Here’s some more intriguing e-textbook news from Kno, who recently released a survey showing that the majority of college students would give up sex to avoid carrying heavy textbooks, and who also released an HTML5-based app that allows students to read textbooks through Facebook and the web,
Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch has an interesting piece looking at some new interactive features in Kno’s e-textbook iPad app. One such feature is a form of 3D modeling that can convert chemical notations showing how atoms bond together into 3D models that can be enlarged and rotated so students can get a better sense of how the atoms bond together. The app also features video notes, smart links, and a “journal” that keeps track of audio, video, text, or highlighting notations students make.
As much as some people claim e-textbooks hinder rather than help learning, app features like this show that there are some ways tablet texts can help learning that teachers would have given their eye teeth for just a few years ago. The digital future looks very promising.