The history of digital reading in a fascinating one and I believe exploring its development arc helps predict the trends that may lie ahead. Thinking about what worked early on – meaning what was read in digital form – use cases where search, find, and quick read were the primary means of interacting with the content, such as encyclopedias and reference works, directories and other data driven compendia.
A stir was created recently when Sourcebooks announced the delay of the ebook version of a brand new title for fear of cannibalizing print sales. CEO Dominique Raccah said, “Hardcover books have an audience, and we shouldn’t cannibalize it,” adding, “It doesn’t make sense for a new book to be valued at $9.99.” Read the rest of this entry »
The first two parts of this series, Disruption and Generation On-Demand, explored my own personal content consumption disruption and traced it through the seismic shift in my reading, listening, and watching habits. My experience seems to align with the generational experience of content at one’s fingertips, on-demand. I called this phenomenon Generation On-Demand because this generation has grown up with and expects that everything and anything (content) be available to them, however, whenever, and wherever they want.
Disruption is the first part of a 3-part series on the zeitgeist of the digital era and the significant impact it has on publishing and all other content businesses. Disruption is personal as I look at my own content consumption over the years and document its transformation. There are no answers in part 1, just the facts as I understand them and the questions they spur.
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In 2006 The Smithereens did something really unique – they did a covers album. Actually, they covered an album. The Smithereens recorded the Beatles breakthrough album, Meet The Beatles, from the first track through the last. Meet the Smithereens is a fun romping and wonderful re-imagining of the spirit of the early Liverpool Beatles as heard through the power-pop chords and Marshall amps of New Jersey’s Smithereens.
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Mike Shatzkin
on Mar 23rd, 2010
@ 6:08 am:
Very thoughtful and original post. You make a critical point that textbooks matched the ecosystem of learning: one class moving at a constant speed from a common starting point to a common ending point. And clearly, digital change enables our learning materials, at least, to be much more nuanced than that.
[Reply]
Chris Cosner
on Mar 24th, 2010
@ 12:38 pm:
Thank you for this post.
Re: “The basic assumption of each text is that students all come in at or near the same level and leave at or near the same level.”
Having taught a foreign language from various textbooks, I can say that there is no class in which everyone is assumed to be at exactly the same level, though it is perhaps always a quixotic hope. The teacher inevitably makes adjustments for as many students as possible. FL textbooks are designed to be used in precisely this way. Many include sets of questions in the introduction to help the student determine what to work on, as well as tests at the end of chapters. Students naturally learn to work with the textbook at their own pace. A good teacher expects more from advanced students and recognizes real progress in the less advanced students.
I’m not sure there is anything earth-shattering a digital book can bring to *this aspect* of the textbook. It is up to the author to create a pedagogically sound design, and up to the teacher to coach the students on how to use the textbook.
One way a digital approach might address the problem of different levels of ability is a kind of rental or buy-in to a whole set of textbooks, so the student is free to move forwards and backwards through the material preceding and subsequent to the class.
But even this may be resisted by educators. After all, the student is always free to go to the library for more material, or to work with a tutor if they are behind. The whole point of a class is to be working together on a subject, to be on the same page. That motivates less advanced students to catch up, and it helps the ‘advanced’ students to solidify material of which they may not yet have a perfect grasp.
[Reply]
The iPad: Gateway Drug to Digital Learning? « Black Plastic Glasses
on May 5th, 2010
@ 3:46 am:
[...] my last post, What’s Next in Digital Reading I explored my notion that there are three kinds of reading; extractive: immersive, and pedagogic. [...]
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on May 14th, 2010
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[...] an ardent reader I was interested in the three kinds of reading described in What’s Next in Digital Reading? (found via Interstitial [...]
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on Sep 12th, 2010
@ 6:14 pm:
[...] Schnittman of OUP has an interesting post in which he discusses three types of digital reading: extractive, immersive and pedagogic. It is [...]