Thinking about the Kindle, and other e-readers...

[MineralMan]

I bought one right after Christmas, using some cash given to me as gifts. So far, I've downloaded over 60 free books from the Gutenberg Project. Amazon will wait a long time for me to actually buy any books for my Kindle, since I normally read 100+ year old non-fiction for recreation and check new books out of the library.

Can These E-readers Fix Some School Problems?

I wasn't sure what I'd think of this device, really, but it turns out that I like using it very much. That got me thinking about how these e-readers could change our educational system. Every morning, I watch a stream of grammar school and middle school kids troop by my front window on their way to the bus stop. They're all carrying heavy backpacks, laden, I suppose with their school textbooks.

This seems like an ideal Kindle or whatever application. If the students had their texts, along with related reading materials, on an e-reader, that would accomplish a couple of goals, I think. First, it would end the carrying of backpacks for many students. Second, it should reduce the price of textbooks at schools. The schools system could contract for texts on a licencing basis, rather than buying the paper books. Of course, we'd also be reducing the number of trees used to make the paper, etc.

The reduced costs should pay for the Kindles or some other e-reader many times over in a very short time. It just seems like an idea that makes a lot of sense to me. Now, I realize that kids are hard on technological devices, but a well-designed case for the reader should reduce that problem.

And now, for something completely different:

I didn't order a case of any kind for my Kindle. As soon as I got it, it was clear to me that it would need a protective case of some kind, though. Those things are expensive. So, I put my tiny little brain to work. Looking in my bookshelves, I found a hardback copy of The Bathroom Entertainment Book, given to me as a gag gift a few years ago. It's a thin little volume, and just an inch wider and longer than the Kindle. So, I used my trusty Xacto knife to remove the entire printed material inside the bindings. I grabbed my hot-glue gun, and glued some 3/8" square redwood sticks around the edges of the back cover, leaving just enough room for the Kindle to nestle in the cavity produced. A rummage through my junk drawer turned up some hook and loop material, which I cut into 3/8 wide strips. I chiseled out a cavity in the wood frame and hot-glued one half to the wood, then the other half to the book's front cover.

15 minutes after I started, I had a clever The Bathroom Entertainment Book case for my nice new e-reader. It'll be a great conversation piece on the plane and elsewhere when I want to read to pass the time.

[PoliticAverse]

1. 100+ year old _non_-fiction?

Would seem to be dated. Could you give some examples of old non-fiction you enjoyed?

[MineralMan]

8. Sure. For entertainment, I read old etiquette books, old cookbooks,

old medical books, along with journals and diaries, natural history books, books on fishing, and much, much more. I enjoy reading them, because it gives me a glimpse into what people knew and thought back then. I also read old literature, as well. I found the Complete Diaries of Samuel Pepys on the Gutenberg Project, along with the complete works of several other authors I've enjoyed. Like Sherlock Holmes? They're all available for no charge. I've been reading 100+-year-old stuff all my life, for fun, mostly, but also for research for other projects.

That's not the only reading I do, of course, but the library supplies me with all the recent books I can handle.

[Bluenorthwest]

28. Pepys you say?

Then you might enjoy Aubrey, if you have not already, some for free here http://www.cinemind.com/aubrey/
I also recommend the dvd of the theatrical version of Brief Lives.

[MineralMan]

30. Thanks. I'll check it out.

I've read some of Pepys' journals, but just parts. Over time, I'm planning to read the whole collection. Nice historical context in there.

[Bragi]

2. Clever use of the Bathroom Entertainment Book

My wife knitted an "e-reader cozy" to achieve the same result!

[MineralMan]

14. It's a cool way to personalize an e-reader, I think.

A little humor or homespun character helps ease the way with a new techno device, I think.

[Dappleganger]

3. What a great cover!

I have seen pictures of others who have done something similar, and they are quite creative! I have a girly-purple print cover for my Nook, and I love the fact that it doesn't look like tech but a book instead.

As for your other idea, I don't doubt that one day we'll get to that place but the textbook companies aren't ready for it yet. They make a killing in this industry and on the broken backs of our children, unfortunately. Nobody thinks about saving money and helping poor kids in these corporations--it's all about making the next lucrative contract and how much can they extract from our taxdollars in the process. It's times like these where I wish we had a more centralized form of public ed who could make quick decisions like this (of course the implementation is another thing).

[MineralMan]

15. Yeah. Making your own cover sort of personalizes an impersonal

device, I think.

