Irish School Books

dub_nerd

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I've done two university degrees in the last six years. In all that time I hardly read a single paper book. The academic institutions (which weren't Irish) made all their materials, including course books, available in common electronic formats. What's more they had no copy protection, so there was no requirement to view them only with proprietary readers etc. That allowed me to use my tablet and software of choice, with fancy features like automatically trimming margins to maximise screen real estate. I was able to carry dozens and dozens of books around on a tablet weighing less than a kilo.

Roll forward to now. I'm "giving back" by doing some maths grinds for a Leaving Cert student. The books are colossal. In fairness to the publisher, they are slightly ahead of the game by giving access to an electronic version of the book once you've purchased the dead tree version. But it's a proprietary e-reader, it's online only, and the quality is rubbish -- they've made it close to unusable in their attempts to lock it down against copyright infringement.

I'm wondering about two things. Is it legal to make a copy of a book that you own? I believe that it is legal in the USA, although I haven't seen anything definitive. Regardless of the legality, I've made a copy for my own use (which required a fair amount of software trickery). Would be nice to know if I can give it to my student, though. (Obviously they have their own legitimate copy of the dead tree version too).

On a wider note, I'm wondering how the situation is so archaic in Ireland. How can we possibly justify printing forest-loads of paper for schoolbooks each year when electronic formats could satisfy a great deal of need? I can only imagine there is an iron grip on the content rights on the parts of the large publishers. But surely the Department of Education could play a role here. I'm sure they must be involved in the commissioning of new books, so why can't they also produce them? They could save the environment, save vast amounts of money for parents, save the scam of old editions having to be discarded after minor revisions etc. It seems like a complete no-brainer.

I can't be the first person to think of this. I've no kids, but surely parents are jumping up and down at the silliness and expense of it all? Is there some sort of cosy cartel operating here?
 
surely parents are jumping up and down at the silliness and expense of it all?
Some schools have gone down iPad route and insist kids buy those. I'd be opposed to that. Many schools now do a book rental scheme covering many of the required books. Such works out fine for my kids.
 
Yes, there would certainly be some logistical issues with using eReaders. I think a general push to use them would see fantastically cheap models coming to the fore. No reason a usable eReader couldn't cost €20-€40 -- the cost of a single school book. A tablet is just a glorified portable display, and a 7-inch TFT tablet display can be had for under 20 USD from China, even without volume discounts. There are manufacturing bottlenecks with the larger display areas so we might be a couple of years away from something truly usable. But all the other specifications could be extremely low end on a mass market school tablet. Also, an ugly but robust school version could stop them being objects of desire, i.e. less breakable / thievable. I agree that a €500 iPad would be nuts, as well as sparking a fashion war.
 
I'm doing a diploma at the moment (it would be a post-grad if I has a degree) and everything is paper based. It's nuts.

I agree completely that kids should be using e-readers of some sort.
It's costly and environmentally damaging at the moment but more importantly it is not preparing students for how they will interact with knowledge in their working lives.
I remember hearing that if Microsoft kept issuing paper manuals with Windows they would have become the biggest paper based publisher in the world. How they just give you a scratchcard.
 
I believe that many schools who have embraced tablets for the past couple of years are now going to move away from them.

I know that my siblings purchased books as well as the tablets for their children as they felt that learning was not effective using tablets alone. Admittedly, they were financially in a position to do this.

I like technology and I love my iPhone etc, but I always print out material that I need to read. I will read newspapers etc online but I buy books, I don’t like reading these online.

Marion
 
In surveys many people say they prefer to read paper rather than electronic texts. However, learning studies of tablet users show that they learn about as effectively as those using traditional books. Personally, I've more or less given up reading anything other than electronic media. Being able to read in my preferred format on the right software is very important to me. Features like bookmarks help make an ebook as usable as a paper one. There are several other essential features plus a few -- like searchability -- that are improvements over traditional media. Unfortunately some of the devices with the best displays -- such as large format electrophoretic (e-ink) screens -- have some of the worst software, rendering them practically unusable for learning purposes. But I'd expect this to improve.
 
In surveys many people say they prefer to read paper rather than electronic texts. However, learning studies of tablet users show that they learn about as effectively as those using traditional books.
There was a recent study of 12 year olds where they were all given the same book to read. Half had a physical book and half an ebook. Memory retention was better among those who had a physical book.

Some people will be fine with an ipad, where others will have significant poorer performance than with a regular book. When it comes to studying, I find it a lot easier putting in a load of post-its and flicking between marked sections in a physical book.
 
That's why I think the reader software is crucial. If you can't do the equivalent of sticking in those post-its and flicking around then it fails the usability test.
 
There was a recent study of 12 year olds where they were all given the same book to read. Half had a physical book and half an ebook. Memory retention was better among those who had a physical book.

