Ipad redux, this time for digital textbooks

I asked the Oracle (my husband!) and he said it isn't a question of what the students want; it's how Universities want to feed information to students. If the new technology saves money and frees up staff to do more research, then that's the way things will go. What students want doesn't come into it.

Problems with that.

One, several universitys, including Princeton and Georgetown--and it's a growing trend--have outlawed the use of iPads on campus because their wifi is really irresponsible and messes up the network, including screwing up other students' servers.
A whole COUNTRY (Israel) has banned iPads for that reason.

Futhermore, though padheads like to yap about the glorious communiist future or cheap, updatable iTexts, in reality that's the last thing either the publishers or the profs and college bookstores want.
Textbooks are a huge money-maker, with a really cozy scam where profs get published, assign their books, agree to keep demanding the latest edition for each semester or year, and everybody makes out like bandits.
Why would they want to change that.

As far as ebooks being better than paper texts, it's a no brainer. Textbooks, directories and Bibles are the most helpful and obvious of all books that people want to be searchable. And with textbooks, updateable.

But I'd see a couple of major speedbumps in this one.

Technology is in. All technological change brings initial problems and concerns. 3 of 4 high school students are texting. My niece and her friend text each other sitting in front of the tv. They don't talk anymore; they text.

Some "gurus" say to use that texting as a teaching tool - txt in the classroom - I can see a book on the horizon consisting of just txt jargon so it can be easily read on the cell phone.

I feel like a dinosaur. I love the written word. Yet, I remember some author friends a while back who still wrote on yellow pads and had it transcribed; and others who clanged it out on a typewriter, old fashioned non-electric kind.

I remember teaching office practices when we had a room of non-electric typewriters to "start" on to learn the touch in case an electric typewriter was not available.

I recently ordered a typewriter (some forms are nearly impossible to complete on a computer was the cry of the secretary) and then had to justify such an archaic machine to the purchasing officer. Interestingly, once ordered, it was seldom used - mostly to make a quick correction on a rush document or a quick label.

Then there's Onstar, already extinct and where's that old 8 track or the VHS recorder or the big box television or even the big box computer screen. And I even remember when only important people had a "mobile phone" that involved a battery carried on a shoulder strap. They would be lurking in airports, looking important.

Yes, I believe students of the future will have no books to touch unless they print them from a book printing machine after finding them in the electronic archive.

As it is, many instructors with fully computerized classrooms and smartboards are already having students read online and do the workbooks there as well with the entire Internet resources at the command on the Smartboard.

In fact, the growing popularity of virtual education, high school and university, and the growing unrest amoung teachers - there may be no classrooms at all. Since no one needs to talk to each other anyway (they text everything) and sex is virtual also (the main reason for some students to be at school), school buildings will also be extinct. In many, the teacher is primarily a warden, anyway. I'm so glad I went to high school when metal detectors were not part of entering the building and truant officers (civilian) were the closest to an SRO.

Where's our science fiction writer?

Funny you should mention SF writers.
I have personally found, oddly, that SF people--at least the ones who have the websites and run the magazines and such--are extremely reactionary in such matters.

NONE of the major SF magazines accept email queries. EMAIL!!! Not exactly cutting edge.

SF editors and established writers tend to be extremely defensive about books (I love the smell of books, love marking them up) and down on ereading in general.

It is, as a matter of fact, absolutely true. I've been there, seen it. Used to live with a manager of a large college books store, knew profs who wrote texts, etc. etc.

This is widely known and remarked.

I said nothing about quality of texts. I don't really give a shit. Neither do students. They buy what they're told to buy. Which is why it's such a gold mine.
Anybody with any objectivity would take one look at a market in which people are compelled to buy and tell you it will be a featherbed. Obvious.

There's a lot of reciprocity and logrolling in academia about assigned texts, as well.
But in point of fact, texts ARE assigned, have to be bought. And the texbook companies are not really going to want to see that slip away.
And all they have to do is get together and agree on it.

Any market that can require consumers to purchase a specific product or brand is not competitive: it's rigged. Common sense.

Logrolling is "you require mine and I'll require yours". And don't even THINK about telling me that isn't a factor.

The teachers don't consume, don't pay. They GET paid.
The profs compel the consumers to buy what they say. You can wriggle that one around as much as you want, but it's right there in big block letters.

It's a rigged market. And HIGHLY profitable for the publishers. The idea they'd want to spend big bucks to develop etexts that would save students money by lessening their profits is not a well-thought out idea. It's part of the iPad evangelism mania.

I

NO. Evidently you don't take economics or somehow fail to understand that the consumer is the one who buys and uses a product.

That's really, REALLY not an exotic concept.

They compel the consumers to buy a certain product.

I'm really surprised you would even try to squirm on something that objective and understood.

If the etexts are more proftiable, then the publishers will go that way.
What that will gut is NEW bookstores, actually.

Your squirming is getting ridiculous. Tuition, fees, etc are paid for value received. Students don't even have to pay them, they could go to another school. That's like saying ANYTHING we pay for is rigged. Ridiculous.

But when somebody compels somebody to buy a certain product, that's a different story.

And I think you know it. And are just being obstrutionist as usual.
If not, there's a whole different issue about the caliber of economics awareness among college faculty members.

I

Quote :

I don't compel anyone to buy anything, lin. I describe materials needed to pass the course.

Weakest wiggle yet. "students, you don't have to biuy the books for this course, or can buy any books you want instead of the ones I list. you'll fail, but you don't have to".

What do you TEACH, anyway?

How to wiggle?

The Wiggle Room? I'll sign up.

Quote :

I lecture and they can take notes.

gee, that's a bold new step in education.

But the point is that the STUDENTS consume the book. They pay for it.
And they don't go shop around, they buy the book you tell them to.
You can squirm around as much as you want on that but we both really know that's the situation.