[peacetalksforall]

4. Be aware - that all e-books is a perfect 1984 set-up. Just think what the kids would get

if Michele Bachmann and Darrell Issa and a few others were in charge. Be afraid is things change more than they have in the way they want us controlled, submissive, and with no protest in us. Brainwashing will be a no-brainer. It will be 1984 with the latest update and cleansing/bruning/hanging/injection.

[MineralMan]

10. Oh, my...paranoia, I think.

Reading is reading. The books on anyone's reading list are just collections of words. How would the Kindle be any different from the textbooks the kids are now using? It's not the medium. It's the message.

[Warren DeMontague]

37. Oh, FFS.

:eyes:

[Blue-Jay]

55. ?

[The Wielding Truth]

5. Aren't you clever and fun! Seriously, kindle bothers me. It would be so easy

to change text when it's electrically sent. Children should have concrete books.

[MineralMan]

18. I don't think that'll be that much of a problem, really.

And we already have similar problems with textbooks already. It would certainly cut costs, though. Look at the price of a bestseller for the Kindle and the equivalent hardback copy. It's huge. Plus, there's all that public domain stuff available for historical reference.

I can't imagine that this won't end up revolutionizing the textbook industry. The costs of producing hardbound books is enormous, and keeps textbooks the business only of large corporations. Using e-books would open the industry up to smaller publishers, since preparing and distributing e-books is much easier and less expensive.

[The Wielding Truth]

26. I'm old fashioned.I like paper books and paper ballots.

[TommyO]

22. Even paper books aren't immune to censorship

http://themoderatevoice.com/97029/tom-sawyer-censorship-yeah-again/

Mark Twain once defined a classic as a book people praise but don’t read. It seems that his truism is still quite accurate.

In another of the sadly ironic PC events of the day there will be a new version of Tom Sawyer which will remove ‘offensive words’.

The word nigger (my sincere apologies to those who are offended by the use of this word but it would be sort of hypocritical to condemn censorship by censoring) will be replaced with slave while the world Injun will be removed entirely (not sure if he will now be Native American Joe).

The irony of all of this being, of course, is that one of the main reasonsfor having the word in the novel is for Huck to understand how offensive it is to Jim and for him to recognize his friend as a human being.

[Blue-Jay]

56. As if their backpacks aren't heavy enough.

Now you want them to lug around concrete books. That's just weird.

[X_Digger]

6. Here's a post a friend of mine put together with kindle resources..

http://txvoodoo.livejournal.com/1407965.html

[MineralMan]

12. Cool! Thanks. I'll check out those links.

[truebrit71]

42. Me too! I've saved a bundle on my kindle..

.

[napi21]

7. Replacing text books with an e-reader is a great idea! It would enable all the books a student need

to be loaded onto one device, and there would never be a need to buy updated versions of text books either! No dogeared pages, no rppedor torn books, and all that goes along with books being used for many years by hundreds of students. I wonder if anyone in educaation has ever thought of that?

[hlthe2b]

9. 100+ year old non-fiction: you mean mostly biographies?

I could see where those would be relevant. Other non-fiction, though would seem possibly dated.

[MineralMan]

13. See my #8, above. It's entertainment and research.

I have read a wide range of old non-fiction all my life. I enjoy it. I also read modern works, when I'm looking for modern information. I'm a rabid reader.

[LaurenG]

11. If you got the 3G you can read DU on it. nt

[prodigals0n]

16. I don't like Kindle or any other e-readers

Print editions only for me, thank you. Preferably hard cover. E-readers are too easy to "edit". How do you know you're getting the content the author wrote when, unlike print editions, e-readers can be altered without a trace?

[MineralMan]

19. OK. To each his or her own.

Plus, as the author of several books, I can assure you that "as the author wrote them" isn't the way it works. There are many changes between the author's manuscript and the printed page. It's more "as the editor changed them" than your concept. Yes, there's approval along the way, but the end result is often quite different from the manuscript, for both fiction and non-fiction.

[prodigals0n]

54. Of course, MineralMan.

I should have said as originally published.

I just don't trust electronic distribution of books. The risk of the kind of people we have "editing" school books in Texas is too high and I'd rather err on the side of caution. Printed editions can't be edited.

[GeorgeGist]

27. Just like the ...

internets.

[Raine]

57. I like print too BUT I have thousands of books

and being able to download new ones without taking up all that space would be a real help for me.

[Jokerman]

17. I just brought this up yesterday at a school tech meeting.

Our textbook adoption committee chair liked the idea.

