Electronic textbooks: state of affairs and prospects
Nowadays, electronic textbooks are gaining more and more popularity - this is a fact with which it is difficult to argue. On many sites on the order of books there is an opportunity to order electronic versions of books, both art and scientific-methodical. This form of presentation of the material is aimed at special devices - ordinary computers, various "readers", tablets, and differs from a paper copy in that it has dynamic navigation, search capabilities and many other functions. What should be an electronic textbook so that it can be used effectively and, most importantly, interesting to learn? You also need to determine the terminology, to understand what "electronic textbooks" are.
My name is Pavel, I am a certified Microsoft teacher and have been reading courses at the training center since 2009. Since the middle of last year there have been significant changes in the provision of teaching materials. Now the corporation provides textbooks only in electronic form. Students in the courses often ask questions about the appropriateness of such changes, citing the "former convenience" of working with paper benefits. Almost all books are printed in English and it seems that the “good old” paper allows you to add your comments and notes, paste in bookmarks and add your own navigation. Another note that is sometimes heard is the inconvenience of switching between the book and the practical tasks environment when they are on the same screen. In this article I want to give my reasoning on this topic.
Many people, when they hear the phrase "electronic textbook" imagine a pdf file or djvu (substitute any format you know) a book that can be read from the screen of a computer or other device. This is not to say that this type of information is not popular. Like any modern person, being in the subway or in another public place, I see many people around, with different gadgets in their hands, some of these people just play or watch videos, but many read books. Indeed, it is very convenient, especially for reading fiction. On a small device, the home library will fit freely and there will still be enough free space for a couple of albums of your favorite group. People with familiar books are much smaller. I am very fond of printed books, especially large ones, with beautiful design, bright and colorful images smelling of typography. I read such publications as a child, and now I enjoy reading with my son. But at the moment I have a very dynamic job and reading “for fun” turned out to be practically inaccessible to me. In the car for long trips - an audio book, while preparing materials - official textbooks in electronic form and Internet resources. I catch myself thinking that I rarely use paper books, and perhaps from some nostalgic memories. In big cities it is even more relevant, people spend from two hours of their time on the road, standing in traffic jams, why not spend this time with benefit for their development?
')
A few years ago, I ordered self-study study guides, but I received them only after 2 or 3 weeks. It would seem, where to rush, because the book will come and you can safely read it, but with methodical literature it often happens that the book is urgently needed to start working as quickly as possible. Electronic books are leading here. Paid - downloaded, i.e. the time from payment to start work is significantly reduced.
It is not comfortable for people with visual disabilities, and sometimes it is even physically impossible to read books that are small enough. Almost all electronic devices have the ability to increase the font or have a backlight that allows you to enjoy reading your favorite book in a place with insufficient lighting.
Do not forget about the production of paper books. Not everyone has the opportunity to make recycled paper, most often the material is trees - a very valuable natural resource from the point of view of ecology and various “green” organizations. The world is developing, you need to be able to adapt to the changes.
The production of paper benefits has always cost and costs approximately one large enough amount (material preparation, layout, printing).
Electronic benefits can be more costly only at the primary stage, the stage of development of the system itself, in which the user will be trained. In the future, it will only be necessary to develop the content and simply fill it with systems, and the cost of printing will become zero.
You can try to figure out what positive moments this will be displayed on the end user and whether it will be displayed at all. From my point of view, since the cost of production will be reduced, the manufacturer for the "same money" will be able to give a more functional product to be in demand in a competitive market.
Electronic books can also improve the efficiency of finding the necessary information. He pressed a couple of keys, entered the desired word and in a few seconds got the result, if any. Various bookmarks, discovery, from the point where he stopped last time books are also quite useful.
But why the e-book as a teaching material in this form is not very convenient? We live in the century of information technology and it would be foolish to not use them in the direction of learning.
What capabilities should e-textbooks have in addition to those listed above in order to make them useful for learning?
Often efficiency is enhanced by collaboration. Imagine a situation where a teacher leads a lesson, being physically far away from you. On the computer screen you can see the slides of the presentation shown to them, for example via the Internet. And you follow the course of the lesson in your textbook, which is also available via the Internet from any device that has access to the network and browser. The lesson comes to an important point when the coach asks to pay attention to some points, makes a note on his slides, and you see this remark in your textbook. In addition, you are also free to add your notes and notes. They remain and remain with you until you change or delete them.
