The Future Of Electronic Books in Education

I just finished reading the article, The Book Beyond the Book. This post is all about the migration from physical books to electronic books and how it’s changing the game of book marketing.

I personally have been a huge fan of the Kindle series and have had a Kindle for over 2 years. I plan on upgrading to the Kindle Fire very soon.

Image from Teaspoon Of Life

I have about 70 books on my Kindle right now and love how convenient it is to travel around with 1 device and have access to so much information at my finger tips. I can hit a button and download a book in about 60 seconds. I’m someone who believes in minimizing material possessions I have so that I will have less clutter in my life. The Kindle is an awesome idea for this to work and that’s why I love it.

The article talks about something that is very interesting to me. It’s the concept of HybridBooks, “which melds the physical and electronic cultures together. On the physical side, the Hybrids are attractive, stripped-down paperbacks, with nothing inside but a short classic text.The first five were all called “The Duel,” reprinting tales by Casanova, Kleist, Conrad, Kuprin and Chekhov. The latest is Melville’s tale of the first Wall Street refusenik, “Bartleby, the Scrivener.” Bartleby, for reasons that do not become clear until the end of his tale, decides to opt out. The connection with the Occupy Wall Street movement is clear, and is no doubt the reason the Melville House edition is already in its fifth printing.”

The Future Of Electronic Books

Personally I feel that the electronic book is going to change the way we experience books. I feel that one of the biggest industries that will benefit from this is the educational system.

Think back to your days in college…I know, it could be 30 or even 60 years ago, but try to remember…

Do you remember going to the library to read for hours on end about subjects that often put you to sleep? If you are like most students, you probably spent a lot of time reading books that were written very dryly and if you ever had to take any science classes you most likely had to read books with a lot of equations in them.

Science books were very hard for me to get through, because I’m more of a visual learner and someone who thrives on actually doing something. These books didn’t really allow me to do the activity and that led me to getting bored and switching majors.

Let’s imagine for a second that you were reading about what happens when you put mentos inside a bottle of diet coke. There are a few ways that will help you learn this information. You can do it for yourself (the most fun), you could read about it (least fun) or you could watch a video of someone doing it.

Imagine Watching This Inside Of Your TextBook:

If you are in the middle of studying for a final exam, it’s probably inconvenient for you to stop studying and go to the store or lab to mix certain chemicals to see the reaction. You would waste a lot of time walking to the lab and more time setting up the experiment. What would happen if you could just watch a video inside of your text book that showed you exactly what happens? Do you think that would save you a lot of time and be a great way for you to remember the information?

Of course it would! When we actually see something happen, we are more likely to remember it because we activate more of our senses. Of course if we actually do the activity, we learn even better because we engage more senses, but for the purpose of saving time for studying watching a video is the most effective way.

This is just one way that education will be changed over the next few years because of electronic books and electronic book readers.

Do you have any other ideas on how electronic books will change the way we learn?