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."