Amazon launching Kindle Library Lending

You've probably already caught up with the announcements by Overdrive and Amazon that they are collaborating on a Kindle ebook lending service.

The details are not very clear at the moment but it seems to me that it is simply an extension of Amazon's existing Kindle ebook lending service which allows those in the US who've bought Kindle e-books to lend them once. While the book is lent (for two weeks) the purchaser can't access it on their Kindle. The book can only be lent once, and it doesn't necessarily apply to all purchases - publishers need to give permission.

Crunch Gear has basically republished the media release word for word.

Not much joy here for non-US Kindle users though. Of course Amazon's Kindle e-book lending does not extend outside the US at the moment, so perhaps in the future...

 

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On the lookout for e-book trials

That Australian educators and educational administrators are very interested in how e-books and e-readers might be incorporated into the implementation of the curriculum is being demonstrated by the number of invitations I am receiving to conferences and workshops to talk about e-book scenarios.

As a consequence I am constantly on the lookout for information about trials and projects in schools, in Australia in particular, with e-books, e-readers,  and e-text books. As 2011 progresses schools will be making decisions about budgets for 2012 and will be wanting to consider the experiences of others. I am interested in both formal reports and anecdotal ones, so if you are able to point me to anything I can get to on the web, leave a comment.

If you would like to email me about what is happening in your school (or leave a more public comment on this post), I do need a bit of "depth" in the description: what seems to be working, what isn't. What hurdles have you come across, what seems insurmountable, what are you planning for 2012?

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Will I eventually have to upgrade? - my Kindle, that is

My Kindle is a Kindle2, one of the white ones that has been around for over 18 months.

The Kindle3, which is the graphite (greyish) one that was released in time for Christmas giving last year, is slightly smaller, has better text contrast, and more importantly from my point of view, a slightly different "operating system" if that is the right term.

Already Kindle3 has released some upgrades. I've put the differences mentally on the backburner until this morning until I had to install the upgrade on the "work" Kindle which is doing the rounds of the office.

The features the upgrade brings don't seem all that important to me at the moment:

• Public Notes
• Real Page Numbers
• Before You Go = Rate the Book
• New Newspaper and Magazine Layout

But there are some other features to Kindle3 that I don't have, and so I'm trying to work out whether they are important.
The upgrades for Kindle3 are not available to Kindle2, so the only alternative really is to buy a new device.

There are other differences between Kindle2 and Kindle3, such as the fact that Kindle3 has double the storage capacity.
Kindle3 is slightly smaller and a little lighter.
Page turning is "faster".
You get a choice of US or UK dictionaries.
Apparently has a better web browser.
More of the screen is used for text display.

I already know that I can't download to my Kindle2 some of the "apps" Amazon has on offer, but are they important? They seem to just be games.
Or am I just suffering from device-upgrade envy? You know the feeling, you have a perfectly good functioning computer, but the newer one looks so much better, and you have thta feeling that oyu are missing out on something really important.

But I guess that some time in the next 12 or so months I will come to a cross roads. Or do I wait for Kindle4?

Perhaps if you have experience of both, you can tell me some of the differences you've noticed.

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e-textbooks in schools: what do you need to think about?

Here in Australia school administrators and teachers are already beginning to think about next year.

In terms of converting over to e-textbooks for 2011 they've already missed the boat, but are beginning to think about what would be involved in implementation in 2012.

So what factors need to be considered?
The list below is by no means complete and you may like to suggest things to be added.

• are you happy with the text books that you have?
  Do you want to replace any of them? Source new ones?
• If you convert to e-textbooks what device will you deliver them on?
  netbooks, laptops, iPads, other table device
  What specs will the device need?
• who owns the device? will the school buy it and lend it out? or can the students get the text on a device of their choice?
• What sort of budget do you have?
  There is an impression that converting to e-textbooks will save money.
  Unfortunately that is not the way it is working at the moment.
  In general your e-textbook will cost approximately 50% to 70% of your made-from-paper one. You are basically leasing it and at some stage it will expire or self-destruct, probably at the end of the school year, but perhaps after 2 years.
• who will supply devices for the teachers? And how will you encourage them to explore the productivities that come with e-textbooks?
• Are you aware that your e-textbook has no resale value? And unless it actually comes originally as a CD that oyu own, then oyu won't be able to transfer it from one device to another because of restrictive DRM practices.

