“Ripe for digital destruction,” (A Textbook) were words of the late Steve Jobs referring to the enormous potential for the textbooks industry. He believed the textbook market to be worth an estimated 8 billion dollars in the U.S. alone. His vision was to lessen the burden of carrying heavy textbooks around, while also offering them as a free feature with the iPad. He wanted to change the culture of textbooks forever.
The essay “What are the Enablers and Barriers to Successful Adoption and Commercialization of Digital Textbooks,” discusses the many benefits and drawback of transitioning to digital textbooks. The essay asserts that digital textbooks are on the rise and that there is a good probability they will overtake printed textbooks in the foreseeable future. They are currently accessible to students by download onto a reading device or by logging into the publisher’s site online. The main players involved in the innovation and development of digital textbooks include Flat World Knowledge Inc., Connexions, Courseload, VitalScore, CafeScibe, Coursesmart, Inkling, and Know. The overwhelming factor driving these companies and the user is the cost. The successful implementation of digital textbooks would greatly decrease costs to the consumer and the creators/developers, making it a win-win situation. The three business models include the profit multiplier and the two switch board models. The essay concludes that advances in innovation and technology will lead to advances in education. In this economy, lower costs will lead to more people completing college and a more intelligent society.
Digital textbooks present many advantages and very few drawbacks to both the student and the seller. The primary advantage to the student i...
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...to transform the textbook industry (Kafta).
Paper textbooks have reached their potential a long time ago. Ideas have been exhausted and there simply isn’t any substantial aspects left to improve. We live in a digital time where innovation and technology are constantly reaching new limits, almost overnight. Now is the time to adopt digital textbooks and not just make improvements, but revolutionize the way the next generation will learn.
Works Cited
"A Textbook Manoeuvre." The Economist. 19 Jan 2012. Web. 26 Feb 2012. .
Kafta, Peter. "Publisher Terry McGraw on Steve Jobs and Digital Textbooks: “This Was His Vision”." AllThingsD. N.p., 20 Jan 2012. Web. 26 Feb 2012. .
In his essay “Colleges Should Mandate That All Textbooks Be Digitized,” Mark Pensky, software designer and author of Teaching Digital Natives: Partnering for Real Learning and Digital Natives to Digital Wisdom, takes the position that colleges should ban non-electronic books to improve teaching and learning. Some of the issues he speaks to are; what a bookless college would look like, moving education into the 21st century, addressing pushback of the social and cultural norms, creating enhancements to the educational system, the advantages of having an all digital campus, and the roles of teachers and college surrounding this subject of banning non-digital textbooks.
Umbach, Judith M. “Digitizing Books Debated.” Feliciter 53.5 (2007): 228. Education Research Complete. Web. 23 Oct.
Guernsey, Lisa. "Are Ebooks Any Good? (Cover story)." School Library Journal 57.6 (2011): 28. MasterFILE Premier. EBSCO. Web. 19 Sept. 2011a
The target market for the ipad is divided into two major segments: the academic community, and people who love to read. Reid (2005) notes that tablets appeal to young people who are comfortable with using personal digital technology. However, the recently-launched Amazon Kindle was successfully targeted to “passionate readers” of all ages rather than to “young people, or early-adopting technophiles” (Well read 2009, p. 71). Rowlands, et al. (2007) conducted an online survey of staff and students at the University College of London. The results showed that a large minority (44%) of the UCL community were using e-books. According to Rowlands, et al., this is comparable to the findings of similar studies at other academic institutions. The research by Rowlands, et al. also showed that age was not a major factor in the attraction to e-readers/tablets although men were more likely than women to favor reading from a screen.
Every new generation that is born in the United States always seems to read physical books less than the previous. For many students today, the only physical books that they will ever bother reading are those that they have been assigned to. However, that does not mean that they are reading less, as they spend most of their day reading text messages on their phone, or looking at status updates on social media websites. Even in the pursuit of knowledge, many would rather simply search for an article on the subject rather than read a lengthy book with more details. Such a reliance on the Internet to exchange information is bound to change some the ways that our society as a whole thinks. One work that dives deep into this issue would be The Shallows;
...g a book for the course. As a result, publishers continues to dominate the market by making their product the only product in order to become successful in class.