[MineralMan]

20. I'm sure. What's not to like. No warehousing of texts and so on.

It's a no-brainer, I think. Even the illustrations come out fine on the new Kindle.

[wysimdnwyg]

21. A good friend makes covers for mobile phones and e-readers

I won't solicit for her on here, but if anyone is interested, google "Pippichick".

[Dappleganger]

33. Oh my, she makes some nice stuff!

My sister just mentioned she'd like a case for her new color Nook, looks like a possible winner here. :)

[Xithras]

23. We've experimented with e-readers here at work.

Our biggest problems, so far, are lack of screen size and color resolution. Most modern textbooks have a lot of photos and other graphics, and e-readers generally do a poor job in rendering them. There are other complaints about screen size, inconsistent page numbering, and poor notational ability as well, but image display is the biggie.

Oh, and for what it's worth, textbook costs won't come down much, because printing and paper costs are a relatively small portion of a textbooks price. Unlike a regular fiction book, which is printed a gazillion times, the average textbook is only printed a few thousand times. Because that textbook was written by an author who expects a livable paycheck, the cost of that authors pay must be layered into each textbook.

For example: Lets say two history Ph D's living in California want to make $80,000 a year (a reasonable middle class wage in most of the state). They spend a year writing a college history textbook, which sells 4000 copies. 160,000/4000 = $40 a textbook just to compensate the authors. Now, add in the cost of compensating the editor, proofreaders, graphic artists, and everyone else involved with putting the material together and getting it ready for publishing (the recent Virginia history book farce should demonstrate the need for these people).

There's a reason that textbook are expensive, and it isn't paper. Removing the paper will only have a small impact on their costs.

[MineralMan]

25. OK, I can see the problem with college texts, but not so

much with the lower grades. I still think there's a future in this. Not every subject requires high resolution color images, I'd imagine. Frankly, I think this whole thing is going to somewhat revolutionize book publishing in all areas. Don't get me wrong: I love books, but some of the material I'm looking for is simply not available to me easily, and new books are horrendously expensive, which sends me to the library rather than the bookstore.

I truly believe that e-readers, now and in the future, are going to change the face of publishing forever. Looking at the capacity of my little $139 Kindle, it's clear that I can store an entire library of books in it. What used to fill countless bookshelves in my old house can now fit between the covers of a gag book. There's something in that that is overwhelmingly exciting.

Add to that the fact that these things will improve steadily and quickly, and I don't see any downside to them. They should even make samizdat a lot easier, something that has long been needed. The Internet was a good step, but it's not so portable. I like it.

[Xithras]

29. You cite a common complaint.

"Not every subject requires high resolution color images"

And yet, I challenge you to find ANY new textbook that doesn't have color and images on every single page. The simple, and common argument is that the color and images aren't really needed and can be eliminated, but that argument is consistently, and instantly countered by this: You are essentially arguing that the quality of textbooks should go backward to make it fit the technology.

That's not going to happen. The book publishers aren't going to allow it, and hordes of people currently involved in the publishing industry aren't going to allow it. There's a ton of pedagogical studies indicating that students learn more efficiently, and stay more interested, when their information is presented in a mixed visual format with color. Any argument you can make for the removal of those images can be easily countered, both on economic and educational grounds.

The real danger here is that we might see the reinforcement of our current educational stratification as a result of e-readers. Kids in poor districts might get cheap black and white e-readers with text-only textbooks because the price is low, while kids in wealthier areas get higher quality printed books with supplemental material, images, and explanatory graphics simply because their parents can afford it. The poor kids get turned off by their crappy texts, while the wealthier kids are continually engaged and stimulated by their higher quality texts.

I have no doubt that e-reader technology will eventually match the quality of printed books, but the technology isn't there yet. Until that happens, these devices are a step backward.

[MineralMan]

32. Hmm...given the number of elementary and secondary schools

out there without even enough textbooks for the students they have, I can't agree. If costs can be reduced, then this is a plus. And then, with the reduced load on the students from carrying their books home and back, they'll be more likely to actually read the things, perhaps.

I was in those schools in the 50s and 60s. I'm a die-in-the-wool avid reader, and I'd have loved this technology. I read. I don't look at pictures, except as a visual reinforcement of what I read. Throughout my life, I've averaged a book a day, and at 65, I've read thousands of them. I've now found a way to read books I'd have a hard time even getting, given the modern library's penchant for excessive weeding. I have a huge range of interests, and most of what I've already put on the Kindle I've been looking for for some time. Obscure works by obscure authors on obscure topics.

