about which titles are associated with which Kindles. … As long as we don’t have more than six ‘copies’ of a title out at any given time, we are OK. If we have more than six students reading the same title … then we purchase more copies. With the Adobe-based DRM devices, … this process completely falls apart and is quite unmanageable.”"

eBook restrictions vex users | Policy | eSchoolNews.com

eBook restrictions vex users | Policy | eSchoolNews.com:

"Cushing Academy, a private boarding school in Ashburnham, Mass., made headlines last year when it replaced many of the books in its library with electronic versions. The school bought 68 Kindles, eight Sony Readers, and 101 iRiver Story eReaders for students to use. The latter two devices support the “ePub” open standard for eBooks delivered through Adobe Digital Editions; the Kindle, of course, does not."

Eide Neurolearning Blog: Visual Overload and Visual Crowding - When More Means Less

Eide Neurolearning Blog: Visual Overload and Visual Crowding - When More Means Less:

"Take-home points:
- Critical print size is larger for dyslexics than controls
- Critical spacing between characters is larger for dyslexics than controls
- Reading rate improves with print size to a critical point
- Explains why many dyslexics with excellent verbal funds of knowledge still have trouble reading long words

Classroom and Test Accommodations

In the classroom, more attention should be paid to print size and spacing in daily classroom (worksheets, handouts) and testing materials (as many as 1 in 5 students are dyslexic), and print size and spacing should be considered when purchasing books for students."

Eide Neurolearning Blog: Visual Overload and Visual Crowding - When More Means Less

Eide Neurolearning Blog: Visual Overload and Visual Crowding - When More Means Less: "For visual scientists, visual crowding is a specific term that refers to a greater difficulty in seeing when other visual objects are present. When we look at a complex scene, for instance the picture above, it is impossible to take in all the other visual details. It's what causes some people to overload when they go to large gatherings like music concerts, Disneyland in the summertime, or a crowded Home Depot, but also children in crowded classroom, all-school assembly, writing on a scantron, or completing Mad Math Minutes."

Mick West » Sharing Two Kindles, How does it work?

Mick West » Sharing Two Kindles, How does it work?:

"Re the Nook swap vs Kindle. I read that you can only “loan” the Nook book once for a specific number of days and if the reader hasn’t finished the book, too bad, it comes back to you and you can’t resend it. It’s a feature that’s not quite as good as it sounds."

The sharing feature of the Nook seems more marketing ploy than substance. It does suggest, though, that the Nook firmware contains the code for a capability that could be very helpful in schools if its settings were not so restrictive...

Higher Education Reimagined With Online Courseware - Education Life - NYTimes.com

Higher Education Reimagined With Online Courseware - Education Life - NYTimes.com: "P2PU’s mission isn’t to develop a model and stick with it. It is to “experiment and iterate,” says Ms. Paharia, the former executive director of Creative Commons. She likes to talk about signals, a concept borrowed from economics. “Having a degree is a signal,” she says. “It’s a signal to employers that you’ve passed a certain bar.” Here’s the radical part: Ms. Paharia doesn’t think degrees are necessary. P2PU is working to come up with alternative signals that indicate to potential employers that an individual is a good thinker and has the skills he or she claims to have — maybe a written report or an online portfolio."

The Long Form

The Long Form: "Over the past year it really began to bother me that as I spent more and more time trying to stay up-to-date with RSS feeds, tweets, emails, and other bite-sized pieces of content, this came at the expense of reading long-form content — and books in particular. Sure I was still reading, but what I was reading was less substantive. Most of my reading was being done very quickly and in short bursts, and neither my life nor my reading habits were oriented to consume long-form content. I came to view this as a “reading gap”. Even though from one perspective I was reading more, I was really reading less."

My iPhone has revolutionised my reading | Education | The Guardian

My iPhone has revolutionised my reading | Education | The Guardian:

"So why I had found it easier to read from my iPhone? First, an ordinary page of text is split into about four pages. The spacing seems generous and because of this I don't get lost on the page. Second, the handset's brightness makes it easier to take in words. 'Many dyslexics have problems with 'crowding', where they're distracted by the words surrounding the word they're trying to read,' says John Stein, Professor of Neuroscience at Oxford University and chair of the Dyslexia Research Trust. 'When reading text on a small phone, you're reducing the crowding effect.'"

So, when kids crank up the font size on a Kindle, maybe they are just creating less text and more white space on the page that they need...?

NYU Tries Digital Textbooks -- Campus Technology

NYU Tries Digital Textbooks -- Campus Technology:

"'We expect digital textbook use to grow as fast as the title inventories can,' said Phil Christopher, director of the bookstores. 'The technology is in place, the books are highly interactive, and students own powerful portable devices. Moreover, traditional textbook costs are rising, and students are quite comfortable with searching, shopping, and learning online. Our students are excited to have the option of purchasing CafeScribe digital textbooks.'"

Is this reading?

Really?

4oh4 - words not found: An Email Interview With Merlin Donald

4oh4 - words not found: An Email Interview With Merlin Donald:

"The ebook may be best suited for fiction, or biography. But for anything that requires a lot of reflective thought, a printed book is so portable, handy, easy to notate, and flexible in its format, when compared with current electronic readers, that I would not see the latter as serious competitors yet. That may change as they improve. In particular, electronic readers are not friendly for page flipping, or for parallel processing, where you lay out many books and papers at once, some with pages held open, others annotated, and scan them collectively. What you are doing in that case is moving through several parallel information fields in three-dimensional space, something you cannot do in an ebook."

How the iPhone Could Reboot Education | Gadget Lab | Wired.com

How the iPhone Could Reboot Education | Gadget Lab | Wired.com:

"The traditional classroom, where an instructor assigns a textbook, is heading toward obsolescence. Why listen to a single source talk about a printed textbook that will inevitably be outdated in a few years? That setting seems stale and hopelessly limited when pitted against the internet, which opens a portal to a live stream of information provided by billions of minds. “About five years ago my students stopped taking notes,” Rankin said. “I asked, ‘Why are you not taking notes?’ And they said, ‘Why would we take notes on that?…. I can go to Wikipedia or go to Google, and I can get all the information I need.”

