“The future is here. If you’re looking for ways to cut costs as either a student or teacher, why not consider digital textbooks?  Here’s a few reasons why the digital revolution is worthwhile when it comes to textbooks courtesy of CourseSmart:”

1. Availability: Over 90% of core higher education texts
2. Savings: Up to 60% over print textbooks
3. Apps: Use free iPad, iPhone and soon-to-come Android app to read etextbooks
4. Instant-Access: Anytime, anywhere – no waiting, no shipping charges
5. Highlight: Highlight key information in your etextbooks
6. No backpacks required: Access you etextbooks from your laptop, iPad or iPhone with internet
7. Search: Find what you need in your textbook the same way you’d search the internet
8. Copy, Paste, Email: Take your own online notes or send notes to your classmates in Word or Excel
9. Print: Print up to 10 pages at any one time with an overall limit of 150% of the total number of pages
10. eResources: Interact with learning tools such as online homework, quizzes and exercises

http://edudemic.com/2011/04/10-reasons-to-use-digital-textbooks/

The list from Edudemic and CourseSmart is quite interesting.  This semester I took a different road and actually used a book in my technology class for pre-service teachers (Retool Your School: The Educator’s Essential Guide to Google’s Free Power Apps). Love the book, but will not use again, I just have such a difficult time using a book enough to justify the cost.

Anyway, the book was available in the traditional format of paper & heavy, but was also available in the digital format. List price from ISTE is $37.95, from Amazon $27.05 and in digital eBook format $12.90.  A number of my students had an appropriate digital device (iPad) and purchsed the digital copy. I purchased it in both formats.

We did not use the book in class often, it was for support and the reading was done outside of class time.  But the book  contains good tutorials for each of the Google Apps, so having it in class was very handy many days.  Those with the digital copy had ready access all the time to the book.  This generated and unplanned rich discussion about digital books in classroom and those without an iPad or other digital reader really witnessed first hand the convenience and power of these devices. Needless to say, I could not have planned this better if I had tried.  I predict seeing many more iPads next year.

Related Photos

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.