Some people will be fine with an ipad, where others will have significant poorer performance than with a regular book. When it comes to studying, I find it a lot easier putting in a load of post-its and flicking between marked sections in a physical book.
I'm dyslexic (amongst other things) so I've always found I retain knowledge I consume through audiovisual means better than that which I consume through printed means. I put it down to me using more of my brains processing power reading than other people do.
 
My comment was based on options where the material needs to be read, and comparing a real book vs an ebook. I find I also tend to learn better by hearing the subject matter than purely by reading.
 
There was a recent study of 12 year olds where they were all given the same book to read. Half had a physical book and half an ebook. Memory retention was better among those who had a physical book.

Some people will be fine with an ipad, where others will have significant poorer performance than with a regular book. When it comes to studying, I find it a lot easier putting in a load of post-its and flicking between marked sections in a physical book.

That would be an interesting study to read. Intuitively it feels like it ought to be correct. The environment is richer when it is a physical book, you have tactile information, specific visual association to a book that you wear and damage individually. That is before you even get to annotating with your own hand writing. The association between the environment and the topic is unique and you collaborate in forming it. Even where it is a loan book and you are constrained in the use you can make of it, it is still richer than any electronic means. When you read multiple texts through a single portal you are simply not getting the same level of interaction on any specific text, they lose their individual charm :)

(Confessions of a dedicated bibliophile who always annotated text books!)
 
I haven't seen the study, it came up in conversation around this topic with someone who had read it. It was partly the fact that when you have a book, you have a visual clue of roughly where in the book something happens, and that visual clue helps with remembering the sequence of events.
 
Not every book has a sequence of events. The expensive maths books I mentioned in the opening post don't. There is no doubt that paper and electronic media are different, but each has its pluses and minuses. We haven't talked about the many ways that ebooks can be better than print. The existing electronic version of these particular maths books contain additional animated sequences and short videos to enhance the learning experience.

But really, all of this is beside the point which is that a vast amount of expense and environmental impact could be avoided by having publicly funded ebook production. There is no point simply moving to ebooks and continuing to let publishers bilk the paying public. The experience is that publishers are only too delighted to save all the costs of paper book production and make even higher margins on ebooks. Inevitably these contain DRM mechanisms and proprietary formats that make it harder to use best-of-breed e-readers. Moving to ebooks is only part of the answer. The content itself should be publicly commissioned and distributed entirely free of charge.
 
Agreed dub_nerd. I'm a big fan of printed books for reading as well and really didn't like the experience of e-readers, but for school books it's hard to see the logic of providing both formats to students. The one thing I will say is that, although I don't have a breakdown of the costs, for our daughters' school, we're only paying once for the books, not twice. i.e. we're paying for the printed version and the digital version is provided free of charge. We're in a 3 year scheme with the school so I don't know this for certain but the package provided by the school implies this is the case and the cost certainly suggests the same. The physical books are for homework use only - not to be brought to school.
However as you rightly point out, were the school to ditch the printed versions you would expect a significant reduction in the costs.
 
...were the school to ditch the printed versions you would expect a significant reduction in the costs.
Only if the production of the books were taken public as well. Publishers would happily increase their margins on e-only books. I don't underestimate the task. An e-book still needs typesetting, though a set of standardised LaTeX templates would go a long way to managing this. There is plenty of relevant experience in academia. There is also the distribution infrastructure which would be required. I'd expect some up front costs, but don't see why the ongoing cost of administration shouldn't be less than a euro per book, which could easily be absorbed by the taxpayer.
 
Not every book has a sequence of events. The expensive maths books I mentioned in the opening post don't.
It may not have a sequence of events, but there is still an association that e.g. pythagoras is covered about a third of the way into the book. That can help with visualising what's there.

With regards publishing costs, the printng costs actually represent a surprisingly small percentage of the overall costs. One author was answering the question of why ebooks are not hugely cheaper than physical books, and put out some of the figures along the way. Now I can't find that. A breakdown of costs is not something the publishing houses are ever likely to produce voluntarily.
 
With regards publishing costs, the printng costs actually represent a surprisingly small percentage of the overall costs. One author was answering the question of why ebooks are not hugely cheaper than physical books, and put out some of the figures along the way. Now I can't find that. A breakdown of costs is not something the publishing houses are ever likely to produce voluntarily.

Would be very interested to see that breakdown if you come across it again. Some of the costs will also be distribution and retailers margin, which would mostly go away in the scheme I envisage.

Here is an article from the Guardian about the costs. They agree with you that the printing itself is not the major cost but the things that are -- paying the author, editing, and marketing -- would all be substantially reduced for publicly commissioned school books. Really, this scheme would just be taking advantage of the technology to cut out the middle men.
 
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