Digital Textbooks

Amplify’s New Tablet Hits the Market

March 12, 2013 | 11:50 AM | By Katrina Schwartz

Amplify

Along with the big release last week of Amplify‘s tablet, produced by the education arm of media conglomerate News Corp, came details of the product that will vie for a spot in the growing education tablet market.

Amplify’s tablet runs on the Android platform and comes pre-loaded with a curriculum that’s aligned to Common Core State Standards. It’s 10 inches long, with a hard exterior shell, and is pre-loaded with its own learning software, as well as Google Apps for Education, dictionaries, multimedia lessons, Encyclopedia Britannica, Khan Academy lessons, a graphing calculator. If the company wins rights from publishers, it can also be loaded with electronic textbooks. What’s more, teachers can keep track of students’ progress, as well as have access to classroom management tools that allow them to turn off apps when needed.

But, as Tech Crunch asks, “What in the sam hill is News Corp. doing messing around in education?”

Joel Klein, former New York City schools chancellor, and now an executive vice president at News Corp, says it’s time to shake up education. “It’s not about hardware, it’s not about devices, it’s really about learning,” Klein told NPR. ”And if this does what I believe it will do — which is enhance the teaching and learning processes — then it’s going to be a home run.”

But industry watchers have other ideas. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture, Teaching With Tech, Amplify, Android, digital textbooks, News Corp.

Why College Students Still Prefer Print Over E-Books

September 14, 2012 | 11:58 AM | By MindShift

Flickr: wohnai

By Katrina Schwartz

College students may seem to be well-equipped to learn in a wired world, but despite the enormous growth of tablets, e-readers and digital textbooks, they still prefer heavy, expensive print books.

These were the results of a pilot program created to understand why students have been slow to adopt digital texts and what would have to change in order to make them the preference. The pilot was developed by the University of Wisconsin, Cornell, University of Minnesota, University of Virginia and Indiana University, which decided to jointly investigate how e-textbooks could be used on their campuses with an e-text pilot during the spring semester of 2012.

What they found, produced in a report called Internet2 [PDF], was that, for purposes of study, at least, e-books were not quite there yet in terms of usability, visual presentation and navigation tools. The pilot program pointed out some glaring flaws in the e-reader model: Students reported problems with readability, complained of eyestrain, and said the e-books were not fully compatible with all mobile devices. They also noted that the navigation features meant to enhance learning like zoom, highlighting and annotation don’t function well.

What’s more, the functions that make e-books more attractive to students than print books weren’t being fully maximized by faculty. Features like annotating texts, collaboration tools and the ability to share notes with other students weren’t being used or modeled by the professors. And if Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture, Learning Methods, Teaching With Tech, digital textbooks, e-readers, Higher Education

Five Smart Habits to Develop for Back to School

August 13, 2012 | 9:56 AM | By MindShift

By Ben Stern, EdSurge

The enemy of innovation and growth is routine. These auspicious weeks before the school year commences are the perfect time to create a new routine that will ensure innovation in your instruction and growth as an instructor. Here are some idea for those who want to take advantage of these next few weeks to guarantee the best year they’ve ever had.

1. MOVE BEYOND THE TEXTBOOK

Textbooks are by nature restrictive. The chapter order is an imposition; the information within the book is only as current as the publication date. If you can, liberate yourself from the book! If you don’t have the luxury of foregoing textbooks altogether, you can still supplement them.

The first step is to choose a destination for the resources. If your school doesn’t already use a Learning Management System like Moodle or Blackboard, there are some excellent, free resources. Edmodo looks and feels a bit like Facebook but with education-friendly features like assignment postings, quizzes, due dates, and more. If you’d prefer more customizability and care less about the aesthetics of your destination you could build a wiki with your students on Wikispaces.

Once you set up your destination, you can begin to aggregate content and resources. Put a few resources up for the beginning of the year, but then invite students to contribute much of the material thereafter–an excellent strategy for enriching students’ learning. For instance, you might have students find interesting websites that relate to the themes of each chapter of the text. Students can then guide the class with their discoveries. You could have students rewrite sections of the textbook based on these resources and collect the best submissions in a wiki that becomes Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Learning Methods, digital textbooks, Flipped classroom, Open Source, professional development

Publishers and Libraries Clash Over E-Books

June 27, 2012 | 12:58 PM | By MindShift

By Jenny Shank

A new study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, Libraries, Patrons, and E-books, offers a glimpse at the current state of American libraries and finds them eager to lend e-books but struggling to do so, primarily because of budget limits and restrictions publishers place on e-book lending.

Of America’s 9,000 public library systems, 76 percent now offer e-books, up from 67 percent last year. But patrons are often unaware that libraries offer e-book lending — 62 percent of those surveyed said they didn’t know if their library lends e-books.

Twelve percent of e-book readers have tried borrowing digital books from a library, but indicate the process is cumbersome, with wait lists that can stretch for months, lack of availability for many titles, an inability to renew, and difficulty with the downloading process.

