“This is a generation of kids that have learned to communicate, search and purchase on very small devices, like mobile phones,” said James McQuivey, Forrester Research media analyst. “This year is a guinea pig year, next year the move will be en masse.”

In addition to being seen as non-threatening by kids, ereader prices are dropping while their capabilities continue to increase, and publishers are aggressively expanding their children’s and YA ebook catalogs.

Read the full article at Boston.com.

1. California: “Digital Books Engage Students During Test Drive” (by Jill Tucker, San Francisco Chronicle)

The drudgery of solving for X flew out the door of a Presidio Middle School classroom Friday as the giddy students traded in their back-breaking algebra textbooks for an iPad touch screen filled with integers and equations that came to life with the flick of a finger.

The San Francisco eighth-graders are among 400 California middle school students participating in a pilot study funded by textbook publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on the use of digital textbooks. The results will help determine whether the high-tech version educates schoolchildren as well or better than its wood-pulp predecessors.

[Clip]

The $500 iPads come fully loaded with the students’ eighth-grade algebra textbook, and a vast array of technological bells and whistles.

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Schools in Fresno, Long Beach and Riverside also are participating in the program.

2. Abington, MA: “iPads a Hit in Abington’s Eighth-Grade History Class”

Most of the 28 students in Amy Lewis’ U.S. History class at Frolio Middle School already use iPhones, iPods and Blackberry devices.

So it came as no techno-shock when these eighth-graders powered up seven iPads for the first time last week and used them to learn about the Jamestown colony. Their collective response to the new learning tool?

Cool.

For Lewis, however, this isn’t just about cool. It’s about promoting 21st-century learning through using what she considers a highly versatile electronic tool for education.

“This is mobile learning. It’s perfect,” she said.

On Wednesday, she started a history lesson the old-fashioned way: Writing on the whiteboard – the modern dry-erase equivalent of the classic blackboard – she outlined her Jamestown lesson, then made a drastic change in technology.

“Right now, we are going to shift gears here,” she said.

Hearing their teacher’s cue, the students in groups of four powered up their iPads and got down to work.

Source: The Enterprise (Brockton, MA) via The Patriot Ledger (Quincy, MA)

See Also: Effect of E-Readers on Young People is Enormous (Anderson Independent Mail)

Via Resource Shelf

The results might even be nicer for extended typing than a laptop since you could separately vary your distances from the screen and keyboard.

So what do you think of Freescale Semiconductor’s smartbook reference design, ready for CES. If reality, the design might mean a $200 machine with a seven-inch screen. Actually the price might be just for the screen and CPU alone. Not sure. Sounds too high to me and others. But maybe it’s a hint of better things to come.

Certainly, for K-12, I like this approach much better than just a Kindle-style tablet or a netbook. I’d also like the screen a bit larger. And perhaps the unit could use retractable legs and notch the screen into the keyboard, for a true netbook when you wanted one.

Specifications:

.8 pounds
1GHz i.MX515 processor.
512MB of DDR2 RAM
1,024 x 600 touch panel
4GB to 64GB of internal storage
MicroSD expansion slot
Optional 3G WWAN module802.11b/g/n WiFi and Bluetooth 2.1
GPS
USB 2.0 socket
Audio in / out
3 megapixel camera
Inbuilt 3-axis accelerometer
Ambient light sensor
1,900mAh battery

Related: Gizmodo and Techmeme roundup.

A prep school in Massachusetts created an uproar by saying e-books would replace paper books in its library.

Now a private high school in Toronto says it is tossing out p-textbooks in favor of Sony e-book readers. The school has deployed at least 110 readers already and is ordering hundreds more.

“Our student survey shows that they are twice as likely to read a book available in an e-book format as in hard copy form," says Sam Blyth, chair at Blyth Academy.

Catnip for students raised on tech

There has been a growing emphasis among schools to engage student interest through technology, and this initiative appears to be, in part, a response to that. A comment from Sam Blyth is of special interest:

"When they were told they would be able to download books free, we asked them ‘Would you be more likely to read outside of school?’ they came back with a yes, and that clinched it."

As a teacher, I have long agreed with the growing chorus of e-book fans who say that the problem is not print versus e-book versus whatever, but that fewer people read for pleasure. Might not e-book readers help popularize recreational reading among the growing number of young people raised on technology?

