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After organizing our bookshelf almost a year ago (http://youtu.be/zhRT-PM7vpA), my wife and I decided to take it to the next level...
The change has come more slowly to books than it came to music or to business correspondence, but by now it feels inevitable. The digital era is upon us. The Twilights and Freedoms of 2025 will be consumed primarily as e-books.
Books are the carriers of civilization. Thoreau had that right. If our ideas are the best of us, and books capture our best thoughts, how could we ever live without them?
Via Ana Cristina Pratas 
eReaders allow you to carry your latest interests around on one small device, which often also houses your email, documents, photos and more especially if you're working off a device like the Kindle Fire or iPad.
"The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, and other institutions are old hands now at taking course material from the classroom and lab and putting it online for learners anywhere to use. Yale University may be the first to reverse the process, using its Open Yale Courses as the basis for an old-fashioned book series.This month, Yale University Press released the first batch of paperbacks based on lecture courses featured in the online-learning program. Priced at $18 and available in e-format too, the books are meant to expand the audience for the course material even further, according to Diana E.E. Kleiner. A professor of art history and classics at Yale, Ms. Kleiner is the founding project director of Open Yale Courses. “It may seem counterintuitive for a digital project to move into books and e-books, because these are a much more conventional way of publishing,” she says. But the Open Yale Courses are about “reaching out in every way that we could.” That includes posting audio and video versions online (via Yale’s Web site, YouTube, and iTunes), and providing transcripts and now book versions of the lectures..."
"When I first started down the path of writing the SMACSS e-book, I had intended it to be either an e-book or a printed book. After months of writing and not getting enough written, I released what I wrote as a web site. A free web site at that. However, I also released it with the intention of continually adding new content to it until I had reached a point where I had a "finished product".
Right away, though, many people asked for the site in an e-book and even a printed format. With my intention to add more content, a printed format just wasn't (and still isn't) a practical option. However, an e-book could be created and updated over time. And so I started down the path of converting the HTML content into other formats. Knowing my preference, I decided to try and put together the e-book in different formats, since each format has its own pros and cons. I did PDF, ePub, and mobi. Mobi is the format used on the Kindle and other e-ink readers. It lacks a lot of control over formatting and was the lowest common denominator. ePub is the format that Apple uses and was a format that I wanted to push the limits on—even if maybe just a little bit. Lastly, I also went with PDF, which has great support across most platforms. Once I stop writing new content, I may very well do a print version, too. This feels rather backwards from how a publisher would normally do it: print to e-book to free. I went from free to e-book to (maybe one day) print..." Link via @nzelearning 
Are digital interactive textbooks and the means to create them finally here? Amazon’s Kindle, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, and even Apple’s iBooks have been working on moving us away from reading physical books and toward embracing the digital revolution. Via Sam Gliksman 
Apple's new software lets anyone create digitally rich eBooks for iPads. iBooks Author experts Joe Wood and Burt Lo share why this new software is important and how to introduce it to schools right now.
"...What I see happening is that some eBooks may not be available as eBooks themselves. Publishers may pull them back and create an app for an entity of titles, maybe by the same author or content that is the same. They do that, you’ll be buying apps instead.
Or the boycotts continue, which lets admit is a knee jerk reaction and one that won’t really solve anything. Not to mention, you have now taken content from your users, the same users that pay the taxes for you to buy the content. They are not being served, they have now lost access. Pubs need to pay attention to this and get things back on track, but everything is pretty much going to get ugly, just wait for ALA, it’ll be an interesting conference this year. In the end what’s going to help, honest conversations, none of this we want and they want. It needs to be here’s a list from both of needs, wants, etc. Then be prepared to scrap about 50% of it and give in on that much, because there is no way that one is going to walk away with the larger percentage of their list intact, just can’t happen." 
"Open-education resources have been hailed as a trove of freely available information that can be used to build textbooks at virtually no cost. But a copyright lawsuit filed last month presents a potential roadblock for the burgeoning movement.