My advice:

• Talk to your current textbook suppliers, tell them you are interested in the e-text scenario, and ask them what they can do for you
• Talk directly to the publishers of your current text books and ask the same questions. Be sure to include questions about cost.
• Ask your teachers to look for alternatives to their current text books.

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e-book management strategies for schools

One of the problems in managing e-book use in schools is that we are dealing with a number of scenarios as the top of this diagram indicates, and the solutions required, or possible, will vary.

The other is that the e-reading devices are not always owned by the school. The school may be providing devices for experiential reasons, or social/economic equity, but often you'll need to manage download to not only a variety of devices, involving 3 main formats (see yesterday's post), but also allow access to school resources to privately owned devices.

What I've tried to show in the bottom diagram Repositories are the solutions being attempted in Australian schools. It is a sort of tiered approach, although the elements run in parellel to each other,  and it is possible that not all 4 elements will be present. The Third Party Solutions for example may well be financially beyond the school as setting them up and then paying an annual licence fee are expensive. The Third Party Solutions won't replace the hard copy holdings of the school library, and if the school ends up with nothing to show for their spending on e-books, then higher authorities may not regard it as money well spent. The other thing with a Third Party Solution is that implementation in a school has to be accompanied by quite a high level of usage to present an economically valid argument. Anecdotal reports I have heard about implementation in public libraries for example have talked about an initial flurry of borrowing, then a slackening off, and the need to build up a clientele through pro-active measures.

Is your school doing something that doesn't fit this diagram? Or does it cover everything you are doing? I'd love to know. Leave a comment please.

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A classroom with e-books

There are logistical problems (page numbering, battery life, power, using text to voice) but they are not insurmountable.

Bigger problems are going to come from getting copies downloaded onto the various devices, but even those are solvable.

Some of my thinking is that the teacher will need to think the pedagogy through carefully. Each of these devices has its own set of distractions and disruptions.

My main question is, if the hard copy option exists, whether the students will learn to, or be encouraged to,  use the productivity tools that e-books and e-readers afford the user.

My fear is that one of the hard copies will be the teacher.

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Rate of change in the e-reading world

I'm building up to some e-book presentations in the next few weeks and beginning to assemble my thoughts.

I wrote an article on e-readers for teacher librarians and cataloguers which was published at the end of the year.

I began

2010 will be seen as the year of the advent of the e-book and the e-book reader. Toward the end of the year teachers and libraries worldwide, and in Australia, had begun pooling their experiences with the new devices, trying to wrap their heads around how e-books could be used in schools, and libraries in particular. The opportunities are enormous, but so are the challenges.

E-books and e-readers have become a topic of special interest to me, and it became obvious from responses to articles that I wrote, presentations that I delivered, and webinars and forums that I participated in, that it is of great interest to others as well.

I suspect that by the end of 2011 we may well have solved some of the challenges, and e-book use will be well-entrenched in our schools and our libraries. We may have to resign ourselves to the insolubility of the other challenges at least for the moment.

So now I'm trying to analyse what progress we've made since I wrote the article. One of the things I'm conscious of is that in a sense nothing has changed, and yet at the same time the rate of change has been huge.
I think by "nothing has changed" I mean that the overall issues are still there, particularly if you are talking about libraries lending e-books and schools issuing e-text books. The barriers still exist as do the management problems. If you have money, then there are solutions within reach, but they may not take you down the path you wanted to travel on.

On the other hand if you are talking about e-readers themselves then the rate of change is enormous. I have a Kindle2 and already Kindle3 has had an upgrade and my Kindle2 is obsolete, if you are talking in terms of the "improvements".
Mind you, a number of the improvements, as far as I can judge, have been cosmetic, and my Kindle2 still does what it always did, provides the service it always has. It seems a pity that Amazon has no intention now of upgrading the functionality of my Kindle2.

I'll witter on a bit more tomorrow...

