Want "PROOF" of a Real Conspiracy ? Try to get an E-Textbook

I could not find a forum for educational conspiracies. Boy, speaking of oxy-morons !

I have been an advocate of the e-textbook since I was in school; no, wait we haven't had computers that long.

But, I do think I see where they would be very useful. The City of Hackleburg, Al. which was distroyed in the recent storms has issued laptops to their students rather than purchase books this year.

Now lets explore what others think and why the e-textbook has not yet in wider use.

Platform fragmentation remains yet another impediment to e-textbook adoption. As the four major digital textbook publishers — Cengage, Pearson, Wiley, and McGraw-Hill — push for more dynamic experiences stuffed with audiovisual content, the question of platform support becomes increasingly relevant. Will an e-textbook work on your Kindle as well as your laptop? Will it be accessible from the HP Touchpad you picked up on the cheap? Do you have to have an open Internet connection to access the material? Depending on the e-textbook vendor, these answers vary, and they’re not always clear up-front.

Even with this, we have some who are going ahead.

.

Some impetus for change is coming from the top down. In a rare all-or-nothing effort, Daytona State College is in the midst of a transition to 100 percent digital course material in a bid to drive down textbook prices. And influential institutions like Stanford University and the University of Michigan now run e-book rental programs

I think this issue should be brought up more when the politicians want to cut education funding.

I, for one, have always maintained that we MUST build more schools or we WILL build more prisons !

Why was "proof" put in quotation marks? Do you not believe that you posted any proof?

reply to post by Elsek


You can never prove a real conspiracy.

reply to post by hdutton

I, for one, have always maintained that we MUST build more schools or we WILL build more prisons !

I have bad news for you buddy, schools these days ARE prisons, i'm not being cute, they are ran pretty much the same way and our children are treated like criminals with absolutely no rights within there walls.

reply to post by hdutton

what really irks me even more, is that e-books cost just about the same as a hard-cover book cost!!!!! No paper, no printing costs, almost no distribution costs, yet an a-book is more expensive than a paper-back. I can't figure that one out, and then I have an issue too with their digital rights. I have bought some, and then, bang, some software update, and "sorry, you can't read this book", after I paid a lot of money for it!!!!!

I fully appreciate the beauty of e-books, I can carry thousands of books on my iPad on my travels, yet I can only carry one or 2 on my travels, but unless I drop my paper book in the toilet or something, it doesn't get destroyed by something as simple as a software-update.

I have 2 geology textbooks that I still can't read, even with all the technical support of the publishers!!!!, and then some books that I couldn't read after a software update (even with help from the publishers, etc), and THEN they wonder why there is a huge demand for versions of those books without the DRM.

reply to post by Elsek


It got your attention, didn't it ?

Line two speaks for tiself.

reply to post by hdutton


I think it has everything to do with money. If e-textbooks became available then they are open to piracy and would dip into the outrageous income generated from textbooks.

reply to post by hdutton


Is that your explanation for your illiteracy?

reply to post by Hellhound604


I can't help but agree with some on this point.

Of course, it largely depends upon your point of view as to the value of an education.

Atleast a kid can quit, can't do that in prison; and they can look forward to getting out in 12 years.

Originally posted by josh2009s
reply to post by Elsek

 

You can never prove a real conspiracy.

false you can look how many were proven.. and what u want the feds to say yah its a conspiracy, symbolizm is everywere in front of you to yet they denyit... use common sense

reply to post by hdutton

I, for one, have always maintained that we MUST build more schools or we WILL build more prisons !

Have to disagree with this last statement. If we build more schools we will be building more prisons.

Underground History Of American Education.

The above link is by Mr. John Gatto, who has been named Teacher of the Year for both New York City and State. He has spoken at the UN the White House and has spoken in many foreign countries, a very popular speaker.

His book will show the error in your thinking here, very clearly. Homeschool them before it is too late and your child is watching LG15 on YouTube.

reply to post by Helious


On car trips my wife and I try to guess - school or prison.

If you ignore the barbed wire I get about 60% right (most of the time the watch towers can give it away). Of course there are the schools WITH barbed wire and so you can always get them wrong....

what really irks me even more, is that e-books cost just about the same as a hard-cover book cost!!!!! No paper, no printing costs, almost no distribution costs, yet an a-book is more expensive than a paper-back.

reply to post by Hellhound604


Have to agree with you there! Two of my textbooks for this semester are e-books and they cost MORE than my actual text books. I can use them this semester but when the class is over, so is my access to the text. Fortunately, they aren't for classes that I'll need to be able to refer back to the text later on. I'm all for e-texts because I think it's the right thing to do for the environment but limited access doesn't make sense to me at all and at least you can sell an actual book back to the book store. I should try to sell the e-book back just to see how loud they laugh at me...

With that said, I think e-texts are great and the way to go, but things need to change before they become a major part of education.

Double post

reply to post by Elsek


I believe it has been proven on this thread as well as many others.



There is no real singular explaination for illiteracy, or ignorance for that matter.

As for "my illiteracy".

I try to be sure the brain is running before engaging the mouth, but sometimes the clutch slips.

reply to post by shadowreborn89


If it is proven, it is no longer a conspiracy! Use some grammatical skills next post.

reply to post by josh2009s


I like how you posted in this thread only to argue about the definition of a word and insult the OP without actually contributing anything meaningful...

As for the OP: I think there are a few good reasons E-Textbooks aren't as popular as they could be.
There are a lot of times when you need a textbook in a class or a lab, and you can't expect everyone to have a laptop. If a publisher was to only put out E-Textbooks, the people who don't have laptops to carry around would be screwed. In a college setting, it would be ok to sell both physical and digital copies of textbooks. However, if you're in a chemistry lab or something similar, I don't think anyone wants to put their $2k macbook next to a few beakers of liquid.

In high schools, you would have to provide the laptops for everyone, which far outweighs the benefit of saving money on books. Besides that, you can't expect kids to be responsible with laptops and stay off facebook, youtube, etc...

In the Tertiary Institution I work at there is a drive (from the top) to steer towards a paperless library. I am disturbed about this because a lot of knowledge will be lost, a lot of older books and journals will be thrown out (many have already, bolstering my personal library!) and having been through nearly a year of earthquakes with intermittent power outages I find this reliance on electronic media unsettling. Plys our infrastructure can't handle to well enough yet.

Sure, E-books and journals can be handy, but I find that I always print off an article if I want to read it.

Originally posted by TheSnowman
reply to post by josh2009s

 

I like how you posted in this thread only to argue about the definition of a word and insult the OP without actually contributing anything meaningful...

As for the OP: I think there are a few good reasons E-Textbooks aren't as popular as they could be.
There are a lot of times when you need a textbook in a class or a lab, and you can't expect everyone to have a laptop. If a publisher was to only put out E-Textbooks, the people who don't have laptops to carry around would be screwed. In a college setting, it would be ok to sell both physical and digital copies of textbooks. However, if you're in a chemistry lab or something similar, I don't think anyone wants to put their $2k macbook next to a few beakers of liquid.

In high schools, you would have to provide the laptops for everyone, which far outweighs the benefit of saving money on books. Besides that, you can't expect kids to be responsible with laptops and stay off facebook, youtube, etc...

Read the second post. I wasn't arguing the definition of a word, I was answering a questing that very much so had to do with the thread. I like how you flame me with no factual basis. As for insulting the OP: how?

reply to post by josh2009s


Sorry, guess you weren't insulting the OP, just somebody else who replied. Either way, you just flamed somebody for his grammar and still never posted anything on the actual topic... Guess I should've double checked who you replied to and you should've contributed to the actual topic Fair nuff?