Conversely, the problem with the internet is there’s too much information, and it’s difficult to determine which data is valuable.

These are the specific educational problems Abilene is targeting with the iPhone. Instead of standing in front of a classroom and talking for an hour, Rankin instructs his students to use their iPhones to look up relevant information on the fly. Then, the students can discuss the information they’ve found, and Rankin leads the dialogue by helping assess which sources are accurate and useful.

It’s like a mashup of a 1960s teach-in with smartphone technology from the 2000s."

Colleges Dream of Paperless, iPad-centric Education | Gadget Lab | Wired.com

Colleges Dream of Paperless, iPad-centric Education | Gadget Lab | Wired.com:

"Bill Rankin, a professor of medieval studies at Abilene Christian, called the iPhone program the “TiVoing of education,” because the iPhone was giving students the information they need, when they want it and wherever they want it. After the success of the pilot program, the iPhone has now become a regular part of Abilene Christian’s course structure. Rankin views the iPad as the potential sequel to Abilene Christian’s iPhone program. The university has ordered 50 iPads to kick off an iPad pilot program, which Rankin believes will focus on the future of publishing.

“This is really about people re-imagining what books look like — re-imagining something that hasn’t really been re-imagined in about 550 years,” Rankin said."

ASEE PRISM - MARCH 2010 - TEACHING

ASEE PRISM - MARCH 2010 - TEACHING:

"Amira Choueiki, a Georgia Tech junior, admits that while she still finds some print textbooks useful, “digital books are definitely better for me because I can read them wherever I am.” But books are portable devices, too, it’s pointed out to her. “Yeah,” she says, “but you can’t carry them all at one time, like a laptop.”"

The primary use of the iPad has yet to be determined, says PriceGrabber survey | TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

The primary use of the iPad has yet to be determined, says PriceGrabber survey | TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home: "The eBook versus the paper book. Forty-one percent of consumers would miss aspects of reading paper books if they switched to reading eBooks. The top three aspects consumers mentioned are touch (36 percent), portability (13 percent) and making notes (13 percent)."

Um, can't you touch the portable Kindle and make notes in the books you are reading...?

The primary use of the iPad has yet to be determined, says PriceGrabber survey | TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

The primary use of the iPad has yet to be determined, says PriceGrabber survey | TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home: "The primary use of an Apple iPad has yet to be determined. While more than 1 in 10 consumers say they would primarily use an Apple™ iPad for an eReader, the majority of consumers would use the Apple™ iPad as an additional mobile productivity device (20 percent), a replacement for a laptop or a netbook (19 percent), an entertainment device (10 percent) and an educational/entertainment device for a child (3 percent)."

I wonder if educators would be more in agreement about uses. It is really a big iPod Touch, and those are gaining traction in schools.

Pros and Cons of the iPad in Education

Pros and Cons of the iPad in Education: "No citation/equation support: OS X Pages does a decent job at handling citations, albeit via third-party tools. Almost all of my papers require some sort of APA citations. While I expect I can get the bulk of a paper written on the iPad, handling citations looks like it could be problematic."

This is a problem for everyone!

Tools of Change – Networked, Mobile and Landlocked, Current Ereaders

Tools of Change – Networked, Mobile and Landlocked, Current Ereaders: "The move toward the networked world really differentiates the print and digital book world."

Grant will help Kelso teacher purchase 'e-readers'

Grant will help Kelso teacher purchase 'e-readers':

"A Kelso High School teacher has won a $10,000 grant to help bring struggling students up to grade in reading.
Jerri Patten will used the Qwest grant to buy 30 'e-readers,' electronic books that have built in dictionaries and other features to assist students.
The technology will be particularly useful at Kelso High School, where 'sometimes 25 percent of students are below grade level in reading,' Patten said Tuesday."

I wonder which ereaders they will be using?

Will $99 Moby tablet swim or sink? | eSchoolNews.com

Will $99 Moby tablet swim or sink? | eSchoolNews.com:

"“The negative comments follow quickly when the software applications operate slowly, or not at all, on a device that was never designed to run those applications. That will happen to this device, as well as the iPad, unless user expectations are properly set by technology leaders whose job it is to provide that level of understanding,” he said.
As for replacing textbooks, Hirsch said that once educators can ensure that every student has access to a device that appropriately displays learning resources required by state or local education agencies, “then yes, it can replace textbooks. Until that time, students need to have access to required learning resources that often are print-based.”"

eReaders by price « Kindle Review – Kindle 3 Review, iPad Review

eReaders by price « Kindle Review – Kindle 3 Review, iPad Review: "With the upcoming release of the $149 Kobo eReader and the $499 iPad it’s worth categorizing eReaders by price, looking at what they offer, and identifying patterns and trends."

Journalism students turn to Wikipedia to publish stories | eCampus News

Journalism students turn to Wikipedia to publish stories | eCampus News: "College students know the online resource of which they dare not speak: Wikipedia, the voluminous internet encyclopedia demonized by many in higher education—and a resource that two University of Denver instructors use as a centerpiece of their curriculum.
Denver journalism students are writing Wikipedia entries as part of a curriculum that stresses online writing and content creation as readers move to the web en masse.
Journalism instructors Lynn Schofield Clark and Christof Demont-Heinrich said students are told to check their sourcing carefully, just as they would for an assignment at a local newspaper."

