Textbooks Move To The iPad

Anyone who has ever taken a full load of college classes knows two things about textbooks. They weight a ton and they cost a fortune. Well, not anymore. Now textbooks have become eTextbooks that you download to your iPad at 30 to 50% off the list price. Just how heavy is a semester’s worth of books? It’s the exact same weight as your iPad!

This is the future of education. Today, it’s college textbooks. Tomorrow, kids will have no idea why you’d ever try to put information on paper. From pre-school to graduate school, it will be electronic media all the way.

Why not? There are huge advantages to going electronic over the traditional ink on paper approach. First, the cost. Those texts tend to be thick. That’s part of what makes them heavy. There’s also the notion that you have to use extra sturdy covers and special slick paper that isn’t seen so much in trade hardcovers and paperbacks. Perhaps it’s because they think you’ll keep your precious texts for a lifetime. Are you kidding? Have you seen how students treat those things? Besides, in fields like engineering and computer science, the information starts going obsolete before you even graduate.

Get rid of the paper and you can drop the cost dramatically. Electronic textbooks move through the ether and the Ethernet. There are no transportation or bookstore handling costs to speak of. Students love the savings. Trees breathe a sigh of relief. Hey, we need those trees to breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen to make up for the rest of us who are doing just the opposite.

Think of the children, their backs broken from decades of education as beasts of burden. It’s painful to watch them trudging home laden down with a backpack full of textual tonnage. All of that goes away instantly with a simple shift from textbooks to eTextbooks.

This school year, you don’t need more textbooks. What you need for your college courses is the Kno iPad application. Kno? Yes, Kno. It’s free. I downloaded it myself in less than a minute. Even before you launch into shopping for electronic textbooks, the Kno app comes preloaded with sample documents and how-to lessons. There are lessons on features, how to add a PDF, using gestures, social networking and about Kno. You even get sample books and a PDF to play around with. If you like what you see, you can shop for your electronic text books and be ready for class.

Some of the highlights of Kno and the Kno reader app include a course manager so you can organize your textbooks and PDFs by class and term. There is one-touch highlighting with multiple colors, a tap to zoom images, portrait and landscape reading modes, pinch to zoom in on pages in the portrait mode, ability to annotate with sticky notes and bookmarks, the same page and chapter numbering as in the physical textbook itself, and social connectivity so you can ask questions, post comments or share your location with friends.

Are you on the way to college or about to start a new term? Before you make a beeline to the campus bookstore, take a closer look at the Kno eTextbook reader application and the 30 to 50% discounts on the textbooks you need for class. There’s even a 15 day money back guarantee on any textbook so you won’t have to worry about dropping a class and getting stuck with the books. All you need is your trusty iPad and you are ready to go.

Internet Soothes The Savage Beasts

How do you get a bunch of unruly teenagers on a school bus to behave themselves on the trip to and from school? Have the driver scream threats? Hire a pro wrestler to intimidate them? Put in a spy camera and give the troublemakers detentions? Nope. The answer is much easier. Just give those kids access to WiFi Internet and you won’t hear a peep out of them.

That’s what Vail, Arizona has done to one of its busses. Reports are that once the WiFi router was installed, rowdy behavior simply disappeared. What’s more, there is more homework is getting done that ever before. Can you find a better return on your school district dollar than this?

Of course, not all of those students are likely writing term papers. Some are tweeting about their teachers, some are sending amorous emails to classmates, some are reading computer and science news sites, and I’ll bet a bunch are playing online games. It really doesn’t matter. The problem was discipline. The Internet was made available. Afterwards, no discipline problem.

I suspect there is a wider lesson to be learned here. We’re constantly hearing about those computer or gaming addicted kids who just won’t go outdoors and play. Yeah? Well, those are also the kids who aren’t tagging buildings with spray paint, stealing other kids’ lunch money, or terrorizing the neighborhood. Perhaps the solution to both childhood and adult behavioral problems is more Internet, not less.

There’s and old saying: “Idle hands are the devil’s playground.” That’s as true today as it ever was. For some kids, the under-supervision problem is severe, with parents absorbed by careers and social lives. A lot of adults fare no better. They’ve been trained through childhood and schooling to do what their teachers and then their bosses order. But with unemployment rampant, there is no boss anymore and they find themselves both directionless and squeezed financially.

What’s that got to do with the Internet? I think there’s a case to be made that universal Internet access is at least as important as universal telephone service or public libraries. The information world has changed dramatically in the last couple of decades. Everything is moving online, including communications, reference and research materials of all sorts, newspapers, job postings, magazines, games, and a lot of socializing and support. If you aren’t connected, you are more than disconnected. You are disadvantaged.

There’s something online for everyone. Whether you want to solve a puzzle, read up on what’s going on in the world, do your homework, look for a job, or even make your own job using your computer. Every profession, every trade, every hobby, every political action, and every interest is represented online. It’s even possible to go to college and get a degree online.

So, here’s something to roll around. How much could we reduce our juvenile delinquency and adult crime problems by making the Internet not only available, but mandatory? We need to insist on broadband everywhere as being as important as electricity and indoor plumbing everywhere. The “one laptop per child” project isn’t just important in Africa. It a crying need in the United States. Instead of turning kids into hunchbacks with backpacks loaded down with heavy and non-interactive textbooks, why not get those lessons online and accessible through the tablet or laptop computer every child gets from school day #1?

Yes, the vast majority of kids are going to use those computers for a lot more than grinding out rote homework assignments. They’ll be exploring all sorts of web sites, playing games, sending each other messages and whatever else they find interesting. We should be thankful that happens naturally. It’s curiosity, exploration and self-teaching that is going to be as important to their success as any assignments they’ll ever receive.