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e-books in classrooms

I'm looking for a bit of feedback with this post.

There have been a number of newspaper articles now about schools, particularly in the USA, taking delivery of e-book readers, in the main Kindles. But I haven't seen much in the way of post-adoption reporting.

Here are just a couple of the articles:

In September 2010 ClearWater High School in Tampa Bay distributed 2,100 Kindles (spending roughly $600K) to students and teachers.

• http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/clearwater-high-school-in-florida-will-ditch-textbooks-for-all-students-and-go-to-kindles/
• http://www.tampabay.com/news/education/k12/textbooks-ditched-at-clearwater-high-as-students-log-on-to-kindles/1099264
• http://thenextweb.com/us/2010/09/18/us-school-replaces-textbooks-with-kindles-students-go-crazy/

Nashua High School in Arkansas is using 200 Kindles in English classes in hopes that it’ll be possible to use them in other subject-areas as a replacement for paper textbooks. article.

So far, the adoption of Kindles or any other e-reader in Australian classrooms seems to be minimal.
But I could be wrong. Maybe I am just listening to the wrong grapevines.

What I'd like from you, if you come across this post, is some more evidence of usage (anywhere).
In particular I'd like to hear about some post-adoption reports, that help me answer questions like these.

• how are the teachers using the e-books & e-readers in the classroom?
• what devices have they decided to use? Did they have to change their original plan?
• Is the pedagogy different? What stumbling blocks have there been?
• Is it working out cheaper for the school to use e-books?
• specific details - are the e-books they are using supplied by a publisher? What are the terms and conditions? How are they distributed? Do they expire after the academic year?

I came across an article today related to a proposal by the Florida State Board of Education to transfer over to digital textbooks by 2014.
The writer gives many good points supporting the move:

• they will replace heavy books
• And e-books will make it less expensive than ever before; many of the classics on reading lists, for example, can be downloaded for free.
• In addition, e-books have the potential for other broad, interactive uses in the classroom.
• Most important, students gain access to books they never would have before.
• Finally, being electronic, and therefore intriguing, young people might become more interested in reading, and learning.

But, the writer says, there are some questions that need to be answered:

• how will the students acquire the books, and who will pay
• will using e-books affect the way text books are chosen
• will the system of state-wide (in Florida) use of the same texts still continue?
• will teachers be given the freedom to choose their own e-texts

The writer concludes:

The transition will be an expensive one, but well worth the investment and effort as long as we do our homework and base our decisions on thoughtful research as opposed to over-excitement.

What do you think?

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Educators: taking advantage of e-reader capability

Using e-readers in the classroom should prompt some pedagogical changes.
Reading a book with an e-reader or e-reading software/App is not just the digital equivalent of reading a made-from-paper book. It opens up a whole world of possibilities, student engagement, and, at the next level, of creativity.

Most teachers will be familiar with the first level of possibilities:

• text re-sizing
• dictionary/thesaurus
• portability and the potential of carrying a very large number of books on a single device
• animation and interaction if you are using an App
• search function that enables the user to search the book for specific text - e.g. to check up on the first time a particular character appears and so on
• text to speech synthesis - usually a "computer" voice but sometimes still useful

There are tools that the user can use which both personalise the device, or, if it needs to be shared, enable more streamlined use. (Here I will refer mainly to the Kindle because that's where my area of "expertise" lies, but perhaps you could adopt the approach of "if that can be done on a Kindle, how can I achieve something similar on my e-reader?)

• tools like Categories in the Kindle enable the user to put the e-books into a sort of "folder" system. In this blog post I explain what I've done on my Kindle, but you could easily use categories on a shared device to store books for specific users. I would imagine that other devices/software have the ability to sort books into labelled shelves. (if you know of anything here, leave a comment)

But there are tools that allow the user to take use of their device to a new level. Let's take the scenario of a student who is required to write a book report, or an analysis of a particular section.
The student may need to be shown how to use the bookmarking and annotation tool, how to transfer those notes to a text reader on a computer, and then to manipulate them for a book report.