Ereaders, the iPad—Is That All There Is? - 3/25/2010 - School Library Journal

Ereaders, the iPad—Is That All There Is? - 3/25/2010 - School Library Journal: "Why, for instance, do I have to finish writing a book? I could release it as I am writing it and continually add to, edit, and prune it. I could open it up for you to do the same. Is it still a book? Why wait for editions when I could use wiki-style edit histories? Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of reasons to finish the book and create editions (version control, for instance), but they are now choices, not rules dictated by the medium. This is the reinvention we need from ebooks, not pretty pages and a new store. You want to reinvent reading? You want the iPad to be a revolutionary product? Then see reading for what it truly is: a conversation in which authors, readers, and an entire community can use the book to build knowledge and exchange ideas."

MacDailyNews - Why Apple iPad users will read more, and faster

MacDailyNews - Why Apple iPad users will read more, and faster: "Dannon writes, 'Reading hasn’t kept pace with the improvements of our other human pastimes: listening (to music), talking (by phone) and watching (movies and TV). Unlike with other other media, books have hardly changed. It’s as if they’re mired in roughly the same time period as the daguerrotype, the record, and the telegraph. Paper books aren’t searchable, can’t be easily excerpted, don’t have links to footnotes and can’t backup your notes. They can can show pictures, but not video; they can be released yearly, but can’t be updated every 24 hours. (This isn’t to say I dislike paper books — it’s simply that not every book needs to exist in print.)'"

As Schools Lose Relevancy, Students Take Charge of Their Own Learning - Featured News - EdNET News Alert

As Schools Lose Relevancy, Students Take Charge of Their Own Learning - Featured News - EdNET News Alert: "In the absence of a more relevant learning process in schools, our nation’s students increasingly are taking their educational destiny into their own hands and adapting the various tools they use in their personal lives to meet their learning needs and prepare themselves for the future, according to the 2009 Speak Up survey of 300,000 students nationwide. The 2009 Speak Up national findings provide compelling evidence that our nation’s K–12 students increasingly are taking responsibility for their own learning, defining their own education path through alternative sources and feeling not just a right but a responsibility for creating personalized learning experiences."

Insideschools.org » High School Hustle: Overloaded backpacks and outdated textbooks; a better way?

Insideschools.org » High School Hustle: Overloaded backpacks and outdated textbooks; a better way?:

"A recent Scholastic survey commissioned by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and released last week found few teachers believe traditional textbooks can engage today’s digital natives and prepare them for success. Teachers say they prefer digital and non-digital resources like magazines and books other than textbooks.

Only 12 percent of some 40,000 teachers surveyed said textbooks help students achieve, while only 6 percent said textbooks engage their students in learning. Eliminating textbooks (a $7 billion market in the U.S.) is also cost effective in these cash-strapped times; Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California proposed cutting the budget deficit by replacing “outdated” textbooks with electronic versions."

Publishers Short-Sighted in E-Book Price Fight - PCWorld

Publishers Short-Sighted in E-Book Price Fight - PCWorld: "A physical book and an e-book are different. You can sell the former, not the latter."

Homework at North Texas schools is going high-tech | eSchoolNews.com

Homework at North Texas schools is going high-tech | eSchoolNews.com: "Every netbook is a potential eBook reader and Wi-Fi portal, research tool, and classwork file. It’s a trend that education experts say is inevitable, as prices and durability of the equipment improve along with the educational opportunities accessible online. Last week, fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders at the Math, Science and Technology Magnet Elementary School, part of the Richardson Independent School District, carried school-owned netbooks home."

FT.com / Business education - No substitute for a paper read

FT.com / Business education - No substitute for a paper read: "Of the 63 students randomly selected for the trial, 10 to 15 per cent remain “heavy users”, with a very small percentage using Kindles in the classroom. Almost three-quarters said they would not recommend the Kindle to an incoming MBA – even though the vast majority said it was a great personal reading device. In spite of the e-reader’s faults, many liked having their notes to read en route to interviews or to use its text-to-speech features to listen to cases while driving or at the gym.

“They have created a fantastic consumer device,” says Mr Koenig. “Those who have it, have a library that travels very easily.”"

FT.com / Business education - No substitute for a paper read

FT.com / Business education - No substitute for a paper read: "In the US, Forrester Research forecasts sales of 6m e-readers in 2010, double the 3m of 2009. US e-book sales leapt 177 per cent last year compared with 2008 to $169.5m, according to the Association of American Publishers, but still make up just 3.3 per cent of the total book market."

eBooks now outnumber games on the App Store | Cult of Mac

eBooks now outnumber games on the App Store | Cult of Mac:

"...according to Mobclix, a mobile device advertising agency, the number of eBooks available on the App Store has surpassed the number of games for the first time ever, with 27,000 eBook apps to 25,400 games. The reason here is pretty simple: there’s little barrier to entry in releasing an eBook app. All you do is grab a public domain title, wrap it in a remedial interface, slap a $0.99 price on it and hope for the best. Once you’ve programmed the wrapper, you can pump out eBook titles like this quickly and indefinitely, making it an easy moneymaker for more unscrupulous App Devs. Games, on the other hand, require you to have more advanced programming, artistic and design ideas."

Craig Mod thinks iPad could mean the end of ‘disposable books’ | TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Craig Mod thinks iPad could mean the end of ‘disposable books’ | TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home:

"Mod divides books into categories of Formless and Definite Content. Formless Content is your average fiction book, or non-fiction without many illustrations and tables. The text is the all, and it does not matter how it is paginated or reflowed—it still reads the same on any device. Definite Content is designed and formatted to be read in a particular way, with pictures and charts embedded in text at specific places. Textbooks are a good example. Devices such as the Kindle or iPhone, Mod says, have historically had trouble presenting works Definite Content due to the black-and-white nature of the Kindle, or the small screen size of the iPhone.

But the iPad presents new possibilities for e-book formatting, and not just in the tired old “add video to it” multimedia sense. Mod observes that the page-turning metaphor could be entirely abandoned. Books could scroll continuously horizontally or vertically, or scroll horizontally for new chapters and other divisions then vertically within that chapter or division."

