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eBooks vs. Textbooks
Ones to watch:
- Amazon
- Pearson
- Academic publishers
- Writers
- Educators
- University Faculties
- Schools
- Research in and of faculties.
- Initiatives to give eReaders preloaded with course books to students.
- Proactive use of eReaders by learners, say junior doctors.
- Research in schools. Related research on mobile learning.
- Drivers include cost savings.
The purchase of books and their distribution is expensive compared to digital versions that are easily uploaded and include a multitude of affordances:
- highlighting,
- book marking,
- annotating,
- sharing,
- searching …
Whilst digital versions of millions of books, journals and papers increase access and scope of reading, developers are producing new interactive, multimedia formats even blending eBooks into the learning process with assessment and student analysis through quizzes and games.
A student can find rapidly from vast sources the material they need to see, though distraction is an issue. They can fast track through ‘reading’, branch out or study something else in parallel.
Has this been cornered by Martin Weller?
The Institute of Educational
Technology at the OU is a leader.
Ones to watch:
- Paul Anderson
- Graine Conole
- Tim O’Reilly
- Eileen Scanlon
- John Seely Brown
- George Siemens
- Clay Shirky
- Rhona Sharpe
- Lave
- Wenger
- M Wesch
- Victor
- Mayer-Schonberg
- Adam Greenfield
- Brian Kelly
- Stephen Heppel
Ones to follow:
- Martin Weller
- Helen Beetham
- Rhona Sharpe
- Allison Littlejohn
- Chris Pegler
- Sara De Frietas
Open Access: Guardian Higher Education Network
Far from saving me time, owning a kindle is obliging me to spend more time with the text.
There are no page numbers at all, they’ve been deleted, instead, it is done by line or word … so (Location 870) might be how a highlighted piece of text is referenced. How I deal with this should I quote an author I don’t yet know.
If it takes me as long to work through my notes and highlights as it took me to read the chapter in the first place … then I simply accept that I have still got a heck of a lot to learn and that in good time, these points, squirreled away will bounce back into my life with a click of my fingers.
A book, for example.
Ask, a literary agent has asked.
My contact lenses are stuck to my eyeballs and the skin under the pads of my thumb are chafed from scooting back and forth over a keyboard.
Am I learning anything though?
That a great deal of nonsence is written. That authors must be pillored if they use strings of abbreviations and terms that are not common place. Courtesy of Kindle and an e-book I was able to see, for example, how often LOM was used in the body of a book. Four times it turned out, and in three it had been written out in full and in the fourth as LOMS it meant something else.
This I my bugbear about the use of the highly technical descriptors: more, very, truly and actually.
Pedant?
That’s me.
Kindle will drive some people crazy at is potential. I see a way into the minds of many authors. My son dismissed it. One of his friends, I can’t get away from it.
Further insights?
There’s a way to write for a Kindle. Ditch many diagrams and tables. Think in terms of graphics that would work on TV (in black and white). Write short sentences (these are good discipline).
Meanwhile I have generated 11 pages of quotes and notes (4,000 words) having so far only regurgitated my thoughts on the introduction and chapter one to Rhona Sharpe’s ‘Rethinking Pedagogy for the Digital Age’ (2007). It’s that kind of book.
Fun packed.
And valuable.
(Even if I keep disagreeing with the authors)
H800: 16 Kindle 5
If you’re interested in learning and education online I recommend these two.
The first, E-learning by Design by William Horton a highly practicle, hands on, solutions to e-learning problem x,y, or z. Informed, experienced, good advice with examples galore and links online.
The second, Educational Psychology something by someone you will come across repeatedly. As my background is not in formal teaching, but in TV production and the ‘media’ it is this kind of foundation that I need.
On reflection, I wonder if ahead of the MAODE a module on the Foundations of Learning would have been of value.
The 16 chapters of ‘Rethining the Pedagogy of E-learning’ edited by Rhona Sharpe would suit an MAODE student as several OU and other authors have contributed.
Enjoy!
Do please get in touch if you have read or are reading any of the above. It is invaluable to share thougths, especially on Vygotsky.
The mistake risk takers make is to take too few risks
The dot com or e-learning mistake is to have only one ball in the air.
Like Cirque du Soleil they should juggle a dozen items, who even notices if one drops to the ground and breaks, there’s enough going on to amaze.
TV production companies, docs and drama, film companies too, have to have many ideas in development if any are to succeed; when will web producers take the same approach?
28 projects on the go I understand is the figure
I’ve got four ideas, so seven other people with four ideas each and we’re in business as imagicians.
Kindle Joy Part 2 and How to Change the World Part 1
Not quite 24 hours, more like 18 hour, but much of this has been spent in the company of my Kindle.
Had it been back lit I might still be in bed. Once upon a time (twenty years ago) when my bed was my own I’d wake, read for an hour, then go back to sleep. Because I have to get up, I do.
It amuses me that I bought the stand it is resting on in 1982. My girlfriend at the time thought I was wasting my money. Here it still is. It pays to by something that will last.
The A5 Pad of Cartridge paper is meant for drawing, though it sometimes will double up for notes and mind maps.
Had I a Kindle at the time I would have the Kindle version of Media and Communication Technologies. For H800 I have read the introduction and conclusion and can draw on my notes done the old way: into a notebook, then typed up and blogged or stores in the MyStuff eportfolio.
The only book I have on the Kindle is this.
Excitement and ease of use has got me through five chapters in as many hours.
Kindle joy is here
The highlight tool is spot on, as is notetaking. I would have preferred a stylus, as my old PDA, but guess this would make it more expensive. Low cost is a factor (at least low enough).
The default images are a thing of joy and beauty. I recall seeing Mark Twain, Jane Austen and various pages from illuminate manuscripts and pages of animals from Victorian engravings.
I subscribe to How to Change the World on a 14 day trial. It starts with this. A lecture by Randy Pausch, age 48, an inspirational educator … months before he dies from cancer.
I’ve watched this through once, and will watch it several times over and take notes before I am finished. Randy Pausch has some inspired things to say and share. It will reduce you to tears and inspire you to be a better person and do great things.
Mind Bursts 