My point here is that the teacher needs to take a bit of an interventionist role, set post-reading assignments that challenge the student to make use of the extra capabilities an e-reader provides.

If you have a Kindle, you might find EduKindle a useful place to browse and monitor.
Of course there is always the Kindle User's Guide.

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Seducing our students with e-readers

It seems that many students can be turned off reading by the physical characteristics of made-from-paper books, like

• size of the font - we expect them to "graduate" to smaller type fonts before they (or is it their eyes?) are ready
• page layout - not enough white space, print density, no pictures
• the size of the book - too small, too big
• the weight of the book

One of the interesting things emerging from discussions about e-reading experiences is that it seems people who already read a lot are reading even more. Here is an article that explores that theme.

All of this is the fault of my ereading device. Like the muses of ancient lore, the device has seduced me. I can’t wait to sit in my recliner and read on my Sony 950; I simply do not want to pick up a printed book. The screen is easy on my eyes, the touch screen a pleasure, the ergonomics excellent for me, and the weight significantly less than most of my hardcovers. It oozes pleasure and an enjoyable time to be had. ... I’m reading three to four times as many books as I did before I had an ereading device

Perhaps that ties in with what I touched on yesterday: the impression that they are able to read faster.

Amazon for example are citing rising books sales, particularly of e-books.

Of course in education it isn't really the established older readers we want to get to. It is the younger readers who in the past have been turned off reading for reasons like those I cited at the beginning of this post.

And the jury is out on whether these people need a dedicated e-reader or an App on an iPad or e-reading software on their computer

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Can we make things too easy to read?

Anecdotal evidence from friends and comments about their e-reading experiences include an impressions that they are able to read faster on their e-readers than they can with a "normal" made-from-paper book. We have all thought that had something to do with the ability to manipulate the size of the font.

This phenomenon has been noted elsewhere, for example, a study of US middle school students who were all using Kindles, where their teacher found that nearly all were choosing to read their e-books in one of the larger size fonts.

Again this is anecdotal "evidence" - but there have been suggestions made that e-books are abridged versions - people unable to believe that they were able to read the book so quickly!

A colleague borrowed the company Kindle for the holidays and got on famously with it, far better than she thought she would. She said that she quickly forgot it was a device and settled down to reading with it easily. She read 3 books, all fairly long. However the time came to return the device and she reported that she had made the transition back to p-books just as easily.
She reported having a strange experience. The print on the p-book was a bit small and so she thought she would "bump it up bit", until she remembered she was not reading it on an e-reader.

So this post from TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home, a blog that I follow regularly, Are e-readers too easy to read? makes interesting reading. A neuroscience blogger suggests that easy to read fonts interfere with information retention. I guess if that were an educationally sound conclusion, then we would have made our readers and text books much harder to read long ago.

What do you think?

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Teachers and librarians lead the way with e-books

New Research Report Just Released
eBooks:  K-12 Educators’ Usage and Attitudes

 

A new research report has just been released that surveys teachers and librarians to find out how they are using e-books—personally and in the classroom—and to identify purchasing usage, attitudes, and trends.  

The report presents the results of a survey conducted among 700 teachers and 600 school librarians in the US.

The survey shows that school librarians are leading the way in bringing e-books into our nation’s schools – in large part because they have funding available to support their E-book purchases. The top-line results show that 40% of K-12 teachers and 50% of school librarians have purchased E-books for either personal or professional use.

The survey was conducted by educational consulting firm Egremont Associates, with support from co-sponsors edWeb.net, MCH Strategic Data, and TecKnoQuest Inc.

Points from the survey results:

• educators who have not already jumped on the bandwagon appear to be unlikely to do so in the near future.
• 70% are paying for eBooks out of their own pocket.
• School librarians are more involved with eBooks than teachers - partly because their eBook purchases are more likely than teachers.
• most popular foramts of books purchased are .pdf or .azw (Kindle)
• if educators own an eBook reader it is most likely to be a Kindle

Join Exploring eBooks for K-12 on Edweb Net and download the executive summary free.

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E-books in education in 2011

One interesting report that has come my way is the Price Waterhouse Coopers report on ebooks, published at the end of 2010.