I need opinions about the "Kindle" (the new wireless reading device)? | New To Wireless

I need opinions about the "Kindle" (the new wireless reading device)? | New To Wireless:

"The Kindle is linear. It has no good way to handle content in margins, for example. And how many textbooks use a LOT of marginalia? And it certainly has no good way to handle the sidebar/wrap content in a Teacher’s Edition of a book (the part beside the page with the answer keys, etc). Also, it is harder to thumb through a Kindle or jump to another page you need without knowing where it is. Prose you read straight through, but in textbooks you often bounce around. Even the device homepage can become convoluted and hard to navigate as you junk it up with downloads."

Wide Web of diversions gets laptops evicted from lecture halls - washingtonpost.com

Wide Web of diversions gets laptops evicted from lecture halls - washingtonpost.com:

"'The breaking point for me was when I asked a student to comment on an issue, and he said, 'Wait a minute, I want to open my computer,' ' said David Goldfrank, a Georgetown history professor. 'And I told him, 'I don't want to know what's in your computer. I want to know what's in your head.' '"

Wide Web of diversions gets laptops evicted from lecture halls - washingtonpost.com

Wide Web of diversions gets laptops evicted from lecture halls - washingtonpost.com:

"'It's really serialized interruption,' Sieber said. 'You start something, you stop it, you do something else, you stop it, which is something you're doing if you're switching back and forth between World of Warcraft and my class.'"

University library sees demand for Kindles soar | eSchoolNews.com

University library sees demand for Kindles soar | eSchoolNews.com:

"For students looking to temper sober textbook readings with a literary escape into the world of vampires and zombies, Oregon State University is loaning out Amazon Kindle electronic readers stocked with the latest in popular books.

The Corvallis, Ore.-based university has found it too expensive to fill its Valley Library shelves with fiction and nonfiction books that students would read for fun, not homework assignments or upcoming exams. So in November, the university began lending Kindle eReaders to students and faculty willing to part from traditional page flipping and embrace a technology being tested on campuses nationwide."

TOC Report: Book Meets Tablet: 10 ways to enhance your iPad books | TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

TOC Report: Book Meets Tablet: 10 ways to enhance your iPad books | TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home:

"How to reconfigure books the way that modern brains have been reconfigured by the web and technology. All this can be done with current software. These are ideas that can be used to “enhance” a book in new and different ways.

The Colonel Fitzwilliam problem: keeping track of many characters in a book can be tough. Put into each book a “tap” that will take you to a quick summary of the character whose nome you tapped on. Enhancing doesn’t have to mean super multimedia.

Give me back my notes: for note takers, the current tools make highlighting and note taking easy, but it isn’t easy to find them later. No easy way to browse notes on current reader. Build into the book a simple browser for all notes and highlighting.

Shiny, happy poems: for poems create an interface that is fun to play with by shining light on interesting content- need to see the slides to understand this. Makes sense when you see it on the screen.


Table of contents: current state of the art is that toc is boring and limited. Can use it to improve a books browsability, and inspire the reader to jump to interesting parts of books. Use the toc to draw the reader into the book rather than just provide info. Use an “inspire me” button, for example in a cookbook, to take reader to something new.

Create bite-sized entertainment: create “javascript:void(0)books” that are full of short stuff that are like reading Twitter and Facebook."

Colleges test Amazon's Kindle e-book reader as study tool - USATODAY.com

Colleges test Amazon's Kindle e-book reader as study tool - USATODAY.com:

"Now, as several major universities finish analyzing data from pilot programs involving the latest version of the Amazon Kindle, officials are learning more about what students want out of their e-reader tablets. Generally, the colleges found that students missed some of the old-fashioned note-taking tools they enjoyed before. But they also noted that the shift had some key environmental benefits. Further, a minority of students embraced the Kindle fairly quickly as highly desirable for curricular use."

Can ebooks save American education? | TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Can ebooks save American education? | TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home:

"In past years the problem was nearly insolvable. But now things have changed — or they should be changing — and ebook textbooks can be the answer. With today’s technology, there is no reason why publishers can’t create a pick-and-choose menu for school districts. Instead of printing millions of textbooks and locking knowledge in shackles for the next 10 years (the lifespan of the Texas review decisions), publishers could both reduce textbook costs and allow each state and/or school district to create custom books for local courses. If Texas and Kansas want to teach that the world is flat, while New York and California want to teach that the world is round, customized textbooks would let them do so. In the expansion of fact over fiction, ebooks can play a role in saving America from total educational collapse.

And think about how much money local school districts could save. It should be less expensive for schools to provide ebooks as course textbooks; in fact, it probably would be cost-effective for several school districts in a state to band together to build their own etextbooks than what is currently being spent on printed books that are not as focused on local needs."

Macmillan’s DynamicBooks Lets Professors Rewrite E-Textbooks - NYTimes.com

Macmillan’s DynamicBooks Lets Professors Rewrite E-Textbooks - NYTimes.com:

"In a kind of Wikipedia of textbooks, Macmillan, one of the five largest publishers of trade books and textbooks, is introducing software called DynamicBooks, which will allow college instructojavascript:void(0)rs to edit digital editions of textbooks and customize them for their individual classes."

Sounds like Connexions or ck12 to me...

Why E-Books Look So Ugly | Gadget Lab | Wired.com

Why E-Books Look So Ugly | Gadget Lab | Wired.com:

"“E-books today are where the web was in its early years,” says Andrew Savikas, vice-president of digital initiatives at O’Reilly Media, a major publisher of technical books. “And some of those e-books are as difficult to read and browse as the early web pages.”"

the connexions blog: How to control for quality in Connexions?

the connexions blog: How to control for quality in Connexions?:

"Here at Connexions, all content is published under a CC-by license, which is as non-restrictive a license as possible while still recognizing and attributing work to the author. That means that it is legally possibly to re-use content. Of course, we go one step further in publishing all content with a standardized format to make 'frictionless remix'* even easier (it's hard to remix a .pdf with a Powerpoint presentation, for example)."