A group of three large academic publishers has sued the start-up Boundless Learning in federal court, alleging that the young company, which produces open-education alternatives to printed textbooks, has stolen the creative expression of their authors and editors, violating their intellectual-property rights. The publishers Pearson, Cengage Learning, and Macmillan Higher Education filed their joint complaint last month in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York..."
Advancing patient education, creation of a new multi touch iPad Book “Know Your PH, Getting to Know Your Pulmonary Hypertension”
"Pulmonary hypertension (PH) is a complex condition, one that can be frightening for patients and challenging for doctors to recognize and treat. Imagine, as a patient, being precipitously plunged from relative health to being immersed in a complex web of care, with doctors discussing invasive tests and powerful treatments involving your heart and lungs.
When Apple recently released their iBooks Author tool, I saw this as an opportunity to create an interactive iPad resource that lets PH patients, as well as their families and friends, explore and understand PH. A fully interactive multi-touch book like this one represents an incredibly exciting way of bringing this information to life in ways not previously possible. In creating the book, Know Your PH, I built upon work co-authored with a colleague, Dr. David Roberts, for our patient education web site KnowYourPH.org. To let people better visualize the underlying mechanisms of related medical problems and symptoms, I also created a series of interactive, animated diagrams specific to the iPad and integrated with the book..." More: http://www.imedicalapps.com/2012/03/advancing-patient-education-creation-multitouch-ipad-book-ph-pulmonary-hypertension/ 
Publishers are going to have to focus on Amazon this year, according to James McQuivey, Ph.D., vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research.
I received a Kindle for my birthday, and enjoying "light reading," in addition to the dense science I read for work, I immediately loaded it with mysteries by my favorite authors...
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"Literacy used to be a very subtle concept that meant linguistic sophistication. It used to denote a skill that could be developed to arbitrary levels of refinement through practice. Literacy meant using mastery over language — both form and content — to sustain a relentless and increasingly sophisticated pursuit of greater meaning. It was about an appreciative, rather than instrumental use of language. Language as a means of seeing rather than as a means of doing.
Reading and writing — the ability to translate language back and forth between oral and written forms — was a secondary matter. It was a vocational pursuit of limited depth. The written form itself was merely a convenience for transmitting language across space and time, and a mechanism by which to extend the limits of working memory. It had little to do with language skills per se. Confusing the two is like confusing the ability to read and write musical notation with musical ability. You can have exceptional musical ability without knowing how to read music. And conversely, you might have no musical ability whatsoever, but still be able to read and write musical notation and translate back and forth between the keyboard and paper. Being able to read and write musical notation really has almost nothing to do with musical ability..."
As in all things, form follows function, and the function of reading is being disrupted by convenience of consumption and construction, changing the book.
Apple's iPad accounts for 94.64 percent of all tablet Web traffic.
Claire Armitstead: Interactive ebooks that enable us to inhabit characters and rewrite the story are transforming our reading experience...
Apple hopes it can combine the iPad's tablet dominance with its traditionally strong desktop software to get a foothold in digital textbooks. Dave Girard sees whether Apple's iBooks Author is capable of a self-publishing revolution—or if it's a dud.
"...Let me tell you the story of an iPad app that I worked on for a magazine. As you can see (above), this story does turn out good in the end- but that’s not what I want to focus on. I want to focus on the bits that people would normally gloss over when giving a talk like this..."
iBooks Author Demo: Creating student produced, media-rich, interactive digital textbooks from standardized curriculum resources. This demo uses an example fr...
Via Sam Gliksman 
"...eBooks were the first to appear on devices such as the Kindle, and have very limited interactivity. You are mainly able to flip the pages, search for content, or highlight words to see a dictionary definition. These devices also allowed font size to be increased to enable visually impaired readers enjoy books more easily. This gave publishers the unforeseen benefit of regaining a large population of users who couldn’t read printed books.
