This discussion could benefit from broadening the scope: laptops and textbooks aren’t all that’s at issue here. All of communications technology will impact on education.

As a person who comes from the traditions of print, I have difficulty working with more than two or three screens on a monitor. The relationship between me and a monitor screen doesn’t provide what I need in order to interact with text – tactile and physical elements are missing. This is despite the fact that I have spent over a decade, in an educational setting, working with computers all day long. Perhaps paradoxically, I find writing with computers totally liberating; the missing elements are there for reading.

For me, the problems center around reading (textbooks) as a thinking process. I want to be able to make marginal notes, to highlight, to draw lines between ideas as I reflect. All of these involve a pencil or pencil-like object in my hand. Other people include arguments for the aesthetics of cloth and paper, smell and so on.

It seems to me that some of the factors that argue against electronic texts are addressed by design elements in the new hand-held electronic books. The promises of this technology provide students with:

* search functions, dictionaries and regular updates of time-sensitive materials
* audio capabilities – which could prove a boon to students with low literacy and other learning challenges
* a stylus to make notes, highlight and draw
* an electronic note pad for copying passages I want to include in writing
* a memory large enough to hold many texts
* portability (and a much lighter, manageable backpack)
* the ability to change screen lighting and font size – for extreme reading conditions and persons with vision problems
* easy electronic addition and deletion of textbooks
* cost savings over paper textbooks
* a reasonable, one-time hardware cost – a few hundred dollars at this time.

This technology has implications for all education. However, for a look at e-books and K-12 go to: http://www.eschoolnews.com/-archive/1998090702.html

I think decision makers need to be aware of this emerging technology and I think a discussion around it would be useful here.

Peter

• Re: E;lectronic Books Patrick, February 10, 1999 (1)
  • Re: E;lectronic Books Lana Faessler, February 13, 1999 (0)