The iRex DR800SG eReader is now for sale at BestBuy.com | BestTabletReview.com

The iRex DR800SG eReader is now for sale at BestBuy.com | BestTabletReview.com: "The iRex DR800SG is a quality large-scale eReader. It has an 8.1-inch 1024 x 768 resolution display, is equipped with 3G and has a Wacom screen for note taking via stylus. It will also connect to the Barnes & Noble eBook store for purchasing new material."

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:

"Over the next four years, Greco predicts these drivers, among others, will result in the US market for professional and scholarly ebooks growing by 94% to $2.60 billion. During the same period, he forecasts that the trade book sector will undergo growth of 119% to $330 million. This would mean that scholarly and professional ebooks will continue to dominate the US market, accounting for 74.7% of ebook revenue through 2013. Even with growth of over 100%, trade books are only forecast to grow to 9.5% of total US ebook revenue."

College Life » Textbook

College Life » Textbook:

"New York startup ScrollMotion has secured deals with textbook makers to adapt their books for the iPad, the Wall Street Journal reports. ScollMotion has deals with companies like McGraw-Hill, Kaplan, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt K-12, Pearson Education to build new applications for the iPad.

Textbook adaptation is more than just plugging in text to an application. It appears as though publishers, and Apple, envision bigger, more interactive features.

That's where ScrollMotion comes in. ScrollMotion already makes an e-book reader application for the iPhone.

Getting students to use e-textbooks has been discussed for years. So far, students prefer physical books. Amazon has tried to turn the Kindle DX into an e-textbook reader, but nobody was interested."

Web not yet the answer to college-text costs | Philadelphia Inquirer | 02/08/2010

Web not yet the answer to college-text costs | Philadelphia Inquirer | 02/08/2010:

"Allen's group pushed for legislation that will take effect July 1 requiring schools that receive federal funding to give students advance notice on books needed for the semester so they have time to shop around. It also prohibits book companies from 'bundling' textbooks and supplemental materials, and requires price disclosure to faculty. Professors say they hear concerns from students frequently about cost and are interested in helping address the issue.

Jean-Claude Bradley, a Drexel University chemistry professor and E-learning coordinator for the College of Arts and Sciences, said he avoids requiring a textbook when possible and makes as much material as possible - including tutorials, recorded lectures, readings, and games - available for free online."

Web not yet the answer to college-text costs | Philadelphia Inquirer | 02/08/2010

Web not yet the answer to college-text costs | Philadelphia Inquirer | 02/08/2010:

"Nicole Allen, textbook advocate for the Student Public Interest Research Groups, believes textbooks should be less expensive for students than the price CourseSmart offers. A 50 percent cut is barely below the cost of rentals or used books, she said. Her group is advocating for professors at campuses nationally to use 'open textbooks' - free digital versions - whenever possible. 'We just want to make sure that open textbooks are on the table,' she said.

At Rutgers University's New Brunswick campus, students last year got about a dozen professors to sign a pledge to use more affordable book sources, said Lindsey Swoap, 19, a sophomore from southern Virginia.

The American Federation of Teachers passed a resolution in 2009 in support of open textbooks."

Web not yet the answer to college-text costs | Philadelphia Inquirer | 02/08/2010

Web not yet the answer to college-text costs | Philadelphia Inquirer | 02/08/2010:

"Don't look yet for a groundswell toward digital books. According to the national Student Public Interest Research Groups, 75 percent of students still prefer print. 'The critical mass just isn't there yet,' said Bell, who added that it's also not clear whether students will buy the e-reading devices to make digital books more palatable.

CourseSmart, founded three years ago as a joint venture of five large college textbook publishers, hopes to change that. It offers about 9,000 book titles online at about 50 percent of the cost of print, said Frank Lyman, executive vice president.

Sales grew 400 percent from 2008 to 2009, he said, declining to release exact numbers.

'It is in the hundreds of thousands of students using it - not yet millions,' he said."

The Electronic Professor: Why I'm skipping the iPad

The Electronic Professor: Why I'm skipping the iPad:

"The display isn't designed for reading. --Because it doesn't use e-ink (like the Kindle) or even OLED (organic light emitting diode) in the screen, you're not going to have the same 'easy on the eyes' experience of a dedicated e-book reader. I like to sometimes read for an hour more . . . but with the iPad, I think that may be difficult."

Kindle at Kollege

Kindle at Kollege:

"The lack of an organizational system is getting annoying. I'm up to 98 personal documents, plus one item that only shows up when I switch to books. (Plus 14 'free' books I've downloaded). I want a hierarchial list of 'documents' or books or whatever so I can group things by the class they go with. I've started naming all documents for 'American Modern Writers' with AM and all the 'Victorian Literature' with VL. But if I rename the file on the Kindle, it doesn't change the way it shows in the list. I have to resend it to the Kindle email address to convert it after I change the file name on my computer. A bit of a pain. Oh, and this makes any notes I've written no longer 'live' in the document. They are kept in My Clippings.txt but aren't available when I open the book."

WVU-P to offer electronic textbooks - NewsandSentinel.com | News, Sports, Jobs, Community Information - Parkersburg News and Sentinel

WVU-P to offer electronic textbooks - NewsandSentinel.com | News, Sports, Jobs, Community Information - Parkersburg News and Sentinel:

West Virginia University at Parkersburg is looking at an innovative way to reduce textbook costs for students. The college will be rolling out its first electronic open-source textbook this fall, written and developed by college instructors and available for the Kindle and other e-readers.

"We are tired of our students paying more for textbooks than they do for tuition," said Rhonda Richards, senior vice president for academic affairs at WVU-P. "We are looking at cheaper alternatives to textbooks, including creating our own electronic textbooks."