Then, for the younger set, not only can they read their texts from an easy-to-hold, easy-to-tote reader, they can also have related works available to them, instant access to reference materials, and much, much more. Not every student wants or needs those extras but, for the ones who do, the possibilities are endless.

For those who need it, font sizes can be changed to suit each person's needs. Some of the readers, of course offer color rendition, but they're considerably more expensive and don't have the great e-ink screens that can be read in any lighting situation.

I'm sorry, but this technology is ready right now, and will only improve. I hope it's widely adopted, and quickly.

[dmallind]

40. new nook color handles that fine. nt

[Xithras]

45. Yep, except for the lousy battery life and the fact that they break if you drop them even 12 inches.

Take a Nook Color. Toss it (not gently, just TOSS it, the way a kid would) into a 9 year olds backpack. Send that kid out onto the playground for an hour.

How long will that thing last?

B&N took a crappy shortcut when they went to the LCD display, killing both its battery life and its durability. When rumors started floating out about a color Nook, many people were hoping for a color e-ink system. What B&N gave us was a buggy LCD tablet device that has been widely panned by critics. If you want to see something interesting, look up OWNER reviews of the device on YouTube...the complaints are EVERYWHERE.

As I said in my OP, we WILL get there at some point, but none of the devices currently on the market are even remotely ready for daily use as a textbook substitute.

I've had my hands on every single e-reader device on the market, up to and including the iPad (as I said, my college was conducting an experimental rollout, and I was on the review committee). After painstakingly reviewing them, we determined that NONE of the products on the market were really mature enough to replace textbooks...and that's at a COLLEGE level. Elementary students are going to be far less careful about protecting their equipment, or remembering to charge it, and require far more consistency. A college student who experiences an app crash can fix it himself. A 6 year old who experiences a book crash will sit there stuck until a teacher can come help (which is another bone of contention...most educators take a "I'll use it, but don't expect me to support it" attitude towards technology in general).

What we NEED is a color e-ink tablet with an 8.5x11 screen, a battery that requires charging no more than once a week, and with the durability to survive being dropped, stepped on, crammed under bus seats, rained on, and tossed on a near daily-basis for at least a year. Plain old paper textbooks already do all of these. Until their digital equivalents can do the same, they will never be widely adopted in schools.

[madrchsod]

24. send your description of your cover to ....

http://www.boingboing.net/

really neat idea for a cover

[Lucian]

31. If I remember correctly, a few colleges are going that route.

I think a college in Arizona tried doing this to see how students liked it. I don't know the results of the experiment and I'm too lazy to find a link.

I also have a Kindle and love it. I love how I don't have to charge up the battery every time I turn around. I've had it for two months now and charged it three times. How awesome is that?

They finally have the original Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice in the Kindle store. I'm reading those now.

[MineralMan]

34. Excellent. I'm betting that you're reading more, too.

That's a good thing. The Kindle's display is responsible for that long battery life. It requires no power to display a static image, once it's on the screen, so the battery is only subject to very tiny drain except for page changes. Further, the availability of gigabyte storage cheaply means you can store hundreds and even thousands of books on the device at the same time. That memory also uses no power to maintain the data in storage, and very little to access it.

Amazing stuff!

[Lucian]

35. Yep.

And I want to point out that the nook color only has an eight hour charge to it, so I'd be charging that damn thing once every two days because of its backlit screen. If I want something that has a backlit screen, I'd get a laptop computer or one of those stupid tablet computers.

[MineralMan]

36. That's true. The Kindle display is readable anywhere you could

read any book, dim lighting or bright. It's great.

[Lucian]

39. Oh, and to answer your previous statement...

yes, I am reading more now that I have an eReader.

[Dappleganger]

38. Having an ereader has definitely contributed to my reading more often...

of course, being a voracious reader before that wasn't an issue. It also significantly helps folks like me who quite often have 2-3 books going at the same time.

[walldude]

41. LMFAO.. yeah.

You think schools can afford Kindles? Or anything like it? In my kids elementary school the whole school shares 30 computers. We pay for all the school supplies, paper, pencils, pens, markers, crayons, scissors, erasers, notebooks, glue, tissues, folders, and then we donate for kids who can't afford supplies. The text books are old and ratty, teachers are paying for supplies out of their own pocket, the schools use overhead projectors from the 1980's.

Yeah it would be great if this country gave half a shit as much about education as we do killing Muslims.

[proud2BlibKansan]

48. +1

[GreatCaesarsGhost]

43. Everytime you turn a page, your reader sends a message

back to the mothership. NPR did a segment on ereaders tracking your reading habits.

