The Journal

EBooks and eTexts are the future of education, but until technology reaches a plateau it is too early to make a complete conversion.

Schools are rushing to this new technology to reduce cost and environmental impact while increasing availability and accuracy of textbooks. The three most popular readers are Amazon's Kindle, Jinke's Hanlin reader series and Sony's eReader, but there are others out there. These electronic devices weigh roughly about two or three pounds, range from $250 to $600, have screens about the size of a paperback and have a memory of up to 50 megabytes. They also have expandable memory capable of storing countless books, without having space issues.

If Webster University switches to the option of eTexts, they will need to consider those who don't have the money to spend on an electronic reader or laptop. This is a great concept, but it is still in the developmental stages.

ETexts range in price, but they average out to about $80 per download. This is considerably cheaper if the student only needs the textbook for one semester, but evens out if they need them for multiple semesters. There is also the chance that a student would want to keep a textbook for reference in later classes.

Downloading and pulling up books, battery life and the amount of time a person would "own" a textbook are major concerns for this new technology. The average life of an eText is 180 days, after the student has to pay to re-download the textbook. This is a major inconvenience for classes that use the same textbook all year, or back-to-back classes such as English Composition I and II, which use half of the book per semester.

In the end, the publishers are still going to be making money hand over fist while students shell out big bucks for eBooks they can't even keep.

The adoption of this new technology has proved to be controversial in many schools throughout the United States.

Arizona State University is currently experimenting with the idea of converting, but there are quirks that have yet to be worked out. Instead of page numbers for the books there are access codes that have to be typed in. The codes are long and awkward to input because the 'alt' key has to be held down. But, these inconveniences pale when compared to other schools.

Cushing Academy, a boarding school in Ashburnham, Mass, has completely converted to Kindle and eBooks after finding out that the students were not using the library. The school has gotten rid of half of their print and paper books with the other half to be disposed of soon. The headmaster, Jim Tracy, has been compared to Hilter and called a snob, a spendthrift and a book-burner for this decision. Not all of the students are thrilled with the conversion, even though it has expanded the school library from 20,000 books to millions. The library has turned into more of a hangout spot rather than a center for studies and learning.

More locally, Northwest Missouri State University has been researching the latest trends of the eTexts and have found that students are interested in ways to bring the cost of school down. They are using Sony's eReader but still carry, sell and loan the traditional textbooks of print and paper.

There are many questions, doubts and concerns from the public and students. No matter which form of media that students learn from there will be criticisms from the opposing side. The publishing companies stand to make more money with the cost of printing and distributing the textbooks out of the way. For them it is a win-win. But it is the students who are still suffering. This will remain a problem until the publishers realize the people who are actually buying their products are on minimal budgets, and cannot always afford the latest and greatest in educational trends.

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