According to the college's program plan, the project aims to provide "low-cost, open-source textbooks developed by faculty for students in WVU Parkersburg's first-year experience courses as well as developmental courses in mathematics and English/writing."

Richards said the textbooks will be written by teams of faculty and reviewed by a third party to make sure they meet certain academic standards. The plan also includes the purchase of multiple e-readers for some classrooms and a student fee of about $5 for the electronic book.

In most cases the students will still have to buy their own e-readers, though, but the cost of a single e-reader, around or below $200, is often less expensive than a regular textbook.

The first book will be developed for adult students transitioning to college, followed by developmental mathematics and developmental English course texts.

The project is expected to cost around $30,000, which includes the price of multiple classroom e-readers and stipends for faculty working to develop the electronic materials.

Free Technology for Teachers: Seven Places to Find Free eBooks

Free Technology for Teachers: Seven Places to Find Free eBooks:

"Every year schools around the world spend thousands of dollars on textbooks that are often outdated by the end of their first year in the classroom. Ebooks, many of them free, can represent huge savings for schools over purchasing textbooks. Here are seven places that you can find free ebooks."

Kindlerama » M-Edge develops waterproof Kindle case

Kindlerama » M-Edge develops waterproof Kindle case:

"Finally you can take your Kindle to the bathtub, pool, or beach and not worry about ruining your expensive investment. The case uses “flexible sealed button cutouts” so you can access everything, and is designed to float face-up. M-Edge says it should go on sale this spring."

Burnley-Moran Kindles an interest in reading | Charlottesville Daily Progress

Burnley-Moran Kindles an interest in reading | Charlottesville Daily Progress:

"Reading on the Kindle will get students to read books independently, but it is also all-inclusive and boosts their reading and critical thinking skills regardless of reading level, said Deanna Isley, who teaches reading to all of the school’s third-graders and decided to apply for a grant to do the project. “It sort of levels the playing field,” she said. Isley said this is possible because of certain features on the Kindle — such as “text-to-speech,” where a built-in computer voice starts reading the text like an audiobook — that can help students learn difficult words without spending all their energy trying to decode them.
“It’s, like, easier to read,” said 9-year-old Adrian Ward. “If it’s a hard book for you, you can use the text-to-speech to read.”"

scholarshop « ResearchForward

scholarshop « ResearchForward:

"Expand Support for Content A “scholarly” Kindle would also need to broaden its compatibility with formats commonly used by researchers and instructors, especially PDFs, PowerPoint documents, and Excel files. Amazon’s device currently only supports Kindle (AZW), TXT, Audible (formats 2, 3 and 4), MP3, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively; HTML, DOC, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP through conversion. The lack of PDF support is perhaps the most glaring omission. Yes, it is possible to use Mobi creator to convert PDF’s to MOBI format and then upload them to the Kindle via USB, but this is an inefficient, multi-step process that should be unnecessary. PDFs should run natively on these devices."

A Newbie's Guide to Publishing: E-Volution

A Newbie's Guide to Publishing: E-Volution:

"Waterproof. Scratchproof. Adjustable font. Carrying 1500 books at once. Instantly purchase books with the press of a button. Directly interacting with the author and her fans. Extra content like early drafts and deleted chapters. How is this no advantage over print, which kills 40 million trees a year, and costs way too much?"

The Timely Demise of the Paper Textbook

The Timely Demise of the Paper Textbook:

"...with e-textbooks, publishers can cost effectively produce textbooks that align with each state's standards. Books can be customized to state's desires and updated without having to reprint."

The Timely Demise of the Paper Textbook

The Timely Demise of the Paper Textbook:

"Textbook costs in schools, from Kindergarten to the University, have increased dramatically over the past two decades. Textbooks nearly tripled in price between 1986-2004 [3]. College students are forced to spend up to $1,000 a year, further adding to the burden of paying for a higher education. For school districts, the rising cost of textbooks means pushing other school funding priorities to the side, keeping outdated materials for longer, or simply doing without. For instance, even though California spends $400 million per year on textbooks, [4] 500,000 students did not have textbooks to use in class and 2 million could not take their textbook home last year [5]. In response, 34 states have introduced laws that attempt to scale back prices but only six were successful, possibly due to heavy lobbying by the industry [6]."

The iPad in Schools

The iPad in Schools:

"they have started buying iTouch carts for teachers to use for things such as letting students watch lectures and videos and being able to use apps that deal with the subject-matter to further enhance learning. These 21st century classrooms will continue to grow in number and luckily for us, AAPL will benefit tremendously from this."

Can you please help me finish my essay, please? it’s about Technology in the Classroom ********* Please? | Buy Amazon Kindle: Your Edge

Can you please help me finish my essay, please? it’s about Technology in the Classroom ********* Please? | Buy Amazon Kindle: Your Edge:

"The Sony Reader, as you can easily imagine, will manage the task of presenting the agenda should a student need to show it. In fact, that’s just a small part of this product’s ability. All manner of pertinent school-related information (teachers’ extensions, department numbers, classmates’ email addresses, etc.) can be stored in the 'SReader'. Anything authorized by school administration may be made available for use by students and teachers . The security of the SReader is its finest feature: its design is such that students, while able to access a multitude of information, are limited in their interaction with SReader. The low rate of systems abuse makes the SReader a most practical product, yet the fun of having all the features in a lightweight, compact package makes it the Hottest Technology In the Classroom you’ll find on the horizon today."

Gordon wants tax on text to hike teachers’ pay to P40k - INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos

Gordon wants tax on text to hike teachers’ pay to P40k - INQUIRER.net, Philippine News for Filipinos:

"He said he would use the projected P365 billion a year to be generated from the 50-centavo tax per text to raise the monthly salary of public school teachers to P40,000 as well as provide grade-school students with electronic book readers."

