Group items tagged

Download free textbooks online: Bookboon's free online textbooks for students are focused and to the point. They are all written by highly respected professors from top universities in the world and cover topics such as economics, statistics, IT, engineering and natural science.

Like a band of summer vacation-crazed high school students, South Korea is tossing their textbooks into the great bonfire of "No More Pencils, No More Books…!" No, they're not entering an indefinite period of state-organized hooky, they are doing away with those burdensome textbooks and digitizing their entire curriculum. In an effort to enable education through technology while bringing down costs, all materials are expected to be digitized by 2015. When the effort is complete, students will be able to learn when and where they want.

"McGraw-Hill, one of the more prominent textbook publishers, is looking to take digital textbooks to another level, announcing its new SmartBook for college students."

While the eTextBooks initiative is a wonderful stride forward from our old paper textbooks it's still essentially a re-constituted content delivery system that wasn't designed or intended to change the one-way process of educational exchanges.

New blog from Jim Burke, author of many books, englishcompanion.com, englishcompanion.ning.com

"Please turn on your textbooks and upload your homework..." In five years (three? two?!) I will not ask my high school students to open the 6.5 pound textbooks that currently sit on the floor under the desks. Nor will I bemoan their reluctance to look up words or mark up the text as they read. I will not wonder how to meet the needs of the 35% of my class who have learning disorders, most of which are language processing disorders of one form or another. Instead, I will ask them to get out their digital textbooks (what will we call them: DBooks? DBs? ETexts? Readers?) and "read the assigned story." Here is what will be different:

"Net Texts: The App for Replacing or Supplementing Textbooks Net Texts helps schools replace or supplement textbooks with customized multimedia courses delivered to students' iPads, Android tablets, and laptops!"

"The Open Educational Resources Research Hub (OER Research Hub) provides a focus for research, designed to give answers to the overall question 'What is the impact of OER on learning and teaching practices?' and identify the particular influence of openness. We do this by working in collaboration with projects across four education sectors (K12, college, higher education and informal) extending a network of research with shared methods and shared results. By the end of this research we will have evidence for what works and when, but also established methods and instruments for broader engagement in researching the impact of openness on learning. OER are not just another educational innovation. They influence policy and change practices. In previous research (OpenLearn, Bridge to Success and OLnet) we have seen changes in institutions, teacher practice and in the effectiveness of learning. We integrate research alongside action to discover and support changes in broader initiatives. Our framework provides the means to gather data and the tools to tackle barriers. The project combines: A targeted collaboration program with existing OER projects An internationalfellowship program Networking to make connections A hub for research data and OER excellence in practice The collaborations cover different sectors and issues, these include: the opening up of classroom based teaching to open content; the large-scale decision points implied by open textbooks for community colleges; the extension of technology beyond textbook through eBook and simulation; the challenge of teacher training in India; and the ways that OER can support less formal approaches to learning. By basing good practice on practical experience and research we can help tackle practical problems whilst building the evidence bank needed by all."

Keep in mind that this experiment was focused on "classroom use" of Kindles, not necessarily "library use." Libraries have never supplied the resources used directly in the classroom for literature study (students don't markup library books!). At Cushing Academy, we are using Kindles to support recreational and personal interest reading rather than directly supporting the curriculum. In that role, they have worked very well.

Well, maybe not just like plain old books. Ebooks have many nice advantages for libraries, such as 24/7 access, always pristine and readable copies for the user, built-in dictionary (which our students tell us they really like) and, for the library itself, very efficient use of space and staff time.

"Last fall, Princeton launched a small experiment, replacing traditional textbooks with the Kindle DX, Amazon's large e-book reader. Almost from the beginning, the 50 students participating in the pilot program expressed dissatisfaction with the devices. Yesterday, a university report offered some more definitive findings. On the upside, students using the Kindle DX ended up using far less paper. (Paper consumption was generally reduced by 54%.) On the downside, students complained that the Kindle was fundamentally "ill-suited for class readings.""

A superb site with free downloadable pdf textbooks for adults on subjects such as IT and Programming, travel guides and science. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Cross+Curricular

A source of free books in pdf format. This a rather extensive collection covering textbooks, business, and travel guides.

Use of iPads in MGT30700 (Project Management), Fall 2010 from Aug 23-Oct 8 Report Prepared by Corey M. Angst, Ph.D. & Emily Malinowski (MBA 2011) Mendoza College of Business, University of Notre Dame December 21, 2010 First, our findings suggest the greatest value of the iPad may not be its ability to function as an eBook reader but instead its capacity to function as a consolidator or aggregator of information. Second, a statistically significant proportion of students felt the iPad, 1) makes class more interesting, 2) encourages exploration of additional topics, 3) provides functions/tools not possible with a textbook, and 4) helps students more effectively manage their time. See wiki https://wiki.nd.edu/display/oitepublishing/iPad+Configuration+for+Pilot. It also includes an Enterprise Deployment Guide

e-textbooks aren't well liked unless students use annotation and collaborative features.

a new service for custom textbooks

Research report emphasizing cultural change to iPad for e-reading sharing/collaborative work (e.g., Dropbox and iAnnotate) but online final exam still chose laptops (since not collaborative effort?)

Be interesting to use this in a class discussion on the viability of the iPad or other similar devices as content consumption and/or creation devices along side the debate that has to do with how textbooks are changing.

" All the sweet promises Apple is making are going to slam headfirst into the funding issue. It will cost a school 552% more to implement iPad textbooks than it does to deploy books."

List of textbooks from CA online learning resources.