Where are the e-textbooks? (Primary Source)
I came across an article written by CNN back in 2002 about colleges beginning to adopt e-textbooks. The article stated that this move would save students money, and provides publishers an opportunity to update content easily as new information becomes available. You would think with the cost effectiveness schools would be looking at making a mass migration to e-textbooks, but aside from the occasional school that tries a pilot project here or there, there is certainly not a mass migration to this medium. In my opinion we will likely never see this spread across the country in a large scale in k-12 schools.
What I have been seeing and what I expect to see significant continued growth in is in two web based information sources that will significantly reduce print book use in public schools. One is primary source materials, and the other is wikipedia, and similar technologies. A great book for using primary sources in history can be found at Amazon.com
First, are primary source materials. Why should we study the documents of our founding fathers through the biased view of a textbook author, when we can go directly to the source and read not only the founding documents, that are published in most textbooks, but also the personal and public letters of the founding fathers, something rarely found in textbooks.
It is often frustrating to have a report and find that the country you have a report on doesn't exist in your 1980 encyclopedia. We live in a rapidly changing society. To meet the evolving political and societal changes we need a source of information that can adapt and change quickly. This is where resources such as Wikipedia come in. Wikipedia is created by it's users and includes a vast amount of information that is constantly updated. Not only is it good because it's current, it is not limited by space, and therefore I can even find an article on my home town Enterprise UT Population 2,000. Try to find that in any print encyclopedia.
I will have more on both these great tools in upcoming articles.
What I have been seeing and what I expect to see significant continued growth in is in two web based information sources that will significantly reduce print book use in public schools. One is primary source materials, and the other is wikipedia, and similar technologies. A great book for using primary sources in history can be found at Amazon.com
First, are primary source materials. Why should we study the documents of our founding fathers through the biased view of a textbook author, when we can go directly to the source and read not only the founding documents, that are published in most textbooks, but also the personal and public letters of the founding fathers, something rarely found in textbooks.
It is often frustrating to have a report and find that the country you have a report on doesn't exist in your 1980 encyclopedia. We live in a rapidly changing society. To meet the evolving political and societal changes we need a source of information that can adapt and change quickly. This is where resources such as Wikipedia come in. Wikipedia is created by it's users and includes a vast amount of information that is constantly updated. Not only is it good because it's current, it is not limited by space, and therefore I can even find an article on my home town Enterprise UT Population 2,000. Try to find that in any print encyclopedia.
I will have more on both these great tools in upcoming articles.
posted by Mr Yardley at
11:19 AM
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