IBallz Give Phones Some Stones - www.wired.com

IBallz Give Phones Some Stones - www.wired.com:

"IBallz is a set of four balls which slot into the corners of your precious slab of electronics. These are held in place by a stretchy cord. The iBallz then sits there, waiting, ready to rescue your tablet from all manner of calamities. What kinds of calamities? First, spills of both kinds: the balls puts some bounce into your device if it slips from your hand and flies floor-ward. It also puts a centimeter or two between the gadget and the table, meaning that literal spills will flow beneath leaving the iPad or Kindle nice and dry."

Sony Catches Kindle, Trails iPad with New Reader - BusinessWeek - www.businessweek.com

Sony Catches Kindle, Trails iPad with New Reader - BusinessWeek - www.businessweek.com:

"Now, Sony is out with a new addition to its e-reader line, the Reader Daily Edition. At $399, it's considerably more expensive than the Kindle and Barnes & Noble Inc.'s similar Nook, both of which sell for $259. But it also offers more than they do, and reaffirms that the parade hasn't completely left Sony behind, even in an Apple iPad world. The Daily Edition is the first Sony model with wireless, operating in the U.S. over AT&T Inc.'s 3G network; until now, every Sony had to be hooked up to a computer to download content. I've found wireless to be a huge boon in an e-reader, allowing me to buy books and access news while traveling or on the go."

Congress wants an e-book reader for low-income kids

Congress wants an e-book reader for low-income kids:

"wiz420 | about 14 hours ago | permalink They should take this money and spend it on open-source textbooks. Has so much changed in the field of high school algebra that new, copyrighted works need to be purchased on dead-tree in order to teach our kids? Take works in the public domain, and adapt them to an electronic, free, model using public funds. I understand this won't work in fields that are rapidly changing, but let's take it as far as we can. Wikipedia is at least as good as most of the textbooks I had in public school, especially in fields like math. I used Wikipedia more than my textbook in college calculus.

Edzo | about 14 hours ago | permalink
Obviously the Federal government should create its own eReader. If the government is capable of offering super-efficient health-care and college loans by cutting out the middle man, Then the same must be true for eReaders.

It will definitely be finished ahead of schedule and under budget, and be the best eReader ever created."

Congress wants an e-book reader for low-income kids

Congress wants an e-book reader for low-income kids:

"Markey's bill would also launch a pilot program to allow low-income students to buy residential broadband service. And it would extend E-Rate to community colleges—a great idea actually. Finally, the proposed law would require an adjustment to the current $2.25 billion cap on the E-Rate program, so funding would adjust with inflation. This is something that libraries and even the Bill Gates Foundation have been clamoring for."

Kindle Nation - The Free Weekly Email Newsletter - II.6 2.9.2009

Kindle Nation - The Free Weekly Email Newsletter - II.6 2.9.2009:

"So, let's do a three-year price comparison of the current 6-inch Kindle, the Kindle DX, and the 32 GB iPad 3G, before a customer buys a single book: * The latest-generation 6-inch Kindle costs $259 up front, another $75 to $100 for accessories and an extended warranty, and never another dime = $334-$359 (Buy Now)
* The latest-generation Kindle DX costs $489 up front, another $100 to $150 for accessories and an extended warranty, and never another dime = $589-639 (Buy Now)
* The iPad with unlimited 3G (i.e., enough bandwidth to do anything more than email and a few ebooks) and 32 GB storage capacity costs $729 up front, another $100 to $150 for accessories and an extended warranty, and $30 a month x 36 months = $1909-$1959"

Kathy Schrock's Kaffeeklatsch: Amazon Kindle 2 Thoughts

Kathy Schrock's Kaffeeklatsch: Amazon Kindle 2 Thoughts:

"One commenter asked about the number of Audible recordings the Kindle 2 would hold if he had no books on the device. (The original Kindle had an SSD card slot, so you were only limited by the size of the SD card.) The answer to that question needs some explanation as to how Audible works. Audible offers its audiobook recordings in different quality formats. The Kindle 2 can play formats 2, 3, or 4, with format-4 being the best quality."

We need fewer, not more, public school textbooks | jacksonsun.com | The Jackson Sun

We need fewer, not more, public school textbooks | jacksonsun.com | The Jackson Sun:

"Is there anything in the traditional textbook that is not available online? No. Education continues to lag at least 10 years behind business and industry applications. In fact, most households are way ahead of their local schools. It's time to move to laptops, 8-by-11-inch tablet e-books, e-readers, Kindle-type reading devices and online data research services, provided we teach our students how to use them (or perhaps the students will teach our teachers!) We can make the transition away from traditional textbooks for a fraction of the traditional textbook costs of 12 years in the public school system! Everything about our schools will change radically in an environment that integrates and embraces technological real-world applications."

Ereaders popular at University of Kansas | TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Ereaders popular at University of Kansas | TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home: "The University of Kansas has made 4 Sony Readers available for checkout in its library. According to Rebecca Smith, communications and advancement director for the libraries, they have been so popular that the libraries are going to buy four more. “We’re trying to meet and anticipate student needs,” Smith says. “E-book readers are something students are incredibly interested in. So far, we’ve had overwhelmingly positive feedback.”"

Kindles, iPads could be textbooks in new Georgia state bill | eSchoolNews.com

Kindles, iPads could be textbooks in new Georgia state bill | eSchoolNews.com: "Could Kindles, iPads, and other reading devices soon be as common in Georgia schools as textbooks? Maybe, if a bill passed by the state Senate is approved in the House, reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. On Feb. 2, the Georgia Senate voted 45-5 to expand the definition of “textbook” to include computer hardware and technical equipment to support the use of digital content. Sponsored by Sen. Cecil Staton, R-Macon, the bill would give local school districts the flexibility to expand their spending options and seek modern, alternative methods of receiving information. Reading devices, where textbooks could be downloaded into the unit, are one option, he said."

