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Apple wants to do e-textbooks
Apple's announced it's going to reinvent textbooks by turning them into multimedia extravaganzas that only work on an iPad. Setting aside, for the moment, the idea of textbooks only for those students whose families can afford a $400-600 device to read them (and the risk of sending said device to school with a teenager), and that the Terms of Use may not work for minors, who can't enter legally binding agreements. Assume we're living in Perfect Apple-land, where everyone can afford an iPad for every child and parents happily assume full liability for all actions their kids might commit with unrestricted internet access.
Okay then. On to the textbooks. Apple's big slide on the screen says they'll have
Interactivity out the yazoo.... yeah, I can believe this. It's what all the new sellers are pushing: BOOKS PLUS! Books with blinky things and movies and charts that switch from lines to pies at a click. Why are they offering these things, which take extra coding skills and time and special software arrangements to support? Because they know damn well that textbooks on a screen aren't as compelling as the ones on paper. Because they can't pitch "here are schoolbooks, which you can put on your device." They have to pitch "these are BETTER than the books you can get now." Which they're not. Vids are nice, but we really did managed to produce quite a few intelligent, strong-willed, creative people over the last fewhundred million years without them. Animation and interactive charts don't make for better content; the history of digitization shows they mostly work to disguise a lack of substance. (I'm all for a textbook about "modern activism" with video clips of the Occupy movement. I don't, however, think kids will be better off with math textbooks that show apples jumping in and out of barrels, which is what I'm afraid we'll get first.)
About that "fast, fluid navigation"... I doubt it. A lot. So far, there is just *nothing* on a screen that rivals paper for "flip back and forth between sections." Certainly, nothing within one program. (When I have 20 tabs open and need to compare text from three different sites... I open Notepad or Word and paste in sections, because switching between tabs is a nuisance.) Maybe, maybe, if the program allows a "split view" (like that option in Word I accidentally open every now and then and can't figure out how to shut off), it'd work for easy navigation between pages. Other than that, however, all current screen software *sucks* for academic work. There is no "hold this page open while I check back to Chapter 3 to see if that was the same topic." There is no "flip through pages, one at a time, until I find that chart again." (There's no doubt a search function. I bet it doesn't search for "that chart with the big spike of activity in the middle, with the green line going diagonally across it.")
It may have a flip function; so far, every computer-flip-pages function I've ever seen has been slower than the human eye can parse pages. Pages have to load, and we don't mind a half-second processing time for that--until we want to flip through a hundred of them in a row. There is no current software designed for fast, fluid navigation of ebooks. PDF with a well-designed TOC in the bookmarks comes closest--but that works because the pages are fixed sizes. PDF doesn't allow for resizing the text; eTextbooks would need to allow that because screen resolution is so much worse than print, and because not everyone can read standard-sized print at all.
Highlighting, note-taking... yeah, well, technically Kindles have this now, and it's useless for academic use. Will the notes be exportable & printable? (Hint: Nothing on the iPad is willingly designed to be exportable outside the iOS walled garden; Apple tolerates the need to allow some data exports.) Will they be unlimited? Will they allow use of a stylus or real keyboard, or will notes be limited to what students can do with a touchscreen keyboard? Yes, most students know their way around a screen keyboard these days--but there's a reason nobody writes novels on the iPad. It's okay for a sentence or two of notes; it's awful for whole paragraphs. (Of course, Apple would say you'd use a notebook to actually compose your reports or whatever. But why have a separate computer, just for reading, when instead you could have a netbook or laptop that lets you read *and* write reports?)
Searching and definitions: The new iTextbooks will have features that weren't groundbreaking in Word97.
Lesson reviews and study cards: "Cards?" It will have "Cards?" No, it will have "quarter-screen squares with limited data input allowances." Cards, in my mind, are physical. Lesson Reviews ... quizzes built into the textbooks? Because I'm pretty sure this doesn't mean "the teacher can assign essay questions that can be answered on the iPad and will be delivered to the teacher's master account."
