Electronic books, reading rooms, book readers - as they are just not called.When you take an e-book in your hands and you begin to realize it, it is easy to get confused, whether it is a book (because it is real) or a device for reading books.
Exterior
The paper book itself performs an advertising function. You carry it, hold it on the table, or, especially, read it - the book turns to you with text, to the rest - with a cover. Often at a party we look at the bookshelves in order to understand what kind of person we are visiting, who he really is, what he lives for. In the article “Ny-Style Books” , Motoko Rich writes the following:
Once, when New Yorker Bindu Wiles was traveling about her business on the subway, her attention was attracted by the image on the cover of a book read by a woman sitting opposite: a dark silhouette of a girl's head against a bright orange background.
The reader was about 45 years old - about the same as Bindu herself, and a twisted yoga mat protruded from her bag. All this brought Bindu to the idea of ​​the possible similarity of their tastes, so she tried to read the title of the book and the name of the author: Chris Cleave, “Little Bee”. In the pocket of Bindu Wiles, who is completing graduate school in documentary prose at Sir Lawrence College in Bronxville, lay the iPhone, and with his help she immediately ordered this book to herself in the online store.
If you do not want to show others what you read, there is always a reliable way. A newspaper, a sheet of paper or cardboard, a regular cover for a book — and that’s all, and no one will see the cover. There are also more interesting options, like the project “Antibooks”, which represents book covers made with talented, sparkling humor. ')
What does an electronic book reader look like from the outside? Like a book on which they pulled a gray cover. In form and behavior, you can guess what you are reading, but it is completely incomprehensible what you are reading. Perhaps, on future models there will be special attachments for the dust jacket (like pieces of paper inserted into a DVD / Blu-Ray box), perhaps the second screen will look at the world, show the cover (and even advertising) to others. So far this is not and the whole impression is a monochromatic rectangle.
Phenomenon
The e-book is not a virtue, not a threat, it is a symmetrical response to the era, the rapid obsolescence of information. Can we say that e-books have become a phenomenon, not a toy for geeks? In my opinion, you can. December 26 last year, the online store "Amazon" said that on Catholic Christmas, for the first time in its work history, sales of electronic books exceeded sales of paper . Book readers, in Osvnovnoye, are divided into two classes: for reading fiction and reading newspapers and scientific literature. So far, these classes can be divided by price and screen size. So, the latter include Amazon Kindle DX (9.7-inch display), Sony Reader Daily Edition (PRS-900) (7.1-inch display) and Apple iPad (9.7-inch display). For everyday reading and carrying with them, more compact readers on 5-6 inch displays are more convenient. One of the most interesting applications, in my opinion, could be the use of electronic books in education.
In education
Two (known to me) programs of e-books in education should start this year approximately simultaneously in Donetsk, Ukraine and in the state of California, USA.
The basis of the Ukrainian program will be the Pocketbook 901 - the brainchild of the Ukrainian-Taiwan company PocketBook Global. According to a March 25 press release , “an electronic textbook is expected to go on sale by the beginning of the new school year.” Price, unfortunately, is not reported. It is only known that "electronic copies of textbooks - <will cost 10-15 UAH (1.3-1.9 USD)".
In the California program announced by Arnold Schwarzenegger, neither the device nor its price are known yet. However, the target amount of spending on textbooks is known - 350 million USD per year (excluding the prepressing of materials by teachers). It is his governor who is trying to defeat him, reducing the state budget deficit. The program is scheduled to start in August, then high school students will get online access to mathematical and scientific materials.
Between two books
I tried to imagine the difference between the e-book and the usual textbook today .
The benefits of the textbook:
tactile;
durable;
the possibility of marks in the text;
full color.
Parity:
reading due to reflected light;
there is a table of contents;
do not know how to play video;
no interactivity;
You can hit a classmate.
The advantages of e-books:
search by text;
stores many texts;
changes the font size;
weighs little;
plays audio;
promptly updated.
From this small comparison, it can be seen that there is nothing left for e-books to complete the replacement of traditional textbooks. Moreover, if you take a device like an iPad as a textbook, then “video and interactivity” are taken into account for an electronic device (but on an iPad, an IPS screen, which is a controversial issue for children to constantly watch).
Unsuccessful experience
While in Ukraine and in California they are making plans for electronization of school textbooks, at the University of Texas they conducted an experiment on engineering students, mathematicians, and others, entrusting them with 1000 devices. 200 000 USD was spent on this program, however, 42% of students were dissatisfied with electronic books, 23% were undecided, and 35% supported the initiative. "About half of the students bought printed versions of books, confirming that the Internet generation also likes to rustle pages."
Development
E-books have where to develop? Of course! Let's rely on the current functionality of computers, think about where the reader can grow further.
Font size
The function of changing the font size is an amazing and magical property that is not subject to printed books. If you remember, we all start with books with children's large print. For the poorly seeing, this “childhood” may not end.
Speech synthesizer
Sadly, someone with a vision is not lucky at all. And then the e-book can read the text. Probably even simple command book management will be understood "by ear".
Boring pictures
Not all pictures are boring, old illustrations, for example, in biology or anatomy, were made intelligently and carefully. But as they say, “it’s better to see once than to hear a hundred times.” It is better to watch the video once, as the mycelium on the roots of trees form mycorrhiza and work in symbiosis, than a hundred times to look for an air-boletus in the field.
Notes
From childhood I was taught to handle books carefully. Therefore, only recently I began to take notes in the margins. Electronic books allow you to leave a note to any letter of the text, to link them together, to shuffle them - to analyze the book.
Magical transformations
What is easier to build a graph of a function or calculate a function by points of a graph. Or, as it will be visually pull the equilateral triangle, turning it into an isosceles or rectangular. It is easier to understand the sine and cosine on it alive ( an example of problems of understanding ).
Social graphs
Who said that a social network can only be modern? No, by correspondence, places of visits, meetings documented in the literature, you can build a social network of any historical segment (the newer, the more accurate, of course). For example, dating social group "Decembrists".
Geology on the fingers
There are no problems to impose historical maps on modern ones, to scale back and forth, to turn drawings into a quasi-volume map. Try what a crustal shift means, what consequences (earthquake, tsunami, volcanic eruption) can cause an impact in one place or another.
One can fantasize further almost indefinitely, but the general idea should already be clear: what we used to comprehend from pictures and slides, tried to imagine, much can be visualized, shown visually and interactively.
Still a book?
But will such a new book remain a book? In its original understanding. Hardly. This text - or even hypertext - will not be a complete work. Due to cross-references, additions, extended notes, etc., such a work, like the Internet, will never be completed. And even from artificial deadlocks there is always an exit with the “Back” button.
... they did not even know that I should not be there <in a wolf pack>.
So modern children, having become acquainted with an e-book in childhood, can hardly imagine that it should not be. Look, on the example of “ Alice in Wonderland ”, what can already be done with the book:
The publisher of this colorful disgrace - in the book are painted drawings of Sir John Tenniel - a startup Atomic Antelope . Not a big publishing house, not book business professionals, no. People who were at the right time in the right place and did not hesitate to use brains.
I am confident that at such a pace one can write notes soon, highlight pieces of text, share them with friends, vote for interesting passages or opinions . Yes, in general, dissolve the controversy on the topic of why in this stanza the size exceeded the volume of the poem to be analyzed or the text exceeded several times. If there is a limitation in technology today, then it is not tomorrow, human habits change more slowly. But having mastered this social life, life in the information flow , children will probably take a different look at the world, their imagination and thinking will be able to develop in their own way, in a special way.