While it is not specifically related to education, it does give a good overview for those who haven't yet begun thinking about e-readers and e-books. It contains some very persuasive arguments for why teachers and librarians need to try eReaders and eBooks. It is the way the world is headed.

It compares data from from the US, UK, Germany and the Netherlands (what a pocket of resistance that seems to be)

I was particularly interested in the final pages which described the Situation in the Year 2015. (check page 32 onwards)

Here are the main points:

• Books will still be printed. Books made from paper are not going to become museum pieces any time soon. However the book industry will be transformed by eBooks and eReaders.
• Printed books will continue to account for the majority of sales. At the end of 2010 eBooks accounted for only 7% of the US market and much less elsewhere.
• Prices for eReaders will fall.
• Colour screens and Internet connectivity will become commonplace.
• eReaders will remain less expensive than tablets and have fewer "disruptive" features.
• Dedicated eReaders will continue to be more popular than tablets, although the sales will flatten out where they are already established.
• Tablets will be lighter and have longer battery life than currently.
• Tablets will gradually take the place of printed magazines and newspapers.
• More publishers will offer multimedia content in eBooks.
• "special interest books" will be sold on a chapter by chapter basis (this has interesting implications for text books)
• Cook books and Travel guides and other special interest books will be offered as tablet Apps, and also with interactive feautres, online updates, and subscriptions
• Libraries will be lending both eReaders and eBooks
• As demand decreases for print books some titles may no longer be available in print, although printing on demand may still happen.
• By the end of 2012 most avid readers (in the US at least) will own an eReader.
• The eBooks market share in the US will be 22.5% in 2015. In the UK it will be 14% in 2015, and in Germany 6% and in the Netherlands 4%
• Closures of physical bookstores so far have probably had more to do with the economic downturn than with the rise of eBooks. Physical bookstores will need to look at the services they offer in order to ensure survival.

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e-books: will Google ebooks make a difference to me?

Watchers are tipping that the recent plunge by Google into e-books is going to change the way the e-book market works.

Well, for those of us In Australia, not much is changed as yet.
Here is the first thing I saw as I explored the Google eBookstore.

The latest Google eBooks are not available for sale in your location, yet...

Google is working with publishers around the world to let you buy the latest ebooks from top authors. In the meantime, you can still browse millions of free and public domain Google eBooks and read them effortlessly across your devices.Learn more

It looks like you're located outside of the United States. Although you're welcome to read about Google eBooks, please note that Google eBooks are only available for sale to customers in the U.S. at this time.

So my question on availability was answered.
My other question was - what format are the books in?

Google eBooks can be read with any dedicated eBook reader that supports the Adobe eBook platform, including the Barnes & Noble Nook™ and Readers™ from Sony. More than 85 devices support the Adobe eBook platform today including Reader™ from Sony devices (PRS-300 - PRS-700), Aluratek Libre, Astak EZ Reader, Barnes & Noble Nook™ and Nook Color™, BeBook, Bookeen, COOL-ER, Elonex eBook, HanLin eBook, IREX Digital Reader, Neolux Nuut, and more.

Currently, Google eBooks are not compatible with Amazon Kindle devices, though we are open to supporting them in the future.

So the format is not really epub - it is Adobe Digital Editions.

So in answer to the question I posed at the beginning in my subject line: no, Google ebooks will not make a difference to me at this stage.

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A collection of e-book links

The e-book e-reader cyberworld is really a fast changing one and I thought I'd pass on some information and tips that have come my way recently.

First of all from Nick:
A new online reader – the FlexBooks System promised to minimise the issues with ebook readers and copyright issues. Read more about this in my short blog here or on blogger.

There are number of Webinars happening soon, so visit the CK12 website for the schedule starting from Nov. 23 to Dec. 16th.

FlexBooks seems mainly to be about free Science and Maths text books available as e-books. There is an introductory video you can watch.

Another interesting one is COPIA. This one has the byline "If a book is worth reading, it's worth discussing", and is a site that enables social interaction through reading. This seems similar to the comment system that Amazon has been developing on the Kindle, which works if you are connected via the wireless.