Also: see them carefully not mention the word "accessibility." Which means the books can't be used in US public schools; there's no way to make an iPad work for someone who can't see well enough to navigate its buttons, or someone whose hands aren't steady enough for its tap-click-drag functions.
Buncha bells and whistles to hide the fact that they're NOT talking about the lack of peer-reviewed content. They intend to release the iBooks 2 spec on authors & developers, and tell them to write textbooks loaded with animations, and sell them through the iBookstore for $14.99, of which Apple will take about a third. They're pitching big hype about the "features" of the books, and not discussing the educational content at all.
Okay then. On to the textbooks. Apple's big slide on the screen says they'll have
- Gorgeous, fullscreen books
- Interactive animations, diagrams, photos, videos
- Fast, fluid navigation
- Highlighting and note-taking
- Searching and definitions
- Lesson reviews and study cards
Interactivity out the yazoo.... yeah, I can believe this. It's what all the new sellers are pushing: BOOKS PLUS! Books with blinky things and movies and charts that switch from lines to pies at a click. Why are they offering these things, which take extra coding skills and time and special software arrangements to support? Because they know damn well that textbooks on a screen aren't as compelling as the ones on paper. Because they can't pitch "here are schoolbooks, which you can put on your device." They have to pitch "these are BETTER than the books you can get now." Which they're not. Vids are nice, but we really did managed to produce quite a few intelligent, strong-willed, creative people over the last few
About that "fast, fluid navigation"... I doubt it. A lot. So far, there is just *nothing* on a screen that rivals paper for "flip back and forth between sections." Certainly, nothing within one program. (When I have 20 tabs open and need to compare text from three different sites... I open Notepad or Word and paste in sections, because switching between tabs is a nuisance.) Maybe, maybe, if the program allows a "split view" (like that option in Word I accidentally open every now and then and can't figure out how to shut off), it'd work for easy navigation between pages. Other than that, however, all current screen software *sucks* for academic work. There is no "hold this page open while I check back to Chapter 3 to see if that was the same topic." There is no "flip through pages, one at a time, until I find that chart again." (There's no doubt a search function. I bet it doesn't search for "that chart with the big spike of activity in the middle, with the green line going diagonally across it.")
It may have a flip function; so far, every computer-flip-pages function I've ever seen has been slower than the human eye can parse pages. Pages have to load, and we don't mind a half-second processing time for that--until we want to flip through a hundred of them in a row. There is no current software designed for fast, fluid navigation of ebooks. PDF with a well-designed TOC in the bookmarks comes closest--but that works because the pages are fixed sizes. PDF doesn't allow for resizing the text; eTextbooks would need to allow that because screen resolution is so much worse than print, and because not everyone can read standard-sized print at all.
Highlighting, note-taking... yeah, well, technically Kindles have this now, and it's useless for academic use. Will the notes be exportable & printable? (Hint: Nothing on the iPad is willingly designed to be exportable outside the iOS walled garden; Apple tolerates the need to allow some data exports.) Will they be unlimited? Will they allow use of a stylus or real keyboard, or will notes be limited to what students can do with a touchscreen keyboard? Yes, most students know their way around a screen keyboard these days--but there's a reason nobody writes novels on the iPad. It's okay for a sentence or two of notes; it's awful for whole paragraphs. (Of course, Apple would say you'd use a notebook to actually compose your reports or whatever. But why have a separate computer, just for reading, when instead you could have a netbook or laptop that lets you read *and* write reports?)
Searching and definitions: The new iTextbooks will have features that weren't groundbreaking in Word97.
Lesson reviews and study cards: "Cards?" It will have "Cards?" No, it will have "quarter-screen squares with limited data input allowances." Cards, in my mind, are physical. Lesson Reviews ... quizzes built into the textbooks? Because I'm pretty sure this doesn't mean "the teacher can assign essay questions that can be answered on the iPad and will be delivered to the teacher's master account."
