Why Aren't Students Using E-books? (and other Links)

joyoftech.com

Why Aren't Students Using E-books? 
The slow adoption of digital textbooks by students doesn’t necessarily mean that textbooks will be the last bastion of print. But it does highlight the ways in which students’ needs aren’t being met yet by digital content providers. That means there’s still a huge opportunity here to reshape what the textbooks of the future look like. Openly licensed content, for example, could address students’ concerns about sharing. Better social tools could help meet their needs for social reading and learning.
http://bit.ly/vInDXp


22 Filmmaking Apps for the iPad and iPhone
The iPad and iPhone have taken the world by storm. Only very recently have filmmakers started to see their potential in a production environment. The iPad has only been out a few months and we are already seeing it used in some very creative ways.
http://bit.ly/u7fobQ

Don't Get Caught with Your Paradigm Down

Now let’s look at teacher training in the digital age. For about 200 years, since the introduction of the blackboard in 1801, education in America has been relatively static and so has professional development. Phases come and go and we all attended professional development workshops which were promptly forgotten. Does everyone remember going to Cooperative Learning workshops? How about Whole Language seminars or Total Quality Management applied to education? Old ways of continuing teacher education just won’t do. We can’t be effective educators in the exponential times we live in unless we develop a new paradigm of professional development.

http://bit.ly/vNgISS


The New Nook Aims at Amazon's Kindle Fire, but the iPad is Still Safe
Whereas Amazon launched a completely new product when it revealed the Fire, Barnes and Noble is really just upgrading its existing Nook Color and finally adding the word "tablet" to its name. In the launch presentation, CEO William Lynch Jr could hardly have made it more obvious who the company is gunning for here. He made several direct references to Amazon and the Kindle Fire, which he unsurprisingly dismissed as an inferior product.

http://rww.to/snpNxY

Redefining Our Value

There is an urgency now to redefine our value. We cannot be about passing the test. We cannot be about content to the extent we are today because content is everywhere. We cannot be about a curriculum that’s a mile wide and an inch deep. Something else can do that now, and in some ways, that’s a good thing. We have to be about the thing that technology cannot and will not be able to do, and that’s care deeply for our kids as humans, help them develop passions to learn, solve problems that are uniquely important to them, understand beauty and meaning in the world, help them play and create and apply knowledge in ways that add to the richness of life, and develop empathy and deep contextual understanding of the world. And more.

http://bit.ly/tdZLnB 

An Amazing Social Network (Comic)

http://dthin.gs/s1Lb3i

Ebooks on the Brain

Flickr CC Photo by kariek

I got myself worked up into a bit of a lather about ebooks last week.  I won't bother you with the details about what exactly triggered it, but I can say in general that I discovered the paucity of ebooks has been a continuing disappointment to the parents at our school.  I think all of us were hopeful that once all of our students purchased laptops they would save money on books and not have to lug their heavy bags around.

Of course, initially, this was pretty much out of our hands.  Digital texts simply were unavailable and those which were offered few advantages.

But due to what I call the "Kindling of America" the landscape has changed.  The notion of a digital text seems less strange and  more and more digital texts are available (Shoot, Project Gutenberg and Google Books now offers thousands of classics for free).  The ground is surely shifting.  In fact I just learned of a projection that 26% of textbook sales will be digital by the year 2015.

Misconceptions about digital books persist based on their rocky start.  I also know first-hand that teenagers in my own classes have shown a reluctance to switch to ebooks even when give a less expensive option, like my AP Government and Politics text.

So, as I said at the top, circumstances have led me to start charging full bore into promoting ebook adoption at our school.  But a couple of colleagues stopped me in my tracks, pointing out to me the difficulties in offering online ebook options to parents.  We have a third party virtual bookstore and it doesn't offer digital editions.  So what do I expect parents to do?  Visit several publishers web sites, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc. to round up a school year's worth of books.  The very inconvenience of acquiring the digital editions would undermine any efforts to adopt them.

Imagine my delight then when I discovered at least one vendor which has fashioned "agreements with major publishers to continually add new" ebooks.  I've made contact with them to see how their operations could fit with ours.  Even if they don't, it's a great sign that a technology which has become so popular with consumers may also come out of the closet into our students' hands.