Fifty-six percent said they couldn’t find the particular e-book they wanted from their library, and 18 percent said their library’s e-books were incompatible with their e-reader.

Many patrons who borrow e-books from libraries report they don’t know how to return an e-book before it’s due, when it will simply disappear from their e-reader, and that lack of knowledge adds to wait list times. Some librarians are especially fond of e-books, however, because they never have to pester anyone about fines for overdue books.

It’s clear library patrons want to borrow e-books, and libraries want to lend them, but because e-book formats, e-readers, and agreements with publishers evolve rapidly, no one has figured out how to make it all work smoothly.

OLD SYSTEMS FOR NEW TECHNOLOGIES

In some ways, publishers artificially impose limits on e-book lending to create the same scarcity and demand that exists with printed books. According to the report, “In general, publishers’ e-book lending restrictions often attempt to mirror the logistics of print lending — for instance, only allowing an e-book to be lent out to one patron at a time through a ‘one book, one user’ arrangement.”

At the same time, cuts in library budgets in recent years and publishers’ restrictions on purchasing have made it impossible for libraries to acquire enough e-books to keep up with the demand. A Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture, Teaching With Tech, digital textbooks, e-books, libraries

Which Device Will Win the Tablet Battle?

May 8, 2012 | 10:49 AM | By MindShift

XO-3

By Frank Catalano

The future of tablets in our schools may not be coming from Cupertino. Or even the U.S.

Despite the craze around Apple’s iPad, it’s only been two years since the device was introduced, and that may not be enough time to separate fad from trend over the long term in education. And while the iPad’s presence – and promotion by the Apple faithful since its launch in 2010 – is hard to ignore, a winning tablet trend hasn’t been clearly established on a global basis.

It’s certainly true that tablets are on the upswing in K-12 schools and higher education. There’s no shortage of U.S. numbers to cite. Going beyond statistics of tablet penetration (in one case, most recently, 25% of college students and 17% of college seniors), it’s in the composition of purchases where the data can get interesting. For example, a Harris Interactive/Pearson Foundation survey released in March gave iPads the largest share among college students (at 63%), followed by the Kindle Fire (26%) and the Samsung Galaxy Tab (15%).

As U.S. education appears to be moving toward tablets in pockets here and there, other countries’ education officials are embracing them in bulk.

Another way to read those figures: It’s roughly a 60/40 split between Apple’s iOS operating system and all flavors of Android devices (“flavors” might be the right word, as Android has named its more recent OS versions Ice Cream Sandwich and Gingerbread). These relative rankings among popular Android tablets in education mirror the broader U.S. consumer market.

But the scope of some big decisions made by international government agencies – and the price of non-U.S. devices – could upset the apple cart.

Consider India. Last fall saw the launch of the highly touted US$50 Aakash Android tablet for education (subsidized to US$35). That initiative subsequently stumbled following reports the first models built by the UK firm DataWind were sluggish and fragile. The government has since decided to press ahead with a new version with improved specifications.

Yet the overwhelming interest in what was supposed to be a first run of 100,000 tablets has spurred the growth of a handful of new education-focused competitors. They’ve developed tablets that are more expensive, but apparently more capable: the US$100 ATab, US$150 HCL MeTab, Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Teaching With Tech, Apple, digital textbooks, e-readers, iPad, tablet

Changing Policies On Digital Books Wreak Havoc on Libraries

May 7, 2012 | 10:47 AM | By MindShift

Hutton

By Jenny Shank

Public libraries are a major hub for Americans to gain access to e-books and other digital resources. But the nation’s recent economic troubles and the transition to digital books are creating major difficulties for these public institutions.

Last month, the American Library Association released its annual State of America’s Libraries Report, and many of its findings were grim. “Public libraries continue to be battered by a national economy whose recovery from the Great Recession is proving to be sluggish at best,” the report concluded. Twenty-three of the 49 chief officers of state libraries surveyed indicated that their library systems faced budget cuts over the past two years. “For three years in a row, more than 40 percent of participating states have reported decreased public library funding,” the report states.

While library budget cuts continue, demand for library services has soared. Lower income and unemployed patrons often turn to local libraries as their only source of Internet access.

“It will take a few years for the dust to settle.”

At the same time, libraries have sought to accommodate Americans’ ever-increasing demand for access to digital materials, a mission that has put them at odds with the publishing industry, which is struggling to retain its viability as many American readers shift toward reading books electronically and purchasing those titles from online retailers rather than traditional bookstores.

“In the end, it will be a matter of leadership and vision that will guide libraries through the current conditions,” said Jorge Martinez, director of Information Systems for the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which supports libraries through grants.

SPARRING OVER E-BOOKS

One of the biggest challenges libraries face in this new digital age is the friction in their relationship with publishers, caused largely by the advent of e-books.

Publishers argue that borrowing a printed book from a library requires a patron to physically visit the building and then return a few weeks later to bring it back, which is more difficult than Continue reading →