I still vacillate greatly on the issue of eBooks. My concern has less (and less) to do with the experience of reading. I greatly enjoy reading on my Kindle DX or iPad or iPhone or my netbook or most anything. I'm much more concerned about the long-term ramifications of DRM and content-lock-down (or editing) by corporations looking to monetize the reading experience even further. Great post on the LibraryThing blog hashing out the same concerns...

Ebooks get better, print not. | Off-topic | LibraryThing: "But I question how publishers and authors will respond when piracy assumes music-industry levels, and then worse. One solution would be a return to the physical. Another would be the imposition of ever harsher DRM. But the most likely result is that the book industry can't solve the problem, and we will gradually lose the 'middle' of the author community--the majority of authors who who aren't Steven King (who could live on non-book revenue), but aren't doing it just for the fun either."

I feel that we're at a major fork in the road. Of course eBooks will continue to gain popularity and adoption in this decade and will shortly outpace "real" books as the preferred mode of reading by the public (and in American schools). However, I hope we don't trade in rights for ease.

Socrates famously rejected the supposed importance of the written word(1) in the Phaedrus. I wonder what he would have had to say about blogs and twitter? David Weinberger has a post on a book which I've just put on my Wish List, The Coming of the Book. Looks fascinating from the quotes he's published:

Joho the Blog » [2b2k] Books: The early years: "I’m reading The Coming of the Book, by Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin (1958), who explain arrival of printed books with an impressive attention to fact-based detail. Amazing scholarship."

Maybe Socrates was right, after all. In any case, one of the main reasons I'm not using a textbook this year is because of the "institutionalization" of science-as-a-method that results from a rigidly composed amalgamation of information (2). Instead, I want my students to realize that science is not institutionalized or something done by professionals with post-docs. Instead, it's sometimes messy and often times can be done in our garages or backyards or bedrooms. I only have a few months of proper class-time with these 13 and 14 year olds(3). I don't want to spend precious moments of 43 minute class times having them memorize bold words in the name of standards. As Socrates observed in the Phaedrus: "And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they know nothing, and as men filled, not with wisdom, but with the conceit of wisdom, they will be a burden to their fellows.” Regardless, I still love my books (even the digital ones). -- 1 via Plato, of course 2 especially since I teach the wide ranging topic of physical science... basic chemistry and physics wrapped in one course like yin-yang. 3 Yet another reason I love the availability factor of email, Facebook, Twitter, blogs etc as I've actually done more quality "teaching" via text messages and FB wall posts compared to class lectures!

Dr Seuss is the Steve Jobs of books:

Green Eggs and Ham - Wikipedia: "Bennett Cerf, Dr. Seuss's publisher, wagered $50 that Seuss could not write a book using only fifty different words. The bet came after Seuss completed The Cat in the Hat, which used 225 words."

I had no idea. Cutting the fat works.

I'm still trying to reconcile Faulkner with my own existence at the behest of Larry McGehee. This particular admonition from Faulkner still haunts me:

It is my ambition to be, as a private individual, abolished and voided from history, leaving it markless, no refuse save the printed books; I wish I had enough sense to see ahead thirty years ago, and like some of the Elizabethans, not signed them. It is my aim, and every effort bent, that the sum and history of my life, which in the same sentence is my obit and epitaph too, shall be them both: He made the books and he died. - Letter to Malcolm Cowley (11 February 1949), quoted in William Faulkner : A Critical Essay (1970) by Martin Jarrett-Kerr, p. 46; also published in Selected Letters of William Faulkner (1978) by Joseph Blotner, p. 285

I need to write more. I'm guessing Faulkner would not have enjoyed Twitter, btw.

I'm terribly excited to head to the local bookstore to pick up Sam Kean's new book on the periodic table today. For some strange reason, I find the periodic table a fascinating symbol of humanity in our continuing attempts to understand the universe around us. There is much more than just chemistry wrapped up in its columns and rows. Maybe I've read too much Oliver Sacks. Nevertheless, I try to convey that sense of awe to my students. You can read more about Kean's book on this NPR segment about The Disappearing Spoon. Good stuff.

Exactly what I'm doing this year with my 8th Grade Physical Science students...

