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."