[X_Digger]

44. Not the kindle..

You can turn off the wireless (most do) when you're not actively browsing the store or a website.

You can have it remember your position so that if you set down your kindle, you can go to your pc (or ipad, or android phone) and start reading on the same page you left off.

It's a feature that you control.

[negativenihil]

46. i was given a kindle

...by my wife as a wedding gift this past September.

I *LOVE* it. amazing bit of tech imo. the e-ink display is simply amazing imo (not to mention the wicked battery life!).

[pipi_k]

49. I got one too in September...the battery life

is great.

There are only two things that really kill it...

wireless and games, although the games don't use up quite as much battery as the wireless does.

But I use my K3 every day and only have to recharge every three weeks or so, and even then, it's not like the battery is completely dead. I recharge when it's down by 66% - 75% or so.

[Spike89]

47. The future isn't a dedicated device

I like the Kindle, the Nook, and others (I'm in book publishing and we've got a variety of platforms in-house). However, they are transition devices and there are some pretty murky issues that still haven't been addressed. The transition is pretty obviously heading toward one single personal device, the current sticking point is that displays are currently not nearly flexible enough. E-ink is awesome in battery life, pure readability, and cost. It can't do color, nor can it handle moving images well. Color screens are very versatile, are nearly as readable, but eat batteries. But it much more than color (animation, video etc.) vs. grey (stability, battery life). A bigger factor is size. The Kindle is pretty small, but it isn't as portable as a smart phone. Simply put, the future is a smart phone with a flexible display.

As for school advantages...not yet. It is a lot of money for a school to put out for each kid, the textbooks really won't/can't truly cost significantly less than current books (do you think e-books edit/fact-check, write themselves?) Also, check out the license agreements--a physical book can be shared or passed along (it can also be sold). E-book licenses typically don't allow that (at least not the books selling at a fraction of the price paper books sell). The only reason many current titles are less in digital format is because the paper versions are subsidizing them--that isn't sustainable for anything other than best-seller titles. It won't work for most books, and certainly not for textbooks which are very high cost to create and must be updated regularly.

[pipi_k]

50. It's true that the Kindle isn't quite as portable

as a Smart Phone, but honestly, if I had to read books on anything smaller I couldn't do it. Even with reading glasses it wouldn't be feasible. The Kindle is large enough for me to adjust the text size without having to deal with reading

one

word

per

page


OK...a bit of an exaggeration....but that's what sort of happened the other night when I forgot my reading glasses in another room and didn't want to get up. I adjusted the text size larger than normal and got about 2/3 of a sentence on the page. It was pretty annoying.

[Spike89]

51. Yeah, displays need to be flexible

I want a display that is tiny enough to fit in my pocket, small enough to see a simple text without burning up my battery, but expandable when I sit down so I can make it the size of a newspaper when I want to browse, the size of a TV when I want to watch, and maybe the size of a movie screen when I want to share. It needs to have the power and storage capacity of my computer behind it, and it may as well have a cell phone, GPS, and bottle-opener too.

Seriously, if they get "foldable" screens (or high-quality battery-friendly projection) or any other truly flexible screen, there will be no reason for anyone to own more than a single computing/media device.

[quiller4]

52. I can download books for Kindle from my public library--maybe you can too. n/t

[dimbear]

53. There are plenty of free books on the net dating from, oh, 2010.

Mostly authors who aren't household names, trying to get you interested. One tip for those interested in mid twentieth century authors, and assuming you have a grip on another language, overseas copyright laws are often much different than ours. We all speak at least Australian, right? But if you speak Spanish too, you can get much more recent works even by American authors. I enjoy Zweig, have read him more in Spanish than in English, but hey he was writing in German, so nothing is lost.

Oddly I don't see his stuff on German ebook sites. Prolly political problem.

[MineralMan]

58. Well, my wife appropriated the Bathroom Entertainment Book

cover for her Kindle, so I made a new one this morning from a 1950s book about spinning tackle. Not quite as cool, but it still holds my Kindle.

[LibertyLover]

59. I have a Sony e-reader and I love it

I have bought one book in the year that I've had it, but have downloaded a number of e-books from our library. I had forgotten about the Gutenberg Project. Thank you for reminding me. I love the cover you've made. That's my next purchase - a cover. You are right - why are those things so darned expensive?

[SoCalDem]

60. Kids routinely drop their stuff.. books are not as easily damaged

when dropped..

and electronic gadgets are probably targeted by thieves more too:(