首页
外语
计算机
考研
公务员
职业资格
财经
工程
司法
医学
专升本
自考
实用职业技能
登录
外语
Textbooks’ Digital Future E-books may be replacing hardbound versions in college classrooms. Harold Elder is not your ty
Textbooks’ Digital Future E-books may be replacing hardbound versions in college classrooms. Harold Elder is not your ty
admin
2013-08-22
38
问题
Textbooks’ Digital Future
E-books may be replacing hardbound versions in college classrooms.
Harold Elder is not your typical Apple fan. Yet the 58-year-old University of Alabama economics professor pre-ordered an iPad to make sure he had one of the first ones. The device is "something that I’ve been waiting for years, " he says. And not, to be clear, merely for reasons of gadget(器具)desire. "It really has the possibility of making the learning experience much richer, " says Elder, who is considering testing a new iPad-ready digital textbook in his introductory microeconomics course in the fall of 2010.
"Richer" is certainly the right word to use. App developers aren’t the only ones who greeted the iPad’s release with gratitude and optimism. The textbook industry, too, sees it as a way to attract customers away from the used-book market, boost profits, and help students learn better. It’s a crucial moment for a segment of the publishing industry that has stubbornly resisted change. Thanks in large part to the iPad and an expected rush of competitor slates(平板电脑), that resistance is collapsing.
Of course, it won’t happen overnight. Textbooks today are still bought and sold in much the same way they’ve always beeni as ink-and-paper objects assigned by professors and purchased by students in campus bookstores. "It’s a slow-moving pharmaceutical(制药的)market, " says Matt Maclnnis.the CEO of Inkling, a startup working on digital textbooks. "The professor writes a prescription, and the student goes to fill it." It may be slow-moving, but it’s highly profitable. While McGraw-Hill Education’s earnings fell by 14% in 2009 because of the recession, college textbook sales actually increased.
But just ask any journalist or musician! technology has a way of laying siege to comfortable industries. And the iPad may be the first of many barbarians(野蛮人)at the gate. Apple sold 3 million of the devices in its first three months, and now competitors, reportedly including Google, Hewlett-Packard, and Amazon, are preparing rivals. Educators and students are enthusiastic about them; at least three colleges, including the Illinois Institute of Technology, will offer free iPads to incoming students. But what will they put on them besides Bejeweled and Facebook?
There are already digital textbooks available, and their numbers are expected to grow: according to Simba Information, which provides data and research on the media industry, they represent less than 2% of textbook sales today, but will reach 10% by 2012. But in 2010 the offerings were pretty scarce. CourseSmart, a San Mateo, Calif., company collectively owned by five of the biggest textbook publishers, has 6, 000 educational titles for sale in digital format. But its electronic books are little more than scanned versions of printed works. A CourseSmart e-book includes some neat functions, like search capability and digital note-taking, but for the most part.it has few advantages over a traditional textbook other than weight and price.(CourseSmart books usually cost less than half the price of a new printed book.)
That’s where a company like Inkling comes in. Inkling, a 20-person San Francisco startup, and its competitors— including New York City’s ScrollMotion—are working with the textbook publishers to bring their books onto the iPad, iPhone.and other future devices. The aim, says Inkling’s Maclnnis.is to harness all the advantages of a multitouch, Web-enabled slate.That means chemistry students won’t just see an illustration of a benzene(苯)moleculei they’ll spin and rotate a three-dimensional model of one. Biology students won’t just read about the cardiovascular system; they’ll see video of a beating heart, narrated by a world-class heart surgeon.
Interactivity, though, is only part of the story. Bringing texts onto a digital platform provides an opportunity to make the book as social as the classroom. With Inkling’s technology, for instance, a student can choose to follow another’s "note stream, " or view a heat map of the class’s most-highlighted passages. Professors get real-time information on how much of the reading assignment the class actually did, or whether a particular review problem is tripping up large numbers of students. All that comes on top of the cost savings: even these advanced digital textbooks will cost less than their print equivalents(with most of them in the $ 99 range)and some will even come "unbundled, " allowing students to buy the individual chapters they need most for a small fraction of the cost of a full textbook.
