An eBook in Every Schoolbag?

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Educational publishers and users are quickly taking to eBooks.  “I think this is going to happen faster in education than anywhere else,” says Susan Driscoll, president of Worth Publishers, which will be offering several electronic textbooks this fall.

In August, WizeUp.com announced that more than 100 digital titles would be available this fall.  The eTexts will be used in schools ranging from Harvard to Georgetown to Ohio State, and in more than 20 subject areas, from Accounting to Sociology.  By next year, WizeUp expects to triple its offerings.

The company says WizeUp digital textbooks make study more efficient through next generation productivity tools.  For instance, students can take advantage of advanced note-taking and note-management features, a highlighter tool, a powerful search function, and a bookmarking tool for creating custom hyperlinks.

WizeUp textbooks are downloaded from the web, usually in under 15 minutes via a university’s fast network connection.  The digital textbooks are then installed on the student’s computer.  Prices are less than a new edition, and usually comparable to a used book.  In addition, WizeUp offers a free “Drop/Add” test drive (supplying the first few chapters of the textbook) while you decide if the class is right for you.  You can then add the complete WizeUp textbook if you decide to keep the course.  Most recently, the company introduced the option of chapter-by-chapter purchasing. 

“Students do everything on laptops these days, so I definitely think electronic books are a trend that’s going to expand,” says MIT psychology professor Dr. Steven Pinker, who plans on using eBooks next year.

For many professors, the flexibility of eBooks is the quality mentioned most.  The electronic version can be updated more frequently than printed editions, and can also be linked to newspaper articles and other supplementary texts, as well as audio and visual aids.  “The text is no longer frozen on the page,” says Dr. Sanford Berg of the University of Florida.  He adds: “eBooks will change the way classes are taught because students will have so much information.  They make professors more a guide than a pontificator, which professors should never be anyway.”

Your homework assignment is now to read “Professors study eBook possibilities. - CNET News.com (via the Associated Press), August 17, 2000

Also among the eBook pioneers: the dental school class of 2004.  Incoming freshmen at five dentistry schools will be drilled using a single DVD—containing the textbooks and materials for their full four-year curriculum, and the equivalent of 2 million pages and thousands of images from more than 400 pounds of books and manuals.

In an agreement with textbook publisher Harcourt Health Science, Vital Source Technologies, Inc. has bundled digital versions of Harcourt’s Mosby, W. B. Saunders, and Churchill Livingstone dental and medical texts along with each participating school’s curriculum course manuals.  Textbooks (including other publishers’ content), manuals, handouts, workbooks, lab manuals, and even lecture slides, are now available digitally for all four years of the degree program.  The DVD will be updated every year.  Cost: roughly the same as the total for the books that students would have been expected to buy during the four years of dental school.   But, content will be 4-7 times larger, depending on subject.

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