Textbook access is just one benefit. Schools are using the readers to download other documents such as schedules to keep with them at all times

A back-saver

Meanwhile children are spared the burden of carrying traditionally bulky textbooks to and from school with them. In my work, I have seen students struggle with rolling backpacks full of binders, lunch items, school supplies and books on top of that. A slim little e-book reader would certainly remove a dozen pounds or more from the typical student load.

Granted, e-book readers might not be a perfect solution. Pearson Educational Media is providing content, and I wrote in the summer about my not very positive university-level experience with Pearson. I hope the company is offering more junior users a better vetted and more useful experience. And a future user community seems to not be available yet.

Netbooks a possibility, too—for both reading and writing

School board members in the public school system appear to be waiting for integrated virtual assessment tools and other trimmings. But some already are tech-boosters. One trustee quoted by parentcentral.ca visited a school in Littleton, Colorado, using netbooks with great success. “It was amazing to watch how involved every single kid was in what they were doing.” See a related blog item from the Littleton on the success students have achieved in writing with netbooks—which might also be used in reading.

While we don’t yet have the tools for a perfect system, Blyth is still to be praised for trying to innovate—and for taking advantage of the opportunity to try and hook students into pleasure reading while they are at it, too. There is great potential in the e-market, both for pleasure reading and for environments such as a school. I just wish publishers would realize that there are so many great things which can happen, and that the best way for them to survive and thrive in the digital age is to embrace it, rather than fight to keep the status quo forever.

Editor’s note For a different perspective, read about disabled student Robert Kingett’s reservations about the Kindle and also E-textbooks not ready for college students yet? Likewise of interest would be the New York Times series on the future of reading, including the issue of whether the Internet has helped or hurt—in addition to various viewpoints on e-books and the brain. For research findings and other observations on e-books in K-12, check out our past items on the work of Dr. Richard Bellever at Ball State University. In addition, see—from the Huffington Post—the latest version of my proposal for a well-stocked national digital library system for K-12 users and others. – D.R.

Update, 12:55 p.m.: New links: E-books go to college, but books still rule the campus, not Kindle in AOL Daily Finance and Sony Reader follows Kindle to the Great White North in Engadget. Also see Google news roundup.

No, people aren’t caught up in some romance novel, a thrilling mystery, a somber story, a dark satire, or a new novella. Rather, just one library user is in this vast empty space.

What can we do to encourage more people to enjoy books?

Here are two ideas—one pertaining to young people in general, and one for students with vision problems.

Why Johnny doesn’t want to read

A major reason why kids in my school won’t read books is that they think they are all written in old English, and that’s a shame. We could be using some good, modern books in the classroom.

A perfect example would be The Giver, or possibly The Fountainhead. I understand that teachers love all the literary elements used in Shakespeare works, and symbols behind everything, and I love them as well, but to the average reader, they are a tad hard to follow. By shoving them down our throats, aren’t educators creating a subtle hatred for the written word? Why not switch to modern literature, such as Sharon Draper books, Lois Lowery books, Margaret Peterson Haddix books, or possibly even some good old Dorothy Parker?

They all have literary elements to study, and some even have more than that. Great study guides could be derived from the books and be made into tests that most kids would be eager to pass. Is it so wrong to change a little with the times? Then maybe more literature lovers would blossom and bloom.

Another reason for apathy toward books—and one solution

Another reason for lack of interest in books, though this relates more to us blind and near-blind people, is that most English teachers have a massive fear of audio books. What if you had eye impairment and there weren’t any large print books in sight? I would pick up an audio book, but all my teachers, even at a blind school, would frown disapprovingly and scold me about how I can read so I don’t need or shouldn’t need audio.

Well, what if I’m an auditory learner and can retain things better that way? Why be afraid of a different medium? Open your heart and mind. Try having your class listen to Shakespeare rather than reading the text. You’re still getting the same information.

Related:  Why recreational reading counts, too—not just the kid for school and ‘A new assignment: Pick books you like.’

Editor’s note: These are Robert’s personal opinions. What do you think about them? I myself believe that we need a mix of classics and modern books. Good literature should challenge readers. But first get ‘em interested in books, period. Robert’s big concerns are right on the mark. – D.R.

My Sony Reader is a teacher’s pet. Mine. I’m the teacher, and it’s a valuable classroom tool.

How? Well, I don’t just use my Reader for “reading” in the traditional sense. It’s also as a way to take long or important files with me for reading on the go.

