Posted on 06/09/2009 10:15:41 AM PDT by yankeedame
iPods are horrible, but I have a Sony Reader with e-ink technology (the same as in the Kindle and others). I would say I have less eye strain than with a standard book.
One funny thing, my wife and I were looking at a demonstration unit at Borders, and we thought that the display was one of those cheesy print-outs like they put on plastic mock ups. It looked too much like paper for us to believe that it was the actual screen--that is, until we pressed one of the buttons and it flashed and changed to the next page.
One of the problems with standard books is that the high contrast with many text books is harsh under a bright study lamp. The e-ink display is closer to the contrast of a newspaper.
You said — Apple is reported to be finalizing a new product, something along the lines of a tablet with a 10” screen. It’s quite interesting to me, the timing of this Schwarzenegger announcement.
Talk about a windfall...
In walks Apple with a color device that can handle the textbook needs of California’s kids, right on que.
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Bingo! That would make Apple a really big player. They are growing by leaps and bounds right now, anyway. That would really kick them into super-high gear and into overdrive... LOL...
Contracts for textbooks are already signed and MUST be paid for.
Ahnold can spout all he wants, but not every household has enough computers for each child to do their studying by computer.
This will only drive up the power that each household is required to use.
Then there is NObama’s new czar of the internet- not approved by Congress—no background shown, but chosen by NObama, who will have the power to act on his own and shut down the entire internet any time he decides there is a ‘National emergency”.
What does that do for the kids?
Text books for college cost $75-100. Not the same for elementary and high school.
As for the comments that “the same old way of teaching with books isn’t working” is just plain bogus.
Those of us who had textbooks are plenty smart-—in fact, we are the SUCCESSFUL people who NObama is trying to shut down and kill off, and the ones that are going to flee Kalifornia and New York over the heavy taxation.
You said — iPods are horrible, but I have a Sony Reader with e-ink technology (the same as in the Kindle and others). I would say I have less eye strain than with a standard book.
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My Apple laptop (happens to be an iBook, but am looking to get a Macbook Pro... :-) — is a greater reader device. I just kick back and prop it up and read stuff on there all the time...
...why not just do away with head start and kindergarden? How much would that save?’
A very big job would be l;ost: Jesse Jackson— the biggest person who benefits from Head Start.
Rove must be guiding these decisions then. The Pubbies are more crafty than we think!
I’d hate to be Kindle about now...
And to make sure kids are well ‘socialized.’ And drug the gifted eccentrics who make the other dips feel bad about themselves. We can’t have someone actually accomplishing anything.
The text book industry has been a scam for decades.””
This is mostly driven by the Teacher’s and School Boards.
They keep changing the contents—such as a whole paragraph on the Civil War, and 2 chapters on Martin Luther King.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with using textbooks. Some kids read fast- others absorb slower. I predict that many kids will get left behind in this shuffle.
I know people who do the prep work for text books- They are on a dealine that Cannot be changed, yet the school boards/teachers keep demanding changes right up to the last minute and days later. Their company then has to work overtime/24 hrs a day to get everything done on time, which then goes to the printers and bindery businesses, which puts pressure of time on everyone. Then the truck freight becomes air freight.
The text books could be used for a great number of years, but it runs in the same vein of thinking that the garbage truck driver slams and bangs your trash cans so they get replaced more often.
Then there is the last minute change within a school board that leaves the new books UNUSED-—and sent -—BRAND NEW to the landfill.
I am not making that last bit up-—not in the least. Ask the janitors in your local schools.
The problem here is if it is really a digital medium, then pdf is problematic for lower resolution screens. It won't re-flow, and you can zoom, but what some people really need is a font-size change that doesn't require horizontal scrolling to read each line.
I think the only real solution is modern HTML+CSS to allow the text to be flexible enough.
As to the money issue, states should simply commission textbooks in the work for hire style and make them available in digital format instead of relying on publishers. This effectively makes the state a digital publisher with all reproduction rights.