In this case, imagine if schools continued to use books and worksheets for their learning and research. They would eventually be at a disadvantage versus a school who incorporates the phycology behind the hues of colors, design and technology into their classrooms. One article disputes that claim though, giving the reasoning that changes should come based off student interest. Students appreciated the easy use of e-books provided, but “contrary to what most would expect, the younger and supposedly tech-savvy students are not all that into e-textbooks.... It runs counter to the push for paper-free digital classroom where e-books are often marketed as the lower cost (and lower weight) option” (Lewis-Spectator). When we personalize learning, we have to take into account whether the
Thompson asserts that despite the increasing technological advancement in the academic cycle, printed books will never become obsolete, but will always remain in use[1]. This is because of several advantages that most readers get from printed books over digital books. It is important for readers to note that e-books will never replace printed books due to better quality format, as well as, experience. Printed books allow readers to read in the old fashion manner, give a book as a present to a person, and display books as artwork in the house. All these kinds of experiences are unavailable in digital books.
With technology progressing from drones fulfilling shipments to electronic books becoming cheaper, major companies such as Apple and Amazon have had a big impact on not only the tech industry but the publishing industry as well. Companies are outputting resources like IBook’s and the Kindle bookstore to take full advantage of the transition to digital publishing. As a result of this we have greener, more budget friendly books, and outdated traditional copies of text. With the introduction to these resources it is making the lives of students and the mass market more convenient. Students are now able to purchase books on one device that won’t weigh their bags down on a daily basis. Companies have created bookstores that can be accessed from devices that we use every day, resulting in paperless copies of books that are substantially cheaper than the traditional hard copy. E-books are replacing physical books and textbooks rapidly, and as a result they are becoming more widely and readily available for students.
I am not alone in my apprehension towards the emerging electronic books. Parents and teachers rely heavily upon the printed book to teach their children and students. With the removal of such a valuable possession, what will schools do and how will they react? There are many questions to ponder when discussing the topic of printed books versus e-books or online print. One that comes immediately to my mind is the idea of picking up a book and lying in bed. How can this happen if we have a computer or hand held device? The electronic version seems extremely distant to me. When I was a child, I used to love looking at the illustrations and turning back a page if I wanted to see a previous picture. Will this be possible with the computer version of books? Also, will these computerized, book-like objects be available to everyone? What happens if someone cannot afford one, yet there are no printed books available? Is our attachment to the printed book based on the idea that we have grown up with them and have grown to love them? Are our worries about the disappearance of the book concerned with the physical book itself, or perhaps just about the idea that the book represents?
The downside of textbooks is that you’re not able to change the text that is already printed in the book, information changes constantly and tablets are able to adapt to these changes, resources in the web change constantly.
Books have been the storehouses of information and knowledge since the printing press and it’s worth our time to inform our selves what the future of our learning will be. “Today, roughly 40-50,000 books are published commercially each year in the English language. But the number is rapidly rising, as traditional barriers to entry are fading away.” ("Polemic: how readers will"). Since the development of E-Books in 2011 a massive amount of books have been published on the Internet. Forbes calls the present time evolution of books a “transition period”. Due to the high progression and qu...
As more people began to access the Internet through smart phones and tablets rather than laptops and computers, it is not a surprise that they would also want to transform the American education system by bringing tablets into classrooms. In fact, a few schools around the country have already replaced textbooks with tablets and have seen improvements in students’ standardized test scores. Using tablets instead of textbooks is not only convenient and helpful, but it can also reduce the amount of paper wastes in school. However, it is not a good idea to completely transform textbooks with tablets with the current technology, for it can not only be damaging to the environment and costly to set up, but also might not be effective in improving K-12 education in the long run.
Getting educated is one of the most important things in life when it comes to getting a good future. By developing good knowledge of schooling, it helps establish and maintain new information as needed throughout the real world. As books are one the essential tools in learning, eBooks are being used in a everyday lifestyle. Traveling to get away places from city life, helps give reading a comforting feel. Students that use print books are eventually going to use ebooks in the future. By educating students with ebooks, it is more efficient than carrying textbooks; ebooks is more convenient and reliable to read, write and store notes. Print books are being replaced by eBooks, it helps on keeping files together and it makes notes
Hard copy books have been and will continue dying. This situation is caused because of the popularity of eBooks. Recently, more and more people have sifted to use eBooks, not hard copy books. And the number of eBook users is predicted to rise in the future. Although, some people say that they love and will keep on using print books because print-books are the classical representation of the reading paper through history, E-book is better to use because it is the the future of reading, and they are convenient.