CourseCast of the Week

Episode 110 07/19/2009

Title/Description: Get Ready for E-Textbooks! and other tech headlines

Welcome to Course Technology's CourseCast of the week, Episode 110, recorded July 19th, 2009. This is Ken Baldauf bringing you this week's technology news and information. This CourseCast is brought to you by Course Technology. Check out www.cengage.com/coursetechnology for innovative textbooks and creative electronic learning solutions.

Visit the CourseCasts Website at CourseCasts.course.com where you will find links to the full stories covered in this CourseCast, related discussion questions for use in your technology courses, and the CourseCast Archives. And now the news….

Story 1: Get Ready for E-Textbooks!

There are dozens of pilot programs taking place in schools across the country analyzing the benefits and drawbacks of replacing bound textbooks with digital e-texts. While there may be benefits to students in cost and reduced backpack bulk, a Wall Street Journal article found that e-books are getting mixed reviews from students. A study at Northwest Missouri State provided 200 students with e-texts on Sony's eBook reader. Many of the students were won over by the technology, but dozens dropped out of the program finding the e-texts awkward and inconvenient. Northwest Missouri State may not be unique in its students’ reactions to e-texts. One poll showed that as many as 75 percent of college students prefer print to digital texts.

While some students may not be ready for e-texts, the move from paper to bits and bytes may be inevitable. The Kindle has proven that there is a growing market for eBooks. The new larger Kindle DX was designed specifically for the college textbook market. Several competing eBook readers are due out later this year ramping up competition in the market, and bringing down prices. Amazon will be handing out hundreds of its new Kindle DX to college students at seven big Universities this fall in hopes of jump starting the eText market. Meanwhile, textbook publishers are analyzing the market, weighing their options, and developing pricing models. Thousands of textbooks are being formatted for the Kindle, as well as online eBook services like Course Smart. This week Harvard University Press announced that it will publish 1,000 of its books on Scribd - the largest online social publishing company in the world.

While it appears that we are on the cusp of a new era in textbook publishing, some companies are looking ahead and wondering if e-texts will satisfy the needs of the next generation of college students. Today's grade school and middle school kids are being raised with digital media, Internet video, and gaming in 3d virtual environments, and are likely to find current eBook technologies incredibly uninteresting. So as with so many of today's big businesses, in order to meet the needs and tastes of a rapidly evolving public, textbook companies are having to become innovative and nimble in order to effectively serve up textbook lessons utilizing the latest technologies.

Check out the links in the show notes for the latest news regarding eBooks and eTextbooks.

• Book Smarts? E-Texts Receive Mixed Reviews From Students [The Wall Street Journal]
• The future of scholarship? Harvard goes digital with Scribd [Ars Technica]
• Publisher Delays E-Book Amid Debate on Pricing [The Wall Street Journal]

News Briefs

• A Staten Island teen, engrossed in texting while walking down a city street, fell down an open manhole. Her parents are suing the city for negligence.
  Girl Falls Into Manhole While Texting, Parents Sue [Wired]
• Digital Sky Technologies, a Russian tech investment firm, has invested $100 million in FaceBook, placing the overall value of FaceBook at $6.5 billion. That's a lot of money, but to put this in perspective, Google, the most valuable companies on the market, is valued at $86 billion. Wal-Mart is at $35 billion.
  FaceBook Valued At $6.5 Billion [InformationWeek]
• In other FaceBook news, this week FaceBook claimed a quarter of a billion users, half of which log on to FaceBook every day.
  FaceBook Claims 250 Million Users [InformationWeek]
• Other statistics released this week, Apple's Mobile App Store has surpassed 1.5 billion downloads and offers 65,000 applications for the iphone and ipod touch.
  Apple's App Store Passes 1.5 Billion Downloads [InformationWeek]
• Is it spite or just good business sense? Apple iPhone's new competitor, the Palm Pre, boasted the ability to sync media using the popular iTunes software. That was before Apple updated its iTunes software this week, adding features that cut the Pre off from utilizing its software.
  Apple Block Palm Pre's iTune Compatibility [InformationWeek]
• A Technical Preview of Office 2010 was released this week, and its no surprise that it is receiving positive press. The new version includes incremental improvements as well as some welcome new features that include video editing in PowerPoint and improved mail handling in Outlook. The most revolutionary aspect of the new Office is a free online version that reviewers are saying will put Google Docs to shame - unless, of course, Google updates its Docs software as anticipated.
  Review: Office 2010 Technical Preview -- no 'wow,' just solid improvements [Computerworld]
  Microsoft girds Office 2010 with free Web versions [Computerworld]
• You thought netbook sales were hot last year? Analysts are predicting that 2009 sales will be twice what they were last year and could reach around 32.7 million units.
  Netbook shipments to double this year, research says [Computerworld]
• Information security researchers analyzing the attacks on US and South Korean Web sites earlier this month, are having difficulty pinpointing the origin of the attack. The attacks were carried out by zombie computers located around the world, that were apparently controlled by a server belonging to a Web hosting company in the U.K. Owners of that company claim that the commands that controlled the botnet army were issued by a user in Miami Florida. At this point no one knows for sure who is responsible for the attacks.
  Cyber Attacks Traced to the U.S., Britain [Wired]
• Tired of Spam? Well apparently a lot of people are taken in by it, making it profitable for spam distributes. A recent survey showed that one in six email users, click the links in spam email to find out more about products.
  One in six consumers acts on spam, survey says [Computerworld]
• The amount of people using the Internet in China, has surpassed the total number of US citizens... and those Chinese Internet users make up only a quarter of the Chinese population!
  China's Internet users outnumber U.S. population [Computerworld]
• A new company in Switzerland will transform snail mail into email! Just have your postal mail forwarded to the company, and it will scan the envelopes and send you PDF images of the outside of each envelope to which you respond with either - throw it out, send it to me, or open it scan the contents and email it to me. The company says that 90 percent of the mail they get is classified by their customers as "throw it out".
  Swiss Postal Service lets users check snail mail online [Ars Technica]

That's it for this week's CourseCasts. Email me with your comments and suggestions for the show at CourseCasts@gmail.com. Let me know how you use CourseCasts in your classes, and I'll give you and your school a shout out on my next CourseCast. Until next time have a great week and be sure to take advantage of the Power -- of Technology!