What do you think about Ebooks?

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Specializes in Case Management, ICU, Telemetry.

What do all of you think about the introduction of E-Books into schools instead of regular textbooks??

I personally do not like them at all and would like to find a way to have them removed from all of my classes lol. I do understand that they are trying to save trees and make it more convenient and affordable but I think that it does the reverse... If your internet or computer is messing up or if you (live in the stone age) don't have internet at all you have to go somewhere else just to review your textbook. Many people also end up just printing their chapters which you can't sell and if you school charges for printing... can get very expensive. Also it is proven that the physical act of reading, tabbing and highlighting actually helps retention of the information that the person is reading. You can't really do that with an Ebook. In general I just don't understand their motivation for making them MANDATORY. If someone prefers an Ebook, great, but they should not be required in my opinion. What are your experiences? What do you think?

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The motivation is money. The subscription term is limited. When you buy the physical book you have it forever. When you buy an ebook, you are only renting access for a short time, not forever. If you need the book longer, you have to pay again. There is potential for repeated renting from the same customer, increasing the profit. I agree with your views on the subject. I was without the use of a computer for the better part of a semester the time I bought an ebook and during that time, had no use of the text. I decided never again, if I could help it.

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Specializes in Emergency, Critical Care (CEN, CCRN).

As much as I love e-references in the clinical setting, I think e-text in the classroom still has a long, long way to go. I had a chance to pilot an e-text version of Jarvis a few months ago, and as I told the Elsevier rep then, "I think you'll be lucky if you can get a third of any given cohort to buy this product."

First, e-text is dependent on you having high-speed Internet, which most students might not at home (or not high-speed enough - the rep admitted that it really only works over commercial fiber, cable or premium DSL, and it was slow as molasses over his Sprint mobile broadband card). Second, as previous posters have said, it's a way to make you keep paying for the same content. And finally, the "value add" in terms of multimedia or collaborative content is pretty minimal (and you're locked into that publisher's platform, which content can't be exported or linked to Moodle, CourseTools or whatever your school's existing learning technology platform might be).

I've seen this idea hyped before, when I was in senior year of HS - my school was one of the first in the country to issue a laptop to every student, in the promise of implementing e-learning throughout the curriculum. It turned out to be a $2200 per student disaster then. From my perspective, neither the concept nor the relevant technology is any better in 2010 than it was in 1999.

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My physical books come with ebooks. It's never the other way around nor can I buy the ebooks alone. So in my case I have no complaint.

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Specializes in Case Management, ICU, Telemetry.
My physical books come with ebooks. It's never the other way around nor can I buy the ebooks alone. So in my case I have no complaint.

Thats really weird because every class that I have taken that had an Ebook did NOT come with the hard copy, infact I was charged for the ebook regardless and had to buy a hard copy seperately ON TOP of the 60-100 bucks for an ebook.

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Specializes in Case Management, ICU, Telemetry.

I think that in general they are doing TOO MUCH online... Ebooks are a big problem for me but also how at my school there are like 50 websites and passwords you have to remember lol. If I wanted to do a bunch of online homework and tests I would have taken an online COURSE. Do you think that there is any way to get administration to understand that ebooks are WORTHLESS? I have not met a single person that LIKES ebooks and yet they are still becoming more common... Ugggggg. Thank god I am done with college in 2 years. I feel really sorry for my future kids in school.

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Specializes in Critical Care, Education.

Very interesting to hear the student perspective on eBooks. I have heard a lot of the hype from vendors about re-designing academia by using ebooks. I remember the strain of hauling around huge piles of books and thought that any solution to that mess would certainly be help students.

Full confession -- I am a Kindle addict. I actually have 2; one for fiction and one for non-fiction - LOL. But I have to stick to hard copy for books needed for hard core 'learning' - latest successful foray was teaching myself software programming languages. I find that my brain can't actually absorb complex ideas without a yellow marker, margin notes & sticky tabs.

I just thought it was my advanced age - good to know that it's probably not.

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at my school you can buy the book which comes with an e book or you can ONLY buy the ebook, which is like five bucks cheaper. i absolutely cannot learn form an ebook. i can't read and retain information from a computer. too many distractions and it hurts my eyes after too long. i would just much rather have the physical copy.

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I wouldn't mind them if I had something like the entourage edge. That thing is way cool, you can highlight, write in the margins, even google text from the book you're reading. Of course, it's new technology that probably won't be great for a few years, but the idea is amazing.

Without the right hardware though, e-books frustrate. Desktops and laptops aren't made for reading long text, I love paper.

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