My instruction manuals, recipes message board threads, magazine articles and anything text-based—I can easily save them all in HTML. Then I can import the files into Calibre and tag them to group into collections, which I can then load into my Sony.

Please note that the Sony isn’t the only reader useful for taking along professional materials and personal documents. You might be able to do the same thing with your Kindle, for example, or Cybook, iLiad or Be Book. If the material isn’t in digital form, perhaps you can scan and OCR it.

One recent use I have found for my Reader is managing my unit plans for teaching. I live in Canada and teach primary school French, and the program we use is music-and-drama based. I haven’t loaded any of the stories onto my Reader—I use paper ones, as the children do, so I can model it for them—but the Sony is already a helpful place to store my lessons.

A teaching guide

Each unit is based around a play, and it comes with all the material one needs for the children, as well as a massive spiral-bound teaching guide with step-by step teaching activities. The activities are sequential, meant to be done in order. They are very well-planned and include a lot of detail. Here is an example of a typical 1-2 page activity from the teaching guide:

Note: Scripted text is in French; translated to English here for illustration. Words in ALL CAPS are new vocabulary from the lesson’s word list

ACTIVITY 43: Targeted Gesture Teaching and ReviewMultiple intelligences: verbal-linguistic, interpersonal, kinesthetic, spatial
Language skills: speaking, listening

As you can see, there is a lot of superfluous information. It’s important to read the manual once through so that one understands the language skills being used, and the multiple intelligences at play in the program. But when teaching subsequently, it’s self-explanatory. It’s obvious that the children will be speaking and listening. It’s obvious that if you tell the children, “This is a DVD,” you should then show it to them. It’s obvious that if a student gives you the correct answer, you should praise them. And it’s obvious too why each manual is about 400 pages!

Hassle to drag in the actual paper books

That said, I’ve found in the past that I have been hampered by being too lazy to bring the book with me. Sometimes, I plan to do one activity, and actually get through it faster than I thought. If I rely on post-it note cheat sheets, I may not have information about the next activity ready and available when and where I want it.

But carrying the books around with me is not an option either. Most French teachers, myself included, don’t have dedicated classrooms. I share a resource cupboard in another classroom with the gym teacher and carry around my things in a tote while I travel around from class to class.

My typical load: a calendar for the entry routine, a folder with my schedule and memos, puppets for the JK/SK classes, a ball to use for filler games, oversize ‘big books’ for reading the play with the kids, any photocopies I need of work for the children to complete with me, a netbook with all my MP3s and Power Points on music days—the list goes on and on.

I have two grade levels doing this program, so that’s two unit guides, with all their accoutrements, and about half of it duplicated content anyway—the first hundred-odd pages are all about the philosophy of the program, charts showing how it meets the provincial curriculum requirements etc. and are the same in every unit guide. And as we have seen, the actual lesson parts are not brief.

Organizing challenges

Thankfully, the unit guides have an appendix with all the word lists in order. For awhile, I was working off of a photocopy of these, accompanied by a checklist of rough lesson descriptions. Every time I did a lesson with the kids, I would refer to the checklist for a hint of what we were meant to be doing, then flip back to the word list and keep that out while I was teaching.

It wasn’t the best system because I didn’t have the space on the word list page for any notes or reminders, so I’d often find myself rooting in my bag during a lesson for a page I didn’t have out with me. And two of my three older classes are doing the same play, so I had double the paper cluttering up my bag, which made it harder to find things, and harder to ensure that when I did find it, I had the one for the group I was with.

The complete book

What I really needed was to have the bulky teacher book in front of me, only less bulky and with all the superfluous information edited out. A summary of the activity, the words needed for it, and a brief line or two of any mnemonic notes would suffice. I needed more than random sticky notes, but less than a 400-page teaching manual.

I finally had the brainstorm to put it all on my Reader. I had about 100 lessons per unit to go through.

For each, I wrote a brief description and then plugged in the word list. It was about a 2-3 hour investment for each play, but it was worth it because now I am set for the year. Instead of having a bulky teacher’s guide in front of me, I have my reader. It’s small and convenient. I can easily turn the page when we’re finished and have the next activity ready to go at any time.

Used to Ms. Gizmo

The kids are so used to seeing me with gadgets that they hardly notice the Reader. When I start my lesson, I can just open up their file, and there I am, just where I left off the last time. The Sony remembers my place. Best of all, being a computer file, it’s easy to copy.