Kindles, iPads also could be textbooks in new Senate bill | ajc.com

Kindles, iPads also could be textbooks in new Senate bill  | ajc.com: "On Tuesday, the Georgia Senate voted 45-5 to expand the definition of “textbook” to include computer hardware and technical equipment to support the use of digital content."

Amazon.com: World English Bible (WEB) (with Direct Verse Jump) eBook: WEB Committee: Kindle Store

Amazon.com: World English Bible (WEB) (with Direct Verse Jump) eBook: WEB Committee: Kindle Store: "This Kindle edition of the World English Bible features, in addition to a hyperlinked table of contents, the Direct Verse Jump, a revolutionary new method of Bible navigation on the Kindle. The DVJ allows the reader to open any verse in the Bible directly in mere seconds. For example, 'jn.3.16' in the search window and two clicks on 'Find' opens John 3:16. The abbreviations used in the DVJ are listed in TOC for easy reference. Chapter numbers are required even for books that have only one chapter. For example, the Epistle of Jude verse 5 translates to jud.1.5 and two clicks on “Find.” On the other hand, to open the first verse of any chapter the verse number is not necessary. The reader can also navigate between Bible books by pressing the joystick right or left. After some practice with the three navigation methods, the reader will be able to open any verse in the Kindle WEB Bible as fast as (or even faster than) in the paper copy."

Reality check: eBook readers aren’t ready for K-12 prime time… — The Tech-Savvy Teacher

Reality check: eBook readers aren’t ready for K-12 prime time… — The Tech-Savvy Teacher: "Textbook materials for K-12 aren’t available. If you have adopted a textbook K-12 lately, you know exactly what I mean. Sure, there are PDF versions on CDs and DVDs and MP3s of the textbook read aloud, but there is no K-12 textbooks released. There are a ton of materials that you can use for free, certainly, but, the vast majority of materials don’t come in an eBook friendly format. Yes, you can read PDFs on many/most of the eBook readers, but I would guess that the PDF of standard textbook pages would be nearly unreadable on the 6″ screens on the eInk electronic paper."

Teachers....and teaching: A Potpourri of Subjects from taxes to Kindles

Teachers....and teaching: A Potpourri of Subjects from taxes to Kindles:

"Let's say a student in high school takes beginning Biology. The next session they take Biology 2 (advance Biology, whatever you want to name it) and have forgotten something from the first course. A quick flip of their Kindle and they can review what they need to know. Had it been a traditional method of teaching, the book would have been returned and already in use for a different class. No, I like this possibility. At the moment, I think having a laptop computer and a Kindle would be very valuable to a student in our school system. Perhaps Bill Gates could pick out a school and supple the students with these items and give it a try. Match the one school with another like school and lets measure student performance after a year. I wonder what we would find out."

I like Les's idea and he is quite correct; we could keep all of our old textbooks handy if they were files on the Kindle or other ereader. There is so much being done today about "renting" and reselling textbooks of the heavy, physical variety. Digital text strategy would argue, though, that keeping everything you ever read and searching when you needed something is the way to go.

Hanvon N618 EBook Reader w/ Handwriting Recognition | PMP Today

Hanvon N618 EBook Reader w/ Handwriting Recognition | PMP Today: "Why is it that except for Apple, very few manufacturers allow hype on their own products, even if the product is worthy of hype. Consider the Havon N618. It’s a 6-inch e-Ink reader, belonging to Havon’s WISEreader devices. It has WiFi, plays music files and supports various ebook files like TXT, HTXT, HTML, PDF, DOC, XLS. It also has an SD card slot. Oh, the N618 is pricey at $497, but it has what other eReaders do not: handwriting recognition. Yep, the Hanvon N618 is a note-taking device as well. Just how good it will work, we’re not sure yet, but put a real browser on this eReader and you have yourself a possible school laptop replacement. Write those notes down, really write them, instead of tapping them on your computer."

I Hate to Say It, But Told You So! :-) | The Christian School Journal

I Hate to Say It, But Told You So! :-) | The Christian School Journal:

What are the implications for our schools?

* It the trends are any indication, textbooks, newspapers, magazines, blogs, etc., will migrate to electronic versions. The price point should be lower, saving schools money.
* We may finally be able to eliminate the heavy book bags that our students carry.
* Lockers may no longer be necessary.
* Curriculum can be updated more frequently, which is particularly important for science textbooks.
* Students and teachers could have access to textbooks and other readings on cell phones, computers, and Kindles (or other e-book readers) simultaneously.
* There may be a convergence of this technology into one handheld device. It is rumored, for example, that Apple is working on an iSlate and Microsoft on a similar device.
* Students can have access to the world’s best literature and historical documents—for free.
* We can reduce the size of our libraries making room for more classrooms."

CES is over...now can we please get some e-textbooks? | Education IT | ZDNet.com

CES is over...now can we please get some e-textbooks? | Education IT | ZDNet.com:

"But here’s the problem. CES gave us software, tablets, better netbooks, cheaper notebooks, “slates”, and plenty of other ways to view and interact with a new generation of books. Right now, though, the books just aren’t there. I didn’t hear any announcements from Pearson or other major publishers about their new partnerships with Kurzweil and Microsoft to deliver great content with smart DRM on a Windows 7 slate. I didn’t hear about the MSI/Houghton-Mifflin booth announcing a vast library of textbooks that had been ported to their new dual-screen color LCD e-book."

StrategyEye

StrategyEye:

"Startup Skiff aims to challenge Amazon's market-leading Kindle with colour-screen e-books that will insert advertising into the text of digital newspapers and magazines. It is also in the process of developing features for school and business customers. The company's first device is thinner than the Kindle, lets users download content via Sprint Nextel and was previewed at the Consumer Electronics Show. Skiff hopes to make interactive textbooks by incorporating video services and believes its devices can help corporate customers manage documents. Skiff is working closely with magazines and newspapers to enable the introduction of ads into the text of stories, which could provide a welcome boost to the struggling print industry. This function is not available with the Kindle or Sony e-reader."