Compiles info on college e-book experiments

"A typical college student spends up to $1,000 per year on textbooks, and many students don't buy textbooks at all because they're too expensive. E-textbooks can cost up to 50 percent less than standard textbooks while providing the foundation for integration of multiple learning resources into a single delivery system. E-textbooks and their enhanced interactive learning resources also have the potential to accelerate student learning."

"Kno can do everything a physical textbook can do and more, with over 60 features that make reading, studying, note taking and organization a breeze."

"Highlighter is a web application that creates a dynamic relationship between publishers and readers. With Highlighter, readers can share, save, and comment on words, sentences, paragraphs and even images. All of this data is passed back to the publisher in the form of powerful analytics."

"Part of the answer lies in the fact that the books they need - textbooks at least - are not always available in digital format. Even if some titles are available, many students opt to buy all their books at the same time from the same location (whether that retailer is online or a traditional brick-and-mortar bookstore or a textbook rental company). As different e-readers and e-reader apps have access to different catalogs, there isn't really a seamless shopping experience for digital textbooks."

"Just one day after the ground-breaking announcement of the new Kindle lineup we got news from the long awaited 35 USD tablet from India."

"As the e-reader and tablet wars heat up, Amazon.com Inc. is launching a digital-book lending library that will be available only to owners of its Kindle and Kindle Fire devices who are also subscribers to its Amazon Prime program."

"Students in these courses use the computer during class time to work through material at their own speed. Through diagnostics taken along the way, the program creates a "personalized learning path" that targets exactly what lessons they need to work on and then delivers the appropriate material. Points, badges and other game mechanics theoretically keep students chugging through courses with more motivation. In the meantime, teachers learn which students are struggling with exactly which concepts."

"Students spend an average of $900 a year on textbooks-20 percent of tuition at an average university and half of tuition at a community college. Textbook prices have increased at four times the rate of inflation since 1994 and continue to rise."

"This isn't the same approach, however, that Apple took to disrupting the music industry. This isn't the equivalent of $.99 download for songs. This is about hiring "great textbook writers," something I don't think Apple ever did for songwriters, other than a few "iTunes Exclusive Releases" perhaps. And it seems as though -- again, just based on this passage from the biography -- that Jobs' frustration with the industry isn't with the industry so much as the bureaucracy that goes into textbook certification and adoption. How would partnering with Pearson, the largest education publisher in the world, disrupt textbook publishing? Color me skeptical."