My two Grade 1 classes do the same play, but because they only have French four days a week, and sometimes not on the same days, they aren’t always at the same point in the unit work. I can have two copies of my little guidebook, one for each of them, and pick up my lesson exactly where I need to for each different group.

Here is the above two-page lesson, in its entirely, following the edits I did:

ACTIVITY 43: Gesture Teaching/ReviewWord list:
taille
casse
problème
par accident
désolé
apporte

E-book version not full replacement for teaching guide

I am not saying my ebook version can replace a well-written teaching guide completely, of course. As a teacher, I need to know my stuff, and the philosophy, teaching tips, curriculum guidelines and other details are important. But they are not so important that I need to carry around 2-3 versions of them in my poor, over-loaded tote and have them in front of me for the moment I am teaching. I can keep those on the cupboard for review during planning, and use my little ebook version for the quick and dirty ‘teach this now’ part of my day.

I love having the word list and lesson description in front of me in the same place. I love that if we finish something early, the next activity is always ready to go. I love that I can keep separate versions of the teaching guide for each class, and let the Reader remember for me where I left off with each of them. And I love that I can keep my entire school-wide curriculum in my hands at any moment, at home, when planning, and in front of my eyes when I teach. I can’t believe I didn’t think to put this all on my Reader sooner!

If California goes free, the economics for education publishing companies will radically shift. Also, it is then likely that Florida and Texas and many other states will follow California’s lead in sourcing free educational content. Most immediately, California’s migration toward the provision of free textbooks has been driven by the state’s precarious financial situation. An effective moratorium on new textbook purchases is expected to last until 2014—see KABC-TV video.

California’s approach may seem either drastic or innovative, depending on your perspective, but the state is actually following a movement toward free textbooks that has been gaining steam over the past several years, with Georgia Tech among the leaders.

How California is going “free”

That said, California appears to be the first state to specifically identify free electronic texts that may be used in the classroom.

In May, Governor Schwarzenegger established a "Free Digital Textbook Initiative" to review free digital high school textbooks to determine which met the state’s established academic standards. State education officials asked content developers to submit content. Then the California Learning Resource Network (CLRN) facilitated the review of the submitted content.

Most of the free textbooks scored highly. The results were not an official endorsement by the state, but even as a “dry-run” or experiment, this effort is likely to both encourage other suppliers of free content and local decision makers to consider adopting free content as part of their curriculum. Which is the intention.

First stage: Math and science 

In this first step, the initiative asked for textbooks in math and science, and nine suppliers submitted 16 titles. The publishers were both individual educators and publishers, but Pearson was the only “traditional” publisher that chose to submit content. Embarrassingly, Pearson scored one of the lowest scores against the “content standards met” criteria. (Why Pearson was there at all is perhaps a more interesting discussion point.) The full report is here.

In addition to the direction from the state level to evaluate digital content, other agencies have also joined in to support this initiative. Notable among these has been the California Educational Technology Professionals Association (CETPA), which recently organized a seminar showing participants how to blend digital content into high school curriculum. The textbook content reviewed by CLRN will be available in classrooms in the fall.

The Governor’s office made the following announcement:

Since these digital books are downloadable and may be projected on a screen, viewed on a computer, printed chapter by chapter, or bound for use in the classroom, schools can take advantage of these free, standards-aligned resources using existing hardware—even in classrooms without computers or laptops for every student.

To showcase the multiple ways in which digital textbooks can be used, the California Educational Technology Professionals Association (CETPA) today hosted 200 educators, technology professionals and content providers for a digital textbook symposium at the Orange County Department of Education. Teachers led students through lesson plans using digital textbooks in four mock classrooms, demonstrating the materials’ interactive potential. CETPA also moderated panel discussions about the future of digital education and potential next steps in this innovative effort.

Secretary of Education Glen Thomas spoke at the symposium and added, “I applaud the Governor for his leadership and vision in launching this groundbreaking initiative. This represents an important first step toward ubiquitous instruction that will help ensure all California students have access to the first-rate education they deserve.”

As this program develops, it will be interesting to see how the concept of a textbook begins to shift.

One of the criteria listed in the “parameters” for review of the digital content is that the material must be “stable for two years”—no changes allowed. For some subjects, this parameter should be no problem, but as the state evaluates social science and some other (dynamic) subjects, this parameter will begin to look quaint and limiting in what advantages digital content—free or paid—is able to deliver over print formats.

In turn, as the parameters change, so will the process of vetting and approving titles for use in high schools.

