I have held the future in my hands
Koboreader.com
Last Sunday in the World’s Biggest Book store I held the future of reading in my hands. It’s called a Kobo e-reader and it retails for $149.00 Cdn. It’s a simple e-reader and it doesn’t have much in the way of bells and whistles but it does what you expect an e-reader to do.
It’s extremely light and weighs less than the current paperback I am reading and it’s so slim; it can fit safely into my purse without having to conduct a overhaul of what I currently carry around in my purse. The battery life is decent and it syncs to either your phone or your computer. The font changes which means I can comfortably read anything without my faithful ‘readers’ perched on my nose – and so can anyone else.
Sony’s, Kindles and even iPads are great and do a great deal more than the humble Kobo, but Kobo will get e-reader’s into the hands of the great unwashed and it won’t take setting up a savings plan or budget to purchase one – a teenager with a basic after school job can easily afford to purchase it in a single pay cycle.
Look, I love books and have been collecting first editions for years. I love the smell and the feel of crisp paper under my hands. A well-bound book is a treasure for the ages and it is my opinion that, there are very few things in life as beautiful as a treasured book. People like me, who currently buy hard cover first editions, will continue to buy hard cover first editions and that won’t change, but what will change is the paperback market. Paperback books were originally produced for mass consumption and that’s the market the e-readers will eventually conquer – all it took was for a company to come out with an e-reader for the masses. The Toronto based Kobo team has done that….now if only I could get a ‘black’ one….
Whatever I think about books (and I love paperbacks, myself), the fact is that every school should think about changing over from textbooks to e-readers. The content will be more current, and our students backs will thank us.
Absolutely. Not to mention we could offer our students a great deal more than just a ‘basic’ course content for those who want to explore a subject more in depth. We are missing opportunities to build on curiosity.
A colleague has a daughter currently studying in Korea and she was amazed to discover the Korean university was no longer using textbooks – everything was done electronically which got me to thinking, why aren’t we?
I know my some of my daughter’s text books came with a ‘cd’ but why have the book in the first place? Even with the CD you can always have a printed copy and have the advantage of only printing the pages you actually need. In my daughter’s case, her text books for science program averaged around $1300-$1600 a year – which could be considerably reduced if it was supplied in an ‘e’ format. All of which goes to show what idiots we all are for opting to make the new technology adapt to outmoded models/patterns.