Also: see them carefully not mention the word "accessibility." Which means the books can't be used in US public schools; there's no way to make an iPad work for someone who can't see well enough to navigate its buttons, or someone whose hands aren't steady enough for its tap-click-drag functions.
Buncha bells and whistles to hide the fact that they're NOT talking about the lack of peer-reviewed content. They intend to release the iBooks 2 spec on authors & developers, and tell them to write textbooks loaded with animations, and sell them through the iBookstore for $14.99, of which Apple will take about a third. They're pitching big hype about the "features" of the books, and not discussing the educational content at all.
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That said, I haven't been willing to use eTextbooks at all, anyway. Most of the ones I know of work under the assumption that you'll be renting the textbook. Now, if I want to use it more than one semester, or it's a book that has major-relevant material, I want to keep the damn thing. Especially if they're charging 70-80% of the list pricing anyway.
Publishers on all fronts have been doing whatever they can on a variety of levels to rip students off when it comes to eTextbooks.
Long story short, I agree: It's a bad idea. Bright side: I'm not too worried it'll take off because most schools (and students/teachers) I know of haven't taken off to eBooks in the textbook realm, period. Books were enough of a ripoff without publishers doing what they keep trying to pull with the eBooks.
I feel the same problem with "Rent a textbook" as well - 50% of the full price per semester? I was going to be able to get 70% of a book's pricing back during their buyback weeks! And, again, what if I end up needing the book more tahn one semester... Nah.
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Publishers who want to sell their textbooks in multiple stores would have to go through two (or more) production workflows.
These wouldn't be the current crop of $80-per-semester textbook rentals; Apple's got a price cap of $14.99, which means the major textbook companies won't touch the program. It'll be indie authors and tiny publishing companies, some of which will be excellent, but many will be "I'm an expert! I'm gonna make a TEXTBOOK!" authors. (I've no idea how Apple plans to prevent Wikipedia scrapes from being distributed as $10 "textbooks.")
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Like... I can't see any college professor I've ever studied under going for eTextbooks, except the type you can also get as hardcover/paperback.
I wish they'd make eTextbooks I'd actually feel were okay to buy, but the things I've been introduced to so far completely suck. Wouldn't touch those things with a forty foot pole :/ Shame, sucks for my back, but until they fix a few things I'm just not touching that department. And Apple can crash and burn on trying to get into that market, as far as I'm concerned. (Of course, I also don't get the appeal of iPad, but that's another story. I like my iPod, I like notebook computers... do not like iPad.)
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Notwithstanding many of the very valid points you made, there is one thing that makes textbooks extremely appealing: they don't weigh nearly as much. ...That's about it, for the useful bits. Everything else, I have a workaround for (and even the textbook carrying bit; I just don't bring them).
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And the other advantage would be for a subject like physics, if you could get actual demonstrations; those are useful. Not so much in other subjects where static images are fine...
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An ereader--any ereader--is a tremendous help to students who need to read literature and articles that can be obtained digitally. Great for the Shakespeare collection or complete works of Plato. But none of them yet cover how created-as-textbook books get used, and Apple's never moved toward maximizing single-use functionality when they could add bonus features instead.
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They'll already be useless if that have all that flickering, jumping about, animations, for anyone dealing with light-eye issues, or epilepsy. And can you auto change colours (or add textures) for people with colour issues, or who are colour blind? The way paper textbooks have to? How are they going to program in text to voice?
And I'm personally not at all sure about a textbook you need to plug-in in order to utilize - but that goes right back to 'in everyone could afford them / class issues' again. The whole walled garden as you describe it is ridiculous and what it will do is continue to widen the gap in technological comfort between the haves and the trying to haves.
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They'll probably have a text-to-speech feature like the Kindle--that the publishers can demand to have locked on the grounds that it "infringes" on their right to sell audiobooks. The ability to operate the tts will probably require sight navigation and careful screen touches, because Apple doesn't want hands-free iPad use.