This initiative, viewed skeptically when it was announced earlier this year, has not only delivered tangible results to California educators but also represents a significant strategic issue for all traditional publishers as they navigate their digital frontier.

(Time stamp changed from earlier today to be closer to the top of the blog.)

The New York Times has the details. The key, as I see it as an ex-child, is balance—between the compulsory assignments and the joy-of-it books that can build the reading habit.

A little Jules Verne to go along with Jane Austen, please.

I know: Austen books may be more “literary.” But Verne himself excels as a story-teller. Good teachers can introduce students to both kinds of writing and try to point out the difference. Some sprawling major literary classics—masterpieces by today’s definitions, such as Moby-Dick—would probably have appalled Austen. (Update, 11 a.n.: No anti-Austen slam intended. Here’s to variety!)

One justification for the TeleRead vision of a well-stocked national digital library system is that it would put online a greater variety of books to match students’ precise needs and interests. TeleRead would be in line with S.R. Ranganathan’s Five Laws of Library Science, including “Every reader his book” and “Every book its reader.”

Again, as I see it, the optimal scenario would a mix of compulsory books—Moby Dick among them?—and for-fun ones. If nothing else, how about more efforts to point students in the direction of classics that share common themes with popular books and movies of the moment? Teachers can also work to nudge students toward the better and more challenging books matching their interests, just as the Times article notes.

In a related vein, female teachers and female curriculum specialists often favor books of more appeal to girls than to boys, and student-chosen titles would be at least a partial solution.

A cause for commercial publishers

Let’s hope that commercial publishers get behind the choice movement without overdoing it. First off by far, it’s the right thing educationally. Second, along the way, it’s good market development. Gung-ho young readers are more likely to become enthusiastic older ones.

Some of the most eagerly read fiction may even come from authors in the same cities as the students. The movement for “choice reading” could be open up some interesting possibilities for local and regional literature, especially if libraries, schools and bookstores worked together to identify the most promising homegrown titles.

But guess what they’re not using, or at least not as often? Traditional textbooks.

The Democratic Leadership Council’s problematic Kindle proposal talks about electronic textbooks, but there’s a little problem. More and more educators and students are put off by the very term “textbook.” What’s more, many would prefer to decouple education from reliance on specific companies and specific products.

Northwestern Missouri State University used the Sony Reader in a pilot study and, according to Young, found that students demanded printed books instead because of navigation problems with E.

Mind you, this wasn’t with the new PRS-700, which lets you use a stylus to move around. So maybe the results would have been different.

Kindle DX: Will lack of a stylus hurt it on campus?

But remember, the new Kindle DX lacks a stylus, so I’ll be curious if similar navigation issue arise. We’ll be finding out soon enough since the DX is officially shipping June 10.

Another issue could be the lack of color, a capability which might be handy for charts, not to mention other illustrations. At least the Northwestern Missouri students shown above are using laptops, with color screens.

Meanwhile here’s a list of the six lessons:

• “Judge e-books by their covers.” Hardware and software count, in terms of interfaces. The university’s results were less than stellar even when it switched to VitalSource software, which runs on laptops. Remember, laptops let you move the cursor and do plenty more than with a Kindle-style device can.
• “Learning curves ahead.” One student told Young: “They should have a week in class where they explain how to use it."
• “Professors are eager students.” Rather than the hoped-for five or six profs, more than 50 volunteers for one experiment.
• “Long live batteries.” Some students needed to tether their machines to outlets in lecture halls because their batteries ran out. Of course, E Ink machines last longer. And I’d note that netbooks and other hardware using Mary Lou Jepsen’s new screen technology also will get more life out of their machines—she hopes that her PixelQi displays will show up in netbooks later this year.
• “Subjects are not equally e-friendly.” Beware if you’re working with numbers and equations, especially if the content is displayed in small fonts. Of course,  as I see it, maybe the right software could simplify things. One lesson from Northwest Missouri was that color significantly improved the effectiveness of illustrations. Will the Kindle DX’s monochrome be a major liability in some situations? Depends. English Lit is different from, say, biology.
• “Environmental impact matters.” Students did feel that E was better for the environment, and according to Young, “administrators said they were surprised at the degree to which such consciousness affected students’s opinions.”
• So how does Northwest Missouri State University’s president—a Kindle owner—now feel about e-textbooks? Well, Dean L. Hubbard stil thinks they’re inevitable. But it’s clear he thinks the tech isn’t quite there yet. Meanwhile Northwestern Missouri has appointed a successor to Hubbard, who’s retiring after 25 years in office; so it’s far from clear how things will turn out there.