One of the interesting things with this sort of development is that in most of the discussions that people are having about e-books and e-readers at the moment, particularly in an educational context, such as the one I have been participating in on Your School Library for the past few days, they are focussing on whether you can lend e-books, and whether there can be such a thing as a lendable e-textbook. Many miss the concept that the e-reader is a personal device, and they are not aware of the social networking aspects at all.

It seems to me that much of the development is around the epub format, with the idea of inclusion of the e-book onto the iPad through an App. As the Kindle is really the only viable e-reader that uses the Amazon format, and if Amazon's real interest is in selling books, e-books among them, then I think this is going to push Amazon into retailing e-books in epub format as well as .azw. The day is not long off when Amazon asks the buyer what format they want the ebook delivered in.

For those who want their e-reader to handle colour then the NookColor looks like a winner, with a ready market here in Australia if Barnes & Noble ever decide to release it for international users. You might be interested in this review.
The writer gives the NookColor the following ratings, with an overall B

Hardware/screen/physicality: A
Battery: B+
General interface/navigation: B
Book reading: A-
Newspaper reading: B
Magazine reading: C+
Kids’ books: A
Shopping/periodical selection: C
Search, highlighting, dictionary, lookup: A
Note-taking/account syncing: F
Music and video playback: B
Library books: B+
Web: B+
Social/LendMe: A-

and a prediction that major problems with be fixed with a software upgrade in January/February along with the launch of a NookColor App store.

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2010 Horizon report: Australia New Zealand edition: e-books

This volume examines emerging technologies for their potential impact on and use in teaching, learning, and creative enquiry within higher education in Australia and New Zealand over a five-year time period. The report identifies electronic books and mobile devices as the near term horizon technologies with the likelihood of entry into the mainstream for institutions within the next 12 months.

http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2010-Horizon-Report-ANZ.pdf

Some of its points

• reading electronic books will be more than simply viewing a digital version of a printed volume - there will be interactive content and dynamic media
• e-books and e-readers will be offered on mobile devices
• students will be able to buy or rent whole books or just chapters
• the e-content will update often
• students will be able to share their annotations and commentary
• institutions must commit to supporting tools
• pedagogical practice must change to take the new tools into account

Technologies to Watch

• On the near term horizon - within the next 12 months: e-books and mobiles
• second adoption horizon - 2 to 3 years out - augmented reality and open content
• far term horizon - 4 to 5 years - gesture-based computing and visual data analysis.

As the technology underlying electronic readers has improved and more titles have become available, electronic books are quickly reaching the point where their advantages over the printed book are compelling to almost any observer. Already firmly established in the public sector, electronic books are gaining a foothold on campuses as well, where they serve as a cost-effective and portable alternative to heavy textbooks and supplemental reading selections. The availability of an increasing range of portable electronic reading devices, as well as the many book-reader applications designed for mobiles, has made it easy to carry a wide selection of wirelessly updated reading material. New, highly interactive publications demonstrate that quite apart from their convenience, electronic books have the potential to transform the way we interact with reading material of all kinds, from popular titles to scholarly works

 The Overview is worth reading for expansion of the following:

• e-books have now reached the point of mainstream adoption in the consumer sector
• to what extent can content be separated from the device?
• what makes e-books potentially a transformative technology is the new kind of reading experiences they make possible - audio visual and social elements
• standards for e-publications are still in the development phase: there is huge change happening in the publishing industry
• tertiary education campuses have been slow to adopt, but many of the earlier constraints are fast vanishing, although availability of e-books in Australia & NZ is still an issue

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e-readers boost enthusiasm for reading

A newspaper article today claims a school district library project to interest students in reading books by providing them with Kindles has been very successful. The librarians say that the devices have been directly responsible for increasing the number of minutes students have spent reading and also the number of books that have been read. The library has bought 30 Kindles and are using them with students in Kindle Clubs. Students estimate that they have read 30% more books over the last year.

Participants in the official Kindle forum (adult readers) have been making similar claims.

For example

Here are some of the things that people at the official kindle forum are mentioning -

1. They are reading more books than they used to.
2. They’re also reading books that earlier they wouldn’t.
3. A tendency to buy too many books.
4. A tendency to hoard books.
5. Downloading and reading a free book and then reading the other books from that author.

