Posted on 03/05/2009 5:20:03 AM PST by MrEdd
“I don’t see electronic books, with the attendant costs, as a reasonable alternative in a public school.”
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What costs? They already have the computers. Any addition to the number of computers would be offset by the very high price of text books and shipping.
Have you priced a textbook recently?
I have a personal library, my wife and I probably have 400 books on the shelf. But I seldom use them now. This beast we are using has replaced them.
Does that make it necessary to apply personal filters to content I find? Yes, of course.
This media only works with interaction.
Now the problem is not source, but trusted source.
“what diff does the format make?!”
At least they can’t wait 10 years to fix an error in the next edition. I know they will fix it only if it makes a lib look bad.
FWIW, seems to me like folks oughta be fixating on the content instead of the delivery system. FWIW :)
If I could put all the courses on one tablet I’d gladly do this. The thing I hated about school textbooks is they all weighed so much and took up so much room.
One heavy hardcase tablet I’d GLADLY take.
I just bought an Amazon Kindle II. The price is $359.00, a lot less than the price of a laptop. It allows nearly instant downloads of about 230,000 titles form Amazon alone. It also has an open architecture that permits downloading from a number of online sources. This means school districts could avoid the heavy cost of shipping, printing, and storage that are inherent in the use of hard copy books. Kindle-type devices can also be a godsend to students, since one instrument weighting about ten ounces and measuring about 10” x 7” x .25” can replace many pounds of books.
There are only two real objections I see to this. First, the readers are more fragile than ordinary books and cost a lot more per unit, meaning it would be a good idea to restrict them to junior high and above students. Second, the Kindles operate off reflected light, not transmitted light, and do not currently support color presentations, meaning they either need to be upgraded to support color or restricted to solely black and white applications.
Nevertheless, even now, I view my Kindle II as one of the best expenditures I have made because it makes reading and storing intellectual content so vastly more convenient than with ordinary books. This is especially true when I fly because I only have the one small Kindle to carry instead of several large, heavy books.
It’s much easier to rewrite history when it’s not on paper.
View the reader cost as more equivalent to the cost of a book case. Readers with plastic backed screens will start shipping in the third quarter of this year - greatly improving durability and bringing viable large screens to the market.
So true. I installed several book cases, each about 3' wide by 7' high a couple of years ago @ $250.00/case. All three can't come close to holding the 1,000 + books a Kindle can. AS far as I'm concerned, the Kindle's compact storage capability is its best feature.
They can always get a hard case. Kindle costs a bit more because it has Whispernet and WiFi built in. I imagine if high school books cost the same as college books you see a few hundred per kid. Thee-book would cost about the same at the end of the day.
The only problem is power. Having to deal with dopey kids who don’t charge it. I imagine they’ll give teachers a few power adapters for those situations.
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