One lesson I’m picking up: It’s high time that publishers gave the IDPF more money and other resources to refine e-book standards to improve usability, such as through improved navigation. We’re talking dollars and cents here. Don’t rely on Amazon—which looks out strictly for Number One—to set standards for the industry.

Another lesson for educators: Phase in E carefully, and, as noted above, think about differences between subjects. I’d suspect that English Lit would lend itself far, far better to e-textbooks and other e-books than most other subjects—just so it was easy for students and professors to find and sync their places within books. Shared annotations would also be good. Too bad that the IDPF has yet to come up with an industry standard for shared annotations.

As for the ePub Interop Group mentioned in comments accompanying a TeleRead post, I’m rooting for it to come up with workable standards for shared annotations if the IDPF won’t. But Google shows no messages posted later than April 3 from the group on any subject. What’s going on, or not going on?

A Book Author Wonders How to Reduce Piracy is the new headline in the New York Times.

Pete is vexed that students are pirating his tech-related books—for example, Disappearing Cryptography—and I sympathize. Here’s my advice: Go after the schools, from K-12 through the post-graduate level, but use the carrot, not the stick.

I agree with Pete that justifications for piracy are off-target. Screen tech keeps improving, for example, so pirated e-books will be less and less viable as a means of advertising p-books. This is fine now in many situations, but it’s hardly a sustainable approach for the long term. And what to do if you don’t want to write a series—and if you doubt that your particular readers will want as high a level of interactivity as the readers of SF books might? You lack the same range of extras to sell beyond the basic text. It’s the main show, with nothing directly related to follow, especially if your next books may be on different topics! Reader loyalty to authors extends only so far.

Does this mean you should be a copyright hawk? No. In the case  of textbooks and others used by schools at all levels, I would not recommend an RIAAish approach of turning these educators into copyright cops. But there is a better option. Why not push for federal legislation that in one way or another would encourage schools to build textbooks into the cost of tuition? Perhaps they would get more federal aid.

Unwittingly Pete himself may have made an argument for such an strategy. In his blog he wrote:

Student complain that textbooks cost too much and I certainly agree. Books easily cost more than $100 and some cost more than $200. While this sounds outrageous compared to a best seller, it’s hard to make much money in this business even at that price. Very few books sell even 1000 copies and very few textbooks sell 100,000 copies.

The irony is that $100 is also much cheaper than a university course. Tuition can easily run $3,000 to $5,000 and a good text book usually comes with more material. While a text book doesn’t come with office hours and TAs, it doesn’t require transcribing a professor’s hen scratching on the board. That makes it a great deal at $200.

Is it time, then, for reasonable payments for books to be part of tuition fees, with adjustment for students in various disciplines? I’m not the first to suggest bundling textbook costs in with tuition—if nothing else, I know that TeleRead contributor Jon Noring was doing so before I did—but it is one approach worth pursuing. The bundled books could come if need be with social DRM to help distinguish them from genuinely “free” content.

Another piracy-reducer

Yet another way to help reduce piracy would be a well-stocked national digital library collection—in other words, a TeleRead approach, which could also encompass hardware-related assistance as well professional development for educators and librarians to help them integrate the new resources.

The Authors Guild and the rest of the copyright lobby seem to enjoy more influence in D.C. than the rest of America does. Here’s a chance to use it in a constructive way that would also save the interest of society in general.

Related: Paul Biba’s A Book Author Wonders How to Fight Piracy—NY Times article today.

"Will Ben benefit if I load my Kindle with hundreds of books that he can’t see? Or does he need the spectacle of hard- and softcover dust magnets eliminating floor space in our small apartment to get the full ‘Freakonomics’ effect? I sadly suspect he needs the shelves and dust.

"Anyway, Ben doesn’t distinguish between my Kindle and a BlackBerry. My immersion in the Kindle is not (to him) an example of impressive role-model literacy. It’s Mom e-mailing, or texting, or for all he knows playing video games. In fact, the only time he describes what he and I do together as ‘reading’ is when we’re sitting with a clutch of pages bound between covers, open in front of us like a hymnal."

