The future of interactions in classrooms
Now, there must be a better way for students to be in classes. A way to offer them the ability to take efficient handwritten notes and to more efficiently use the books and notes they are buying at a very high price every semester. At the same time, we want them to keep a copy of their corrected homework, in a digital format, which they can refer to in the future. This will all change with the eBook, but not before the device goes through a few iterations of improvement first as the first few trials were not very successful. Out of the many benefits listed, imagine not having to carry up to 20lbs of textbook to school, imagine having access to your textbooks in a single device, eliminating the “I forgot my book at school” argument for not doing a certain assignment. Imagine also the possibility to have your textbook updated in real time as typos, mistakes in formulas and new diagrams are prepared by the publisher. You would not buy the book anymore; you would “rent” it for a year. Imagine all the trees that would be saved...
Since its first introduction, the eBook has been evolving quickly; in visual quality of reading, size, battery life, capacity, and usability but a few items still need to be addressed. With the many trials run in schools for eBook readers, the complaints were quite often the same. The lack of notation tools is a key problem for most students. The other issues won’t be discussed as we are in an exponential revolution, which will cover all those issues on a very short timeframe. Some of the rumoured eBooks coming soon on the market should be addressing this main key point, offering touch screen with the ability to write with a pen. Some naysayers are saying we’ve had this technology for years with tablet PCs, and in some aspects they are right. The difference here is a very adapted product, which actually won’t allow the students to “waste” time on Facebook and such during classes but which will allow them to have quick, cheaper and more efficient access to all their textbooks in one single device.
Then after that, as the technology keeps evolving, eBooks will become more than just a Christmas gift you give to the techie in your family, it will become a device used by everyone, offering any type of on-demand live updated reading, including videos, sound and interactive content. The same device will be used for bed time story with the kids, for some novel reading in bed and the next morning as a device to read the latest newspaper. No more waste, just more content, available faster and updated in real time from all over the world.