Textbook publishers stand to lose some revenue if individual chapter purchases catch on, but they hope to more than offset(抵消)the loss by attracting new customers. Big publishers like McGraw-Hill, Pearson, and Cengage are locked in a longstanding battle against the used-textbook market, which now totals about $2.2 billion, according to Simba.and from which they earn no revenue. Online textbook-rental companies like Chegg. com offer lower prices than the publishers, and reach a wide customer base. But traditional publishers think technology will be their salvation. There’s no such thing as a "used" e-book, and digital textbooks are the center of a whole ecosystem of services—such as homework-management systems and video-capture technology for recording lectures—that publishers hope will be profitable. "We’re becoming a software service company instead of a textbook company, " says Peter Davis, president of McGraw-Hill Education.
But what about the students? Are manipulable molecules just digital eye candy(华而不实)or real improvements to the learning process? "Technology is never the silver bullet, but it can sometimes be the bullet, " says Diana Rhoten.an education researcher and cofounder of Startl, which invests in innovative education companies. She notes that different students have different learning styles. Some are just fine reading text, while others prefer audiovisual aids, and kinesthetic(动觉的)learners need to interact with something. "In a digital book, I have all of those types available to me, " she says. "That is huge. Customization is going to have a great impact on learning." And if it means getting an A in organic chemistry, paying $ 500 for an iPad seems like a smart choice.
Compared with a traditional textbook, a CourseSmart e-book has a huge advantage in______.
选项
A、its rich content
B、its format
C、weight and price
D、its versions
答案
C
解析
根据题干关键词a CourseSmart e-book,a traditional textbook定位到第五段末句:A CourseSmart.e-book includes some neat functions.like search capability and digital note-taking,but for the most part, it has few advantages over a traditional textbook other than weight and price.由该句可知,CourseSmart的一本电子书有一些很棒的功能,例如搜索功能和数码笔记功能,但是在很大程度上,和传统书本相比,它的优点除了重量和价格之外别无他物。C)项符合文意。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/Kr07777K
0
大学英语四级
相关试题推荐
Asystematicapproachtothejobhuntandacareerchangeinvolvesknowingwhatskillsyouenjoyusing,determining【C1】______y
Aninternationalcommitteeofdoctorssaysthatthenumberofcasesofbraindiseasesindevelopingcountriesisrising.Thedoc
Inmanycountries,suchasFrance,Greece,andJapan,itisoftenmoredifficultforstudentstopassthecollegeentranceexams
TheWriter’sLifeAsurveyofBritain’syouthfoundthatmanyaspire(立志)tobecomewriters.Theyclearlydon’tknowhowhar
Oneoftheearliestchangesexperiencedbynewlymodernizingcountriesisthereductionofinfectiousdiseasethediffusionofp
InformingtheWorldEveryday,thenewsoftheworldisrelayedtopeoplebyover300millioncopiesofthedailypapers,ov
Studentshavebeencomplainingmoreandmoreaboutstolenproperty.Radios,cellphones,bicycles,pocket【B1】______,andbooksh
A、Attendabusinessparty.B、GotravellingtoShanghai.C、GotoShanghaionbusiness.D、LeaveShanghaiforbusiness.C行动计划题。对话开篇
Itispossibletolearnsomethingaboutmusicthroughbriefcontactwithit,butwithoutthebenefitofformalinstruction.Peop
随机试题
吴茱萸汤和理中丸二方组成中均含有的药物是()
转移支出对生产和就业的影响是()的。
在试运行阶段,人工与计算机数据对比时,要进行的主要工作包括()。
以下各项中,()的说法是错误的。
位于A省某市区的一家建筑企业为增值税一般纳税人,在B省某市区提供写字楼和桥梁建造业务,2019年3月具体经营业务如下:(1)按照工程进度及合同约定,本月取得写字楼业务含税收入3300万元并开具了增值税专用发票。该建筑企业将部分业务进行了分包,本月支付分包
以下()为不文明行为。
①这般赏景观致,自是别有风味②如果说,一个游遍世界的人必然见多识广,那么,一个好读书、勤读书的人,一定博闻广识,而且必豁达从容而知书达理③一个人要走遍世界很难,即使勉强走到了,大多也不过是走马观花④不仅如此,在书籍中旅游,你更可以让时光回流,浏览过往
苏联作家华西里耶夫描写卫国战争的小说是_______。
若定义DAT DD 12345678H,则(DAT+1)字节单元中的数据是( )。
Writeanessayofabout400wordsonthefollowingtopic:TravelInthefirstpartofyourwriti
最新回复
(
0
)