At odds with standard wisdom among moms and literacy experts

But wait. Ben is just three years old, and I wonder what would happen if the Kindle had a color screen and if Mom regularly read illustrated stories to him from the machine. Contradicting more than a few mothers and literacy experts, Freakonomics’ authors doubt that reading aloud to kids will boost their test scores. But wouldn’t this if nothing else associate the Kindle with The Joys of Reading? Meanwhile, yes, color laptops and tablets have been known to exist. The convertible OLPC machine can be both.

I also wonder if decorating the Heffernan apartment with scenes from books—in some cases, maybe illustrations downloaded from sites like Wikipedia, my source of the image from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland—would help get the e-versions on the minds of kids.

The right books

Finally, as long as we’re comparing E and P, how about the touchy little question of how relevant the P or E books will be to the children? Shouldn’t that count, too, not just the sheer numbers of books?

Via E, parents and children can obtain a wide variety of free or low-cost books that match the kids’ interests. Shouldn’t that be a factor, too?

Not a Luddite despite the skepticism

While, as an ex-child, I’d disagree with Virginia Heffernan on various details, it’s clear she’s not a Luddite, and not just because she reads from a Kindle.

About Ben, she concludes: "As he maneuvers the computer trackpad and he shoos me away so he can study (for the 10th time) ‘Sidney Won’t Swim’ on One More Story, I’m not sure he’s developing an appreciation for books. But he is learning how to enrich his solitude, and that is one of the most intensely pleasurable aspects of literacy." Exactly. The challenge for librarians and educators, not to mention the marketers at Random House and S&S, is to make certain that books remain an enricher of that solitude—whatever form they take, P or E.

Image credit: CC-licensed photo from Ninjapoodles.

Barack Obama wants a huge investment in infrastructure here in the States—both the highway and electronic varieties. America’s broadband penetration would be improved. And every child could tap away at a computer.

In the rush to modernize, however, Obama and his team should also press for sufficient resources for:

1. E-books and other items for schools and libraries—and creation of more—while respecting the First Amendment and allowing for a robust private sector. That means money for books from traditional  publishers, as well as creation of wikis, blogs and the rest by teachers, with help from content experts. Textbook publishers might find new contracting opportunities here. Let’s remember all the obsolete textbooks still in use. In other areas, keep in mind the extent to which students can benefit from a wide variety of recreational reading items, including novels. Consider Norman Mailer’s wisdom on the benefits of linear narrative. Meanwhile, in this recession, let’s not forget the economies of e-books compared to paper.

2. Money for training of teachers and librarians to use the new technology—and maybe funds for student aides to help them out. Even many younger teachers are still baffled how to weave technology into their lessons. Librarians need training in e-book technology, as well as in Wikis and interbook linking. If the International Digital Publishing Forum won’t address the K-12-related  interbook and shared annotations issues, then maybe Washington can offer a little push for e-book standards for the non-disabled (current federal requirements include the disabled). Remember, the IDPF’s ePub format is itself a descendant of standards encouraged by the National Institute for Standards and Technology.

3. E-book friendly machines that the students could take home. Much and perhaps most learning happens at home, as the organizers of One Laptop Per Child wisely recognized in making the X0-1 portable and planning its successor. Technology is moving fast enough so that even tiny machines in the future will be able to offer powerful multimedia capabilities. A convertible laptop form factor would be one possibility. Meanwhile, e-book standards like ePub should help assure that most of the books and other items could be displayed on a wide variety of machines such as cellhones.

4. Accompanying changes in copyright law. Telecommunications is a bigger job creator than entertainment, and our copyright laws should reflect that, especially since sharing within bounds can promote interactivity. I’d like to see the fair use altered changed to expand the percentage of a book or movie that users could use and swap without authorization from copyright holders; if nothing else, this would give a boost to wikis and documentaries.

Bottom line: Obama should keep in mind that our students need improved pedagogy and hardware—not just the wires and boxes alone. Do not fixate on the physical. Care about content, too, as well as ways to absorb it. Meanwhile, since TeleRead is an international blog, let’s remember that the same concepts here would apply to many other countries.

Related: Digital Promise moves ahead in D.C.: Basis for TeleRead-style efforts in time? Library e-books to benefit in a major way? Could Digital Promise be accelerated and included or made into law in coordination with the infrstructure package? Also see TeleRead, Obama, and text literacy vs. Kevin Kelly’s ‘screen literacy’ and E-books, Obama-Biden and Prohibition: Any hope of educating the Dems about anti-consumer laws like Bono and the DMCA?

Image credit: CC-licensed photo from David Edmonson.