An LCD screen causes a lot more eye-strain than an e-ink screen. I didn't even realize it until I had read a couple of novels on my Reader and didn't have the mild headache that I have come to expect when I read text on a screen. In fact, I didn't even know I had been having headaches from reading lots of text on LCD screens until I experienced the difference.
Yep, I have a Sony e-reader! Love it for reading novels.
But that never stops liberals from inventing new traumas ;)
At the local community college the book is often more expensive than the class, even used copies are frequently more.
Sorry, won’t work. The collection of knowledge will still have to be paid for, no matter how it is delivered.
But the next thing you know, we’ll all be buying computers for use at home for everyone who is below $80,000 annual income or so.
That’s an interesting fact (not surprising that the government was also partly the source of the problem).
Yeah new standards do cause some change, that’s why she spent the better part of a month deleting cigarettes from every picture of Wernher von Braun. Additions like more Native American in WWII means adding a 10 page sub-chapter about Code Talkers and usually not modifying any of the rest of the text. Deep Throat with a one pager. Most of this stuff it really is just adding pages (and maybe picking something else to get rid of to keep your page count, adding 10 pages on Code Talkers probably means wave bye-bye to the Tuskegee Airmen). If you thumb through a textbook with this in mind these edits get really easy to spot as most textbooks have a rather non-intuitive format of obviously separate sections dropped in the middle of semi-related chapters. My old history teacher (who was heavily involved in textbook selection in a number of school districts) called them “border sections” because they usually included some visible separator to help keep the reader from accidentally trying to read them straight through. He hated books with lots of border sections, saw it as evidence of laziness on the publishers part. A lot of that other stuff in the modern age of publishing software is simple, pagination takes care of itself, terminology can be updated with global search and replaces.
Yeah the whole industry changed dramatically when so many of the publishers went away/ got eaten. For one thing the prices went up, seemed like every time one company went away the survivors upped their prices by $10. But the general quality has slipped too. It’s a shame really on so many levels, not just for what it does to the education of our youth, but also what it’s going to do to the next generation. Most of the great minds in any given field fell in love with their field in school, and now we’re giving them crappy textbooks, it’s hard to fall in love with history reading a modern history textbook.
I’ve wondered for years why text books are not on the internet. Each desk at school would have a PC that can access the material & then you could login from home to do your homework.
For that matter, have wondered why the university atmosphere hasn’t changed over the years. Professors could give their lectures via webcast, and students login to the textbooks - all online. Imagine how much less costly college would be if you didn’t have to build huge lecture halls, libraries or dorms.
I’ve seen the unused book dump. It’s kind of pathetic. There’s so many people at fault in the whole industry. Of course this gets us to the other punchline, getting away from physical texts will only get rid of a small portion of the problem. The teacher/ school board demands will remain, the constant pushing of pointless new editions will remain, unused PDFs will continue to be dumped in vast quantities.
I agree with much of what you’re saying. I think the product could be infinitely better. That would start with objective text, not left-wing bias. Some of that comes back to the state-mandated standards, but much of it also comes from the editorial staff, which is more often than not very liberal in thier own perspective and therefore, not likely to see the unbalance in their product. So I agree that the books could be better.
Now about those “border sections” - the special features, right? Sometimes they’re placed in the way you describe, but the conscientious publishers don’t turn out badly designed products....I’m just saying! :) Really, the changes that are implemented are more than cosmetic. Yes, it’s possible to do a search and fine key terms, but that doesn’t address the issue of content and context. And then there’s the pedagogy and apparatus that supports it. This isn’t tacked on at the end - it’s woven throughout. While there’s not as much competition in textbooks as there once was, there’s still enough to make each publisher consider what they’re up against, so quality does matter.
It’s a market driven industry, just like everything else...was.
Our conversation is reminding me of the arguments that typically come up among the different departments - editorial, sales, and design - over which one actually does all the work. :)
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