Enhanced eBooks (ePUB3) are a new digital publication standard that allows easy integration of video, audio, and interactivity. I expect this format to advance the future of textbooks and other educational material. Future textbooks might be able to "read themselves" with audio narration, perhaps preventing students from actually reading. But the benefits outweigh the downsides; for example, the new text books might also offer the ability to make and share annotations without destroying the book, interactive self-tests throughout the chapters, and generally a much more enjoyable learning experience..." 
"...“The conversation a year ago was, ‘Oh my god you’re going to kill my book sales’ and ‘You can’t release e-books simultaneously’ and ‘Don’t do an app, no one will buy my book if the app is $2.99!’” said Lorena Jones, the publishing director behind Chronicle Books‘ digital initiatives, in an interview with Wired at the company’s San Francisco office.
Now book publishers know they must evolve: 21 percent of Americans say they’ve read an e-book, according to a Pew Internet study released last week, and the Association of American Publishers says 114 million e-books were sold in 2010 (the most recent year for which numbers are available). Some 48.3 million iPads, Android tablets and e-readers were sold to U.S. consumers in 2011, and about half that many were sold the year before, according to NPD Group. With so many tablets flooding the market, demand for e-books is only going to grow. Though the rewards promise to be great, the adaptation book publishers must make is far more complicated than that faced by the music and movie industries, which essentially needed to digitize their current products. Bookmakers must become multimedia companies — creating audio, video and interactive components for their immersive, built-for-tablets offerings..." 
"Apple and five of the “Big Six” trade publishers are reportedly under investigation by the Department of Justice for antitrust violations. The point of concern is the five publishers’ staggered but identical move to an agency rather than a wholesale pricing model, not just for Apple, but for all e-book retailers — a move that caused e-book prices for consumers to rise.
But the DoJ’s investigation and a related civil lawsuit touch on issues bigger than rising e-book prices or even collusion between publishers. The cases are also about who has the right to sue e-book publishers, the nature of publishers’ bilateral interactions with Apple and other retailers, and whether it’s even possible for a true agency model to exist for virtual goods like e-books..." 
"Looking closer at readership of digital books, here are some of the findings:
Seven in 10 college students (70%) have read digital textbooks, compared to 62% a year ago. Six in 10 high school seniors (58%) have read digital textbooks, compared to 41% a year ago. Among those students who had previously read a digital textbook, eight in 10 college students (81%) and two-thirds of high school seniors (66%) have read a digital textbook this school year (since September 2011). Almost six in 10 college students prefer a digital format when reading books for fun (57%) or textbooks for class (58%), while one-third say that they prefer print. This trend can be seen among high school seniors as well, and is mostly driven by an increase in the preference to use tablets for reading. Other studies have found that e-textbooks still face several obstacles to overcome before digital textbook distribution models become mainstream on college campuses..." 
"...But before we go "beyond the textbook," I think it's very important to consider the question of "why textbooks?" in the first place -- how and why did the textbook come into existence? What systems and policies perpetuate its ubiquity? How and why is the textbook used, both by teachers and by students?
I pose these questions not just in terms of the "thing" that we currently call a textbook or a "thing" that could, when digitized, replace it. Rather, I want us to weigh classroom practices, power, authority, politics, publishing, assessment, expertise, attribution, and the culture(s) of the education system. I would argue that the textbook in its current form -- and frankly in almost all of the digital versions we're also starting to see now -- is tightly woven into that very fabric, and once we tug hard enough at the "textbook" thread, things come undone. That's exhilarating -- the whole "beyond" thing. And for many folks, that's terrifying. Even if you have the most up-to-date edition of the very latest textbook, I think it's recognize that the textbook -- as an object, as instructional practice -- is still a relic. It is a relic of a time when information was scarce. It's a relic of the way in which we manufactured and scaled the industrial model of education -- a teacher at the front of the classroom, assigning the lessons and readings from an authoritative text. One that was bound by print. One that was distributed state and even nation-wide. One that was uniform. Somewhere along the way, "textbook" became "curriculum" -- and under today's testing regime, that all became wrapped up in "assessment..." |
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