Now let's try to look a little differently. Imagine that an electronic textbook is not an electronic book in the sense in which we have reviewed it above, but a software product with a certain functionality. For many people, the efficiency of learning material depends on their interest in the subject of study in the first place, and in the process of learning in the second. At first, it is obviously not possible to influence immediately, but with the second one you can work very well. Not all material is equally well perceived after reading the text, albeit with the addition of graphs or tables. Software tools allow you to add various visualization tools written. These can be video clips (adding any media content can significantly increase the space occupied on disks or memory cards, but the current level of development of information storage systems and their relatively low cost can not worry too much about this), screenshots, pictures, animations and much another. What can be improved? One of the options may be a situation in which the graph displays some information and contains text annotations. Technologies allow you to display not the entire graph at once, as in ordinary images, but as you read the annotations. This will be more obvious, especially in situations where the graphics contain a lot of information. The next step may be the ability to change parameters with automatic rebuilding of the diagrams, to view the results with other input values.
New or important terms are highlighted with a different design, and pressing the finger or hovering the mouse displays its meaning in a pop-up window.
In technical courses for IT-professionals, when studying technologies, the so-called emulations can be a good example, allowing you to do the steps described in the task to configure a specific component of the system, etc. The student simply “clicks” the mouse over the necessary elements of the emulated system. This, of course, is not a real system, but no longer a bare theory; the associative memory will work. You do not have to configure demanding virtual machines, which may not always be at hand.
And how to control the assimilation of the material? Of course, questions for self-control and verification tasks. There is nothing easier than to implement such a system in the program, especially now there are analogues. After the end of the module or chapter, the learner may be asked questions for a self-test with “intelligent” memorization of results, i.e. when performing tests or independent work, the system will automatically issue questions on topics that “subside” from the student. I did not answer correctly on the topic - here are two more questions from the same field. After testing, the program will show your results on each topic with recommendations on what needs to be “tightened up” and what is in order.
For the IT world, there is another nuance that must not be forgotten - the information market is changing rapidly, and it often happens that books do not have time to reach the release date of a new product or functional update. With electronic textbooks easier, you can quickly update via the Internet. The methodological material will show the changes and the student will be able to quickly get up to date. I still have beautiful and big textbooks on technology on the shelf, which have now changed a lot, and some are even outdated, although only about five years have passed. And it’s a pity to throw away such books, but they don’t carry any information load, and they stand in the background, creating a cozy interior for the IT person.
For my part, I believe that such textbooks will also be very smoothly integrated into distance learning systems. Thereby, expanding their methodological potential. But this is a topic for a separate article.
In conclusion, I want to make a small summary. So, if we consider an electronic textbook not as a reading book, but as a professional tool for effective learning, both in the classroom and as an independent one, then my opinion is that this is a very promising direction.
Both for work and for the sake of self-development, I try to use modern technologies. In training, they have great potential. It is difficult to disagree that such systems will cost more than ordinary electronic benefits, because will require more intellectual work to implement. But on the other side of the scale lies knowledge, and in most cases they cannot be expressed in monetary terms.
My name is Pavel, I am a certified Microsoft teacher and have been reading courses at the training center since 2009. Since the middle of last year there have been significant changes in the provision of teaching materials. Now the corporation provides textbooks only in electronic form. Students in the courses often ask questions about the appropriateness of such changes, citing the "former convenience" of working with paper benefits. Almost all books are printed in English and it seems that the “good old” paper allows you to add your comments and notes, paste in bookmarks and add your own navigation. Another note that is sometimes heard is the inconvenience of switching between the book and the practical tasks environment when they are on the same screen. In this article I want to give my reasoning on this topic.
Representations of electronic textbooks: myth and reality
Many people, when they hear the phrase "electronic textbook" imagine a pdf file or djvu (substitute any format you know) a book that can be read from the screen of a computer or other device. This is not to say that this type of information is not popular. Like any modern person, being in the subway or in another public place, I see many people around, with different gadgets in their hands, some of these people just play or watch videos, but many read books. Indeed, it is very convenient, especially for reading fiction. On a small device, the home library will fit freely and there will still be enough free space for a couple of albums of your favorite group. People with familiar books are much smaller. I am very fond of printed books, especially large ones, with beautiful design, bright and colorful images smelling of typography. I read such publications as a child, and now I enjoy reading with my son. But at the moment I have a very dynamic job and reading “for fun” turned out to be practically inaccessible to me. In the car for long trips - an audio book, while preparing materials - official textbooks in electronic form and Internet resources. I catch myself thinking that I rarely use paper books, and perhaps from some nostalgic memories. In big cities it is even more relevant, people spend from two hours of their time on the road, standing in traffic jams, why not spend this time with benefit for their development?
')
A few years ago, I ordered self-study study guides, but I received them only after 2 or 3 weeks. It would seem, where to rush, because the book will come and you can safely read it, but with methodical literature it often happens that the book is urgently needed to start working as quickly as possible. Electronic books are leading here. Paid - downloaded, i.e. the time from payment to start work is significantly reduced.
It is not comfortable for people with visual disabilities, and sometimes it is even physically impossible to read books that are small enough. Almost all electronic devices have the ability to increase the font or have a backlight that allows you to enjoy reading your favorite book in a place with insufficient lighting.