There seem to have been three main changes in reading patterns -

1. The number of books read in main genres of interest seems to have gone up.
2. Reading has made its way back to being a top 2 leisure activity for a significant number of kindle owners. For a lot of the others it was always #1 or #2.
3. People are beginning to explore other genres and are reading lots of books that they wouldn’t have without the Kindle Store.

Earlier this year a report revealed that the availability of free e-books was having an unexpected impact on the sales of print books. A growing number of authors and publishers freely distribute their books electronically to increase the visibility of their work. These books, for both academic and general audiences, cover a wide variety of genres, including technology, law, fantasy, and science fiction. Some authors claim that free digital distribution has increased the impact of their work and their reputations as authors.

A pilot study, admittedly with a very small cohort, recently aimed to consider the e-book reading experiences of young children and their families, with currently available portable e-reader devices: Amazon Kindle, Nintendo DS-lite and Apple iPod Touch. Among other factors, there were indications that the one reluctant young reader (a boy aged eight years) was inspired to read by the Kindle.

Yet another article claims :"Ebooks have already proved particularly successful with low-ability and reluctant readers. Not only do they reflect the young learner’s world more appropriately than paper books but children still find technology ‘cool’. Therefore, reading on personal EDAs or laptops individually or together on a whiteboard makes those who are reluctant more interested, particularly when they can click through to relevant websites listed in bibliographies and discover more about a topic for themselves."

Lotta Larson, a Kansas-State assistant professor of elementary education, is finding that electronic readers allow children to interact with texts in ways they don't interact with the printed word. In particular she cites the role of features that enable the reader to make the text audible, increase or decrease font size and let readers make notes about the book.

You'll have noticed that many of these articles are about the Kindle but I don't think that matters. That is simply because the Kindle has been around longer, long enough for teachers and parents to make observations. The evidence linked to e-readers in general will come.

Someone at the conference I was speaking at last week asked about whether the e-book would inhibit those in her class who were already avid readers (I think she was really asking why the evidence appears to have such a focus on the reluctant or slow reader). I responded with the anecdotal evidence  I've seen about avid readers consuming more books, bumping the print text size up a little to facilitate faster reading, and using tools like the note taking tool and the dictionary/thesaurus.

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Why you should grow some digital wings

This week I'm talking about e-books twice: on Wednesday to a local teacher librarians hub group, and then on Friday at the SLAV (School Librarians Association of Victoria) conference.

Here is the prezi that will be the basis of my talk on both occasions - I'm hoping they have losts of questions to ask. My starting focus is what I get out of having a Kindle.

 

Why you should grow some digital wings on Prezi

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e-books: What your school needs you to do (if you are a teacher or a TL)

The e-book/e-reader scenario is the perfect illustration of the hype cycle. We are not so far up from the "technology trigger". The Gartner Hype Cycle July 2009 put e-book readers into the 2-5 years to mainstream adoption and we are quite a long way from that.

The emergence of the latest cab off the rank, the Nook Color e-reader, which is a touch screen device, will throw an interesting cat among the pigeons. I'm sure it will hasten the development of other small colour devices perhaps even a colour Kindle. Many are predicting there will be even more device releases in time for your Christmas spending.

What teachers and teacher librarians should be doing is developing some experience in what an e-reader can do. Please don't sit around waiting for the right one to come along.

I am sure we are just at the beginning of the e-book scenario, and that cheaper colour touch screens etc will become available in the next few months, and that makes sensible arguments for holding off.
On the other hand we desperately need teachers and TLs who have joined the "advance guard" and are developing some expertise in what an e-reader can do, what they might offer to a school library.

I'm sure the issues with how to lend books, and possibilities for e-textbooks will be worried at for at least the next 12 months.

The deal with Amazon and Borders is that multiple copies of a purchased e-book can be downloaded to devices registered to your account. With Amazon it is 6 devices and I thought that was the case with Borders too.
This includes being able to read the e-book on a laptop or PC.