A Classroom Experiment: Ditching a Textbook - ProfHacker - The Chronicle of Higher Education: "I'll be replacing the traditional 'conflicting viewpoints' textbook, though, with materials gathered from a variety of resources: the web, the news media, the popular press, and more traditional scholarly venues. As the semester progresses, the students will take on some responsibility for determining course content."

I'm hoping guessing this will be a precipitous trend in the coming decade with a tipping point about 2-3 years out. My children will never know of dreaded back strain due to poorly conceived cookie cutter textbooks. Primary sources, love of reading and engaged critical thinkers will then thrive.

I'm working on our GriffinScience Text(s)book for next "year" (not sure why we call them school years...) and it's coming together nicely. We aren't going to be using a standard textbook for many reasons. Cost is one, but the assumption that science can be learned via a medium like a textbook is antithetical to the scientific endeavor. Instead, I'm writing everything (along with student work during the "year" that will be incorporated into the book) that will be the backbone of our class. Of course, the students will be doing most of the work and this is a labor of love to provide them with pointers. This isn't me emptying my head and asking them to memorize the facts I proclaim. Instead, this is more of a compass for their own studies of Physical Science. All of the excerpts in the book are from primary texts by scientists and in the public domain. This will all be public domain as well. I'll have it all out there on http://texts.griffinscience.com soon if you'd like to follow along and maybe learn a thing or two about your universe from the incredible young people with whom I'll be working. Here is the HTML outline that you can expand: > GriffinScience Textsbook Here is text file with the outline you can download:

> GriffinScience TextsBook.txt And here is an .rtf file you can open in Word or Pages or OpenOffice:

> GriffinScience TextsBook.rtf I'm also wrapping up on an mp3 version as well as an iPod/iPad/iTouch app (and hopefully Android as soon as I get into the App Builder beta since I don't have time to learn a new programming language after slogging through Objective-C this summer). I'll keep you posted on when those are in the App Store. More soon!

I would love to see a similar study done with textbooks and school books:

iPad and Kindle Reading Speeds (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox): "The iPad measured at 6.2% lower reading speed than the printed book, whereas the Kindle measured at 10.7% slower than print. However, the difference between the two devices was not statistically significant because of the data's fairly high variability."

Even though I don't plan on buying another eBook anytime soon, I don't place much importance on this study (and I use that word loosely since the data set was 32 people and there were many undefined variables not nailed down). Nonetheless, some people will point to this as yet another reason print is better than an iPad or Kindle, especially in the education world. We can't necessarily do that with this information, but it will provide good tidbits for cocktail party chats. Also, it's just interesting to see the difference in reader experiences, even in a small data set. In my current opinion, print is optimal at this stage in our human story because of these points made so well by Nathan Schneider. As a Middle School Teacher, I'll gladly assert all day that speed means nothing when it comes to reading. The key to a reading platform's success or failure is its ability to provide interaction (or get out of the way of that interaction). Now if only we could gauge critical interaction with texts in a test format that didn't involve shading in bubbles...

I never want to buy another "e" book from Amazon or Apple again. Don't mistake my intentions. I have an iPad. I love it. I have a Kindle DX. I love it as well (although I'm falling out of love with it because I do most of my Kindle reading on my iPad or iPhone or Asus eee netbook or Macbook Pro). However, this post (essay) summarizes the rising tension I've felt in my heart and brain the last two years as I've began the slow and admittedly painful process of digitizing my own cumbersome library (this profile in serious need of updating):

In Defense of The Memory Theater | Open Letters Monthly - an Arts and Literature Review: "Until these companies take seriously the needs and, above all, the rights of readers (the human beings, not the machines), they deserve ruthless suspicion. Just because the Kindle and iPad might seem to work relatively reliably now, and because Google tells itself ‘don’t be evil,’ we shouldn’t keep from entertaining darker, more paranoid, even Orwellian fantasies."

Well reasoned luddite ranting aside, the essay is full of inspiration for those of us looking to creatively resist the commercialization and commoditization of our own personal data. I'm off to rearrange my bookshelves. I've neglected my own Memory Theater for far too long in exchange for the ease of a googled life.