Do not forget about the production of paper books. Not everyone has the opportunity to make recycled paper, most often the material is trees - a very valuable natural resource from the point of view of ecology and various “green” organizations. The world is developing, you need to be able to adapt to the changes.
The production of paper benefits has always cost and costs approximately one large enough amount (material preparation, layout, printing).
Electronic benefits can be more costly only at the primary stage, the stage of development of the system itself, in which the user will be trained. In the future, it will only be necessary to develop the content and simply fill it with systems, and the cost of printing will become zero.
You can try to figure out what positive moments this will be displayed on the end user and whether it will be displayed at all. From my point of view, since the cost of production will be reduced, the manufacturer for the "same money" will be able to give a more functional product to be in demand in a competitive market.
Electronic books can also improve the efficiency of finding the necessary information. He pressed a couple of keys, entered the desired word and in a few seconds got the result, if any. Various bookmarks, discovery, from the point where he stopped last time books are also quite useful.
But why the e-book as a teaching material in this form is not very convenient? We live in the century of information technology and it would be foolish to not use them in the direction of learning.
What capabilities should e-textbooks have in addition to those listed above in order to make them useful for learning?
Opportunities that e-textbooks must have to be useful for learning
Often efficiency is enhanced by collaboration. Imagine a situation where a teacher leads a lesson, being physically far away from you. On the computer screen you can see the slides of the presentation shown to them, for example via the Internet. And you follow the course of the lesson in your textbook, which is also available via the Internet from any device that has access to the network and browser. The lesson comes to an important point when the coach asks to pay attention to some points, makes a note on his slides, and you see this remark in your textbook. In addition, you are also free to add your notes and notes. They remain and remain with you until you change or delete them.
Now let's try to look a little differently. Imagine that an electronic textbook is not an electronic book in the sense in which we have reviewed it above, but a software product with a certain functionality. For many people, the efficiency of learning material depends on their interest in the subject of study in the first place, and in the process of learning in the second. At first, it is obviously not possible to influence immediately, but with the second one you can work very well. Not all material is equally well perceived after reading the text, albeit with the addition of graphs or tables. Software tools allow you to add various visualization tools written. These can be video clips (adding any media content can significantly increase the space occupied on disks or memory cards, but the current level of development of information storage systems and their relatively low cost can not worry too much about this), screenshots, pictures, animations and much another. What can be improved? One of the options may be a situation in which the graph displays some information and contains text annotations. Technologies allow you to display not the entire graph at once, as in ordinary images, but as you read the annotations. This will be more obvious, especially in situations where the graphics contain a lot of information. The next step may be the ability to change parameters with automatic rebuilding of the diagrams, to view the results with other input values.
New or important terms are highlighted with a different design, and pressing the finger or hovering the mouse displays its meaning in a pop-up window.
In technical courses for IT-professionals, when studying technologies, the so-called emulations can be a good example, allowing you to do the steps described in the task to configure a specific component of the system, etc. The student simply “clicks” the mouse over the necessary elements of the emulated system. This, of course, is not a real system, but no longer a bare theory; the associative memory will work. You do not have to configure demanding virtual machines, which may not always be at hand.
And how to control the assimilation of the material? Of course, questions for self-control and verification tasks. There is nothing easier than to implement such a system in the program, especially now there are analogues. After the end of the module or chapter, the learner may be asked questions for a self-test with “intelligent” memorization of results, i.e. when performing tests or independent work, the system will automatically issue questions on topics that “subside” from the student. I did not answer correctly on the topic - here are two more questions from the same field. After testing, the program will show your results on each topic with recommendations on what needs to be “tightened up” and what is in order.
Work with electronic textbooks in the IT world
For the IT world, there is another nuance that must not be forgotten - the information market is changing rapidly, and it often happens that books do not have time to reach the release date of a new product or functional update. With electronic textbooks easier, you can quickly update via the Internet. The methodological material will show the changes and the student will be able to quickly get up to date. I still have beautiful and big textbooks on technology on the shelf, which have now changed a lot, and some are even outdated, although only about five years have passed. And it’s a pity to throw away such books, but they don’t carry any information load, and they stand in the background, creating a cozy interior for the IT person.
For my part, I believe that such textbooks will also be very smoothly integrated into distance learning systems. Thereby, expanding their methodological potential. But this is a topic for a separate article.
In conclusion, I want to make a small summary. So, if we consider an electronic textbook not as a reading book, but as a professional tool for effective learning, both in the classroom and as an independent one, then my opinion is that this is a very promising direction.
Both for work and for the sake of self-development, I try to use modern technologies. In training, they have great potential. It is difficult to disagree that such systems will cost more than ordinary electronic benefits, because will require more intellectual work to implement. But on the other side of the scale lies knowledge, and in most cases they cannot be expressed in monetary terms.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/175843/
All Articles