I assume the plugin is free; they'd want people to start buying. But yes, plenty of classism built into the proposal--"we shall sell digital textbooks to high school students (whose parents can afford a $500 device) (per student) (in neighborhoods where carrying a $500 device doesn't make you a target) (for use in high schools that let students use laptops in class)"... they're not trying to make life easier for kids in high school; they're angling for expensive contracts with rich schools that will buy an iPad for every student and require them for several classes.
And then they'll run smack into the problems the Kindle had when Amazon tried that on college campuses--the ADA doesn't allow schools to require content that's inaccessible to students with disabilities. The iPad's a lot less accessible than the Kindle.
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Ugh.
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My guess: Of course it does! ... if the coders put in the graphs as well-coded text that attach to the Special Graphing Options, instead of pasting in a jpg with the alt text "Chart #2."
Apple isn't planning on making any etextbooks; they're planning on lending out the software to make etextbooks; quality of the books will depend on who's putting them together. Like any other ebooks, the market will run the full range from "excellent" (rare), to "tolerable" (common), to "bad" (very common), to "execrable" (more common than anyone at Apple will ever admit). Since they'll only be sold at Apple's stores, there won't be any great number of reviews to sort out which are the better ones.
I suspect that the iBooks will have a text-to-speech option. I know that for Kindle books, the big-name publishers almost all have that disabled on their ebooks; I don't know if iBooks will allow the same option.
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The college text ebook I've been dinking around with is only on the top half of the screen. There's advertising and junk on the bottom. It's annoying as hell. I think that's why they're pushing "full screen".
Despite the problems, I think they'll succeed on some levels
The tablet textbook scheme will probably succeed in the colleges and universities first, followed by the grade and highschools. What tablet and ereader makers will get the most leverage, I think it's still up in the air, but it's inevitable as are the downloaded and streaming entertainment. As someone with back and other pain problems, I'm looking forward to this regardless of how highly some people think of paper, simply because the textbook makers still keep churning out hardcover after hardcover, even though I really hope buying not just renting will be an option.
As for the full-screen size claim-I suspect that's probably a jab at the size of most ereaders, and there are limits to how much quality full color art and photography that can be displayed on them. I would love to see art history books on a tablet, due to a mix of how poorly paper can display pics, and how fucking huge the books are, I have enough pain problems already these days.
Re: Despite the problems, I think they'll succeed on some levels
I would love to see art history books on a tablet, due to a mix of how poorly paper can display pics, and how fucking huge the books are
Except, with a price cap of $14.99, you know the big textbook publishers aren't touching this program. (Nevermind that a $15 Art History etextbook vetted by Macmillan could *sweep* the education world, and would get bought by people who aren't students. The "big 6" publishers are firmly anti-ebook and won't do anything that risks hardcover sales.)
This is a self-publishing textbook platform, which no doubt some small publishers will grab onto. If it catches on (it won't), the big publishers might release what's currently one book as a series of sections or chapters--but they don't want to do that, because then teachers will just assign one or two sections instead of "the whole book."
I really like the idea of digital textbooks, and the iPad is a lot closer to being able to do it than any of the smaller and more limited devices. But Apple's not going to provide the features that'd be necessary for them to work for most classes, so this'll remain an "experimental" feature for rich colleges to try and then drop.
Hmm..,
But Apple's not going to provide the features that'd be necessary for them to work for most classes, so this'll remain an "experimental" feature for rich colleges to try then drop.
They'll definitely have to loosen restrictions, no argument there, and I don't think they'll make much of an impact until they do. I have a feeling they'll be forced to due to the inevitable backlash. Personally I'd never use Apple products for an ereader, Apple doesn't understand that market yet.
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Plenty of college students of all sorts would *love* digital textbooks--if the books they need were available. They'd even cope with the limited features in most ebook readers in order to give up the hassle of carrying them around. Most of those books won't be available; the publishers are too terrified of "piracy" to allow it.
