Electonic Textbooks - The pros and cons

Last week, Apple announced it will be adding textbooks to iTunes. I’m of two minds on it. I think the education world and their economic concerns, and the backs of overburdened students are really ready for something like this. But, there are also questions that haven't been answered.

Here are some things to consider:

Will Apple make this feature available only to iPad users?

There is already a great digital divide between lower income families who cannot afford the price of an iPad and higher income families who can afford one. At its current price, only offering etextbooks on iPads has the potential to make this and the educational divide worse.

If Apple intends to segregate this technology to just the iPad community, will they offer student/family discounts or a lower base price on the iPad to open the field for lower income families and college students?

Offering a $199 simplified iPad, or the equivalent of a Nook or Kindle Fire, would go along way to make etextbooks more affordable to those who don't have $499 to drop on an iPad. Or, Apple could offer some kind of a discount to create a similar price point.

Better yet, Apple could make textbooks on iTunes available to more devices, like other tablets and PCs. Many households and college students who don't have an iPad do have another, similar device. So, the etextbook platform wouldn't be open for everyone, maybe, but a much larger segment of the population than just iPad owners.

What about the research that suggests that people who read information via screen media don't retain the information as well as they retain information read from a paper-based source? Will textbooks on e-readers and tablets have an overall positive or negative effect on students' learning?

I know that Apple is pushing the idea of integrating rich media content along with the standard, static text offerings of these textbooks, as a way to expand how students receive the information, but I still think that the statistics on learning via screen media can't be ignored. (Sorry, I don't have a research study handy that I can link back to.)

The bottomline:

I think the idea of etextbooks is promising. It has the potential to reduce the number and heft of the books that middle school and high school students are asked to carry. It also has the potential to reduce the financial burden on college students who must buy books for their courses, although maybe not as greatly as Apple might suggest. (Do you think Organic Chemistry books cost so much because of the paper they're printed on?)

However, I think we still need more information from not only Apple, but the education community at large. How will this technology affect students and families? How will it affect the learning abilities of students in general?

Where did the time go? And, size does matter.

Time flies. I didn’t know until I looked this morning that my last post was in November. It’s not like I didn’t have anything I could post about. I guess the holidays just tied me up more than I thought they did.

So, let’s kick off the New Year by talking about “ultrabooks”. If you don’t know what an ultrabook is, you’re either a Mac user or you’ve just been living under the proverbial rock when it comes to tech. Sorry, but that’s just how it is.

An ultrabook is essentially just a super-fast, super-light laptop (also add kind of expensive). Think Macbook Air, but in PC form.

This idea was kicked around quite a bit in the latter part of 2011 and continues in 2012. They were featured prominently by laptop makers at this year’s CES. What I want to comment on, though, is the mystification expressed by some (see Buzz Out Loud’s Molly Wood and Brian Tong) that there wasn’t much talk of a small-form ultrabook. As in an 11- or 13-inch ultrabook.

My question: Why would there be?

I have zero use for a laptop that small. Anyone who does a lot of typing or needs a screen size that allows for something other than just reading text is going to want something closer to a 15.6-inch laptop. At minimum, a 14.1-inch.

So, just because 11- and 13-inch Macbook Airs work in the Apple market, doesn’t mean they’ll suddenly be unleashed on the PC market. I just don’t think that there’s as much of a market for them in the PC world.