My appeal to TLs is to at least download Kindle for PC or the Borders software to a laptop or desktop PC, and get some experience in how of what e-reading is like.
It is not quite the same as a dedicated e-reader but the functionality is similar.

Just as we have Apple enthusiasts in our ranks, and PC enthusiasts, those who rally behind the e-book / e-reader banner will probably always speak highly of the device they have spent time with (unless they totally hate it). In my own case it is the Kindle2 which I have been using for 15 months now and have read 35 books on.
But my experiences have given me a view of what we need to look for in an e-reader or e-reading software. I am unlikely to buy a new device anytime soon, although I do have Kindle for PC on my computer, as well as the Borders software. My husband has the Kindle for PC App on his iPad.

If you are thinking about your next step, then the criteria that I listed in my blog post at http://blogs.educationau.edu.au/ksmith/2010/09/08/e-books-and-e-readers-criteria-for-choosing-your-e-reader/ might be a good starting point.

As with most technology decisions, it really comes down to what you want the device to do and how much you are prepared to pay for it.

I have explored the topic in these blog posts
Teaching with an e-book: http://blogs.educationau.edu.au/ksmith/2010/09/14/teaching-with-an-e-book-part-1/
And this one about how we are unlikely to see wholesale adoption of e-texts in schools in 2010: http://blogs.educationau.edu.au/ksmith/2010/10/26/so-youre-thinking-about-e-text-books-2011-may-be-too-soon-in-australia-anyway/
If you explore my blog you'll see that e-books is a focus topic for me.

If you are attending the SLAV conference on November 12, I will presenting a session on why I love my Kindle, and e-books in general.

If you are in Tasmania Jill Hutchins is organising a conference for 11-12 indep schools, catholic colleges and Academies/Polytechnics, where e-books is one of the topics:  Jill's email address is Jill.Abell@hutchins.tas.edu.au I'll be there too.

You could think about tuning into the YSL round table on e-books in early December:  check it out at http://yourschoollibrary.org/

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So you're thinking about e-text books? 2011 may be too soon... in Australia anyway

Many teachers and librarians have told me their principal has asked them to investigate the possibility of using e-text books in 2011.

Now, we've been trying to get our heads around at least a couple of stumbling blocks and now at least one more has cropped up.

The 2 issues we've been trying to get our heads (previous posts) around have been

• which device to buy?
• what format for the e-books? (very much determined by the device)

and the 3rd one: how do we lend e-books either as library books or text books?

Currently many libraries are resorting to lending the device, in the absence of affordable schemes  that facilitate the lending of the e-books themselves. It seems there are schemes (like Overdrive) available if you are willing to put all your eggs in one basket, and cut your cloth to what they can provide. - mixed metaphors I know, but the end result is that you are severely limited in your purchase to what they can provide, not what you want to buy.

Now a 4th obstacle has come up:
geographic restrictions on sale of e-books by publishers. It is yet another illustration that publishers do not "get" the requirements of the e-book market.
An Australian friend has until yesterday been able to buy e-books for her Sony reader through Waterstones UK. Yesterday she was notified by them that they are no longer allowed to sell e-books outside the UK and Ireland.

I have been used to encountering this problem with buying books through Amazon, but had not realised the extent of it until now.

In the course of my investigations this morning I have come across a useful site. Three posts have caught my eye:

• TeleRead E-Book Primer Part One: What is an e-book?
• TeleRead E-book Primer Part Two: Formats
• E-book region restrictions continue to frustrate would-be buyers

The upshot of it all, is that, considering where we are in the school/academic year in Australia, if you were thinking of bringing e-text books in at the beginning of 2011, there are probably just too many imponderables, too many unresolved issues.

If you've made a decision on the device, then that probably determines the format of the e-books you will purchase, then you are only part way through finding a solution.
The main question then becomes one of whether you can get the text books you want as e-books. If you are talking English novels and your students read a number of the "classics", including Shakespearian plays, then you can probably get some of them free through the Gutenberg Project Magic Catalog, but that is not going to help in major areas.

I'm sorry to sound like a Jonah, and I'd love to be proved wrong, but I think 2011 is just too early.

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