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Devices To Take Textbooks Beyond Text
An anonymous reader writes with a New York Times piece about the tumultuous transition to electronic devices, instead of printed materials, for text. "Newspapers and novels are moving briskly from paper to pixels, but textbooks have yet to find the perfect electronic home. They are readable on laptops and smartphones, but the displays can be eye-taxing. Even dedicated e-readers with their crisp printlike displays can’t handle textbook staples like color illustrations or the videos and Web-linked supplements publishers increasingly supply. Now there is a new approach that may adapt well to textbook pages: two-screen e-book readers with a traditional e-paper display on one screen and a liquid-crystal display on the other to render graphics like science animations in color."
Why not have a pc / netbook that can do more for about the same cost?
There will be a need to offer complete downloads when a word changes, so that professors may be reimbursed for a new book each term. Either that or the books will arrive as DRM locked on disposable tablets. Or will erase themselves after the term is over. Can't have people re-using books, now...
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Last time I looked, dead trees don't handle videos and Web-linked[sic] supplements either.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Cause an E-Reader uses E-Ink, which only uses electricity when the text changes. It doesn't take any power to show static text, just change it. (unless, of course, you use the low power backlight)
Nobody wants to charge their textbook a couple of times a day.
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
Given the glaring errors I've seen in just about every school related text book I've ever owned, I'd prefer them work on accuracy before electronic.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Here in Uruguay all school childrens have an XO, that have a decent screen for reading text, even under sunlight. If well don't have a dual screen like those, cost less than half of the ones in the article, and can do far more than just reading books. And doing more than just displaying books means that education don't need to be something as passive as reading/memorizing a textbook, and a lot of its activities are oriented to getting student to participate. And we are talking about a device that is around since several years by now.
In my experience as a professor I found that there are two types of students. Those who get the material without much supporting information, and those who will never get it no matter how many different techniques you use. Bloating textbooks has just made it harder for those interested in the subject to wade through the crap.
Adding more to already bloated textbooks won't help. I should start a movement for smaller books.
Note : the e-paper screen on this device is 9.7" diagonal, which is the same size as the display on the kindle DX. Most likely it's the same part number.
This device is approaching the functionality of a truly useful electronic book. That's enough screen area to make an electronic textbook practical and close to being equivalent to the paper version. The true value of course is that you should be able to fit dozens or hundreds of books onto the machine. Plus : searchability, updates, electronic highlighting, etc.
Downside : publishers will try to destroy the used book market. They'll use DRM and various access controls to try to force every user to buy a separate copy.
Upside : open textbooks directly published by professors, available free or for under $15, will be more practical.
Obviously, the problem this device has is that at $490 it's far too expensive ($200-$300 would probably be a more practical price point). Android is still basically a beta product, and we don't know if the guts of this device are up to snuff. It needs to have a long battery life, a CPU that is beefy enough to not add long delays yet use very little power, and things like an SD card reader.
I would like a *cheap* usb ebook screen so I can reduce the eye-strain when reading text at work/home etc. Why doesn't that exist?
Yes, but the idea of a tablet is that it should be much lighter and smaller than a full computer. You'd be able to cart it around like a clipboard and use it in all sorts of industries. Ideally, the tablet would be about the size and weight of the screen on your laptop. It would be running a very low power usage CPU, and would have a power efficient display. Due to the slow CPU, it wouldn't be useful for a lot of things you can do with a laptop, but would be designed for working with lots of 2d documents.
Who are these people who read textbooks in direct sunlight?
And if you're such an advocate of sunlight, what are you doing posting on Slashdot?
How we know is more important than what we know.