Apple doesn't want to get into the textbook business; they're in the hardware-and-apps business. They want publishers & authors to sell content content through them; they don't care about making the content useful--just marketable. The fact that those *eventually* would need to be the same won't stop them from making lots of money for three years off "digital textbooks" before schools drop the idea (again) because what's available doesn't match what's needed.
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Despite claims for improvement of literacy for the grades below college, learning really becomes a series of events, of spectacles and associated activities, interspersed with bursts of short readings and pop quizzes. Grading is done as soon as the student hits "enter." All data is fed to the teacher's device for instant assessment of the student's understanding and issuance of recommended approaches to direct the student's learning, the assumption being that teachers have enough time and few enough students to give personalized instruction. Some publishers want to eliminate the teacher altogether, having the tablet give feedback directly to the student, adjusting the lessons as needed to enhance comprehension.
Responsible publishers will test proposed textbooks in schools to make sure students are actually learning. Apple is working with E.O. Wilson of Harvard, for example, to generate science textbooks.
I have tremendous reservations about this approach, the most significant being affordability and durability. Despite incentives for school districts, I fear this will increase the digital divide and perhaps create a generational divide.
Another reservation is that we already have a TLDR, short-attention-span society. Education by spectacle won't help this. I suspect that people who get joy out of concentrated reading and dedicated research will continue to do so, however, if they have the opportunity to discover those ways of working.
Then, there's the planned obsolescence that goes along with electronic products, Apple especially. That has always bothered me, but maybe I'm just a throw-back. I still have a math textbook from grade school that my parents had to buy because it got wet in the rain. It's still usable, and it's still mine.
Finally, I don't think we understand how learning happens enough to throw out centuries of practice and more recent theory for a flashy new idea. Having said that, it's possible that some technology can promote student creativity and expression, and possibly learning, and traditional, non-technological enhancements (physical science experiments, field trips) may help.
Shiv5468 has a sceptical post inspired by a piece in the BBC on the new, technology-enhanced, supposedly-interactive phenomenon.
Here's a good discussion (with two follow-up posts worth reading) of Apple's move into this market.
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I have tremendous reservations about this approach, the most significant being affordability and durability. Despite incentives for school districts, I fear this will increase the digital divide and perhaps create a generational divide.
Yes, this. It's not "digital textbooks" that are bad; it's "textbooks as just another type of disposable media to be skimmed and forgotten." On a device that costs 5% of some poor families' annual income, that is incompatible with a wide range of disabilities.
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Nobody I've talked to is moderate about the system - folks either love it or hate it bitterly. I did okay, but I am really good at self-teaching.
This semester I have regular classroom- style math teachers, but the homework and out-of-class stuff is all through a similar system (MyMathLab from Pearson).
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It's actually pretty good for a lot of low-vision folks, and I know of at least a half-dozen who use them on my campus. It has a lot of built-in adaptability functions, which is the main reason I went with it instead of a netbook where I'd have to buy a whole set of programs to get the same level of accessibility.
The built-in screen-reader reads whatever is on the screen - there's no relying on whether iBooks or whatever app "allows" text-to-speech. It also can read back exactly what's under your finger on the screen, and when it's in that mode the buttons require a different gesture to activate rather than a simple touch. It doesn't take much to remember about where on the device things "should" be, then use the talk-back to fine-tune your placement.
As far as textbooks go, there's already quite a number of services that provide eTextbooks. There are a lot of folks I know using Kno, either on the iPad or on a "regular" computer. I've done their try-before-buy and may use them in the future. Right now I have pdfs of several of my texts, and use them more than the paper versions. (There's one that I can't find, even in bootleg, but it's one I have to have for *every* *class* *meeting* and is one of the giant floppy paper-back kind that's especially hard to manage if you've got hand issues.)
I love eTextbooks. I just don't think Apple's got even half a clue of what they're doing here.