This fall, four school districts in New York will distribute 3G/Wi-Fi Kindles to students in high school English classes as part of an experiment to see whether the ereader is a viable classroom tool. The program, called the 8-Ounce Backpack Project, was funded by a foundation grant and will pay for teacher training and 84 Kindle devices, which will be loaded with reference materials as well as novels. Read the full article at the Syracuse Post-Standard. Via Seattle PI (Photo: John Berry / Syracuse Post-Standard) ...

SFGate took a look at all the ways today's student can purchase access to a textbook—buying the latest print edition, buying used or older editions, and buying or renting digital editions—and found that thanks to high pricing and inflexible rental periods, going digital is only occasionally a good solution: Each textbook will have a unique set of prices for its different versions, so it makes sense to consider e-textbook rental on a case-by-case basis. However, for the time being it appears that e-textbook rental will only save students money when having a new edition of a textbook is important, and when...

Inkling, which develops digital textbooks for the iPad, has been around for a couple of years now, but this year its been steadily building up steam (or at least cash) as it prepares to dramatically expand its offerings this fall. Earlier this year it secured funding from Pearson and McGraw-Hill, and today it announced a second round of funding from several investors. Inkling's approach is to augment textbooks with interactive, social, and annotation features, then sell them by the chapter for $3 each. The approach may or may not be cheaper--CEO Matt MacInnis says it can end up costing a...

Kno, the company that had been designing a two-paned e-textbook tablet reader before deciding to get out of the hardware market and concentrate on software for existing tablets, has released a survey that states that American college students hate lugging books around so much that 73% of them would be willing to give up sex if it let them avoid carrying books. (Gee, I didn’t think a Kindle made you look that nerdy.) I find it a little ironic this study came from Kno, since their proposed (and abandoned) textbook reader would have been as heavy as a laptop,...

College bookseller Akademos issued a press release earlier this week announcing the launch of a digital reader "that will allow its member institutions to access electronic content from traditional publishers and from open resources, such as the Connexions Consortium, World Public Library, the Guttenberg Project, and many others." The announcement says the device displays EPUB files, will allow students to make notes, and will apparently be linked to an online store where students can purchase print copies. Unfortunately, that's about all it says—there's no other info about the device, and no links to other info pages. (Even the link to...

Amazon just issued a press release announcing the opening of their Kindle Textbooks store. Titles will be available to rent for periods from 30 days to 360 days, and students can increase the rental period in increments as small as one day, or purchase (license) the book outright at any point. The other compelling feature is that any notes or highlights will remain stored on Amazon's servers under the customer's Kindle account, just like other notes and highlights, so that they'll remain accessible even after the rental expires. Check out www.amazon.com/kindletextbooks for details. By the way, I find it interesting that...

The latest issue of ACCESS, a newspaper for librarians in Asia, looks at Singapore-based iG Publishing, which now offers "some 50,000 titles from more than 100 reputable North American, European and Asian academic publishers." The article doesn't go into much detail on the underlying technology, but it looks like iG relies on PDF and the Adobe Acrobat Reader DRM plugin called FileOpen. Read the full article at www.aardvarknet.info....

From Inside Higher Ed comes an article about how some university presses are experimenting with extending the concept of textbook rentals to ebooks: "For example, instead of buying a paperback or e-book for $20 at the Stanford University Press website, students and scholars can pay $5 to access an e-book for 14 days, or $10 for 60 days." Other presses offering similar rental programs include the University of Chicago, the University of Iowa, the University of Michigan, and Ohio University. The article says so far, none of the presses are making much money with ebook rentals, but that the real goal...

The closure of a half-century-old university bookstore in Ireland is raising questions about the propriety of lecturers posting class notes on-line, the Bookseller reports. The chairman of a UK academic publishing-industry lobby group claims the practice harms academic booksellers. The Bookshop at Queens, at the Queen’s University Belfast, has been in business for 53 years, but has hit tough times and is closing while it is still above water. Tim Smyth, manager of the Queen's bookshop, said the bookseller wanted to close before it "fell below the line". He also blamed internet competition and free...

A partially sighted law student at the University of Victoria in British Columbia has filed a complaint against the school and six textbook publishers, reports the Times Colonist, over what he says is a discriminatory procurement system for students who need alternative textbook formats. For students to get an electronic copy of a textbook, they must first purchase the hardcopy and submit their booklist to the university. The university places a request for the alternate-format book to the publisher once the student has given them a booklist for all their courses. It may take up to eight weeks to get the book...

South Korea's Education Ministry has announced that it will convert all textbooks to digital format by 2015, reports eSchoolNews. The digital textbooks will include supplemental teaching materials and "two-way study methods," and be available across multiple platforms. (Thanks to Michael von Glahn for the tip.) (Photo: rob.wall)...

The Kno single- and dual-screen 14” nVidia Tegra e-textbook tablets that we’ve covered here before are shipping this week. The tablets are priced at $599 and $899, not a bad price for a screen of that size compared to the iPad, if they work as well. Engadget reports that this does not mean the tablets are widely available yet, however; they’re only shipping pre-orders now. Those who want to order now will still have to put in a request and wait to get an invitation. TechCrunch also has some coverage. I remain skeptical that the form factor...