iPad.... iPap?

[Hal Itosis]

Quote: Originally Posted by tlarkin Text book companies have a huge racket going on, and I don't see them converting to digital copies any time soon. Why would they? Their business model currently would make them more money.

I'm sensing a pattern in your [iPad-related] posts, and unbound uncertainty seems to be the prevailing theme.

Interactive textbooks headed to iPad

My advice is... don't sell your AAPL stock just yet "any time soon."

[NovaScotian]

Quote: Originally Posted by tlarkin Text book companies have a huge racket going on, and I don't see them converting to digital copies any time soon. Why would they? Their business model currently would make them more money.

As a guy who taught engineering in three universities over a span of 40 years, I can only add "Yea Verily" to Tom's point. Further, I know several textbook authors; authors whose books were actually quite popular (as textbooks go) and they get peanuts for the effort. All of them agreed that one writes a textbook for reputation & resumé, certainly not for the money. Some years ago I wrote a long chapter (and drew all the figures it required) for a Mechanical Engineer's Handbook. Got paid $400 and a free copy of the book. Several years later, they asked me to revise it for the second edition for nothing. Didn't happen, so they just published the first version again and sent me a copy.

For my own subjects, I took pity on my students, prepared two volumes of extensive notes which I handed out, and ran a web site on the courses that included all the assignments, eventually their solutions (I made up new problems every year), exam solutions, and a forum. Those two volumes of notes with their examples, problems and solutions would easily have been published by a text book company (I was approached), but I didn't see the value in it. For one thing, students are very adept at finding errors, so over a period of years of use, I emended the notes, added new examples, etc. which I could not have done to a pair of (or one long) textbook(s).

A few years ago, MIT made the decision to launch their "Open Classroom" and in the long run, textbook publishers are going to go the way of the recording industry IMHO.

[cwtnospam]

There will no doubt be hold outs, but as fewer and fewer publications go to print there will be a tipping point where it just gets too expensive.

[tlarkin]

Well, to be fair I work in academia in a 1:1 so every high school student at my job has their own Macbook. You would think, now that we have 6,000 students with Macbooks we can stop buying text books. Wrong, we still buy them. The very few textbooks out there that are digital are such a super pain to install an maintain.

Let me give you some examples:

The software requires the CD/DVD, which is totally asinine. I am not going to hand out 6,000 CDs or DVDs to students. I am not going to burn copies when they lose them, and they will. So I had to package it up for network deployment by including an actual image of the disk in my package. Then go into the package contents and tell the app to point to itself for the resources.

Next we have DRM. If you want to purchase individual licensed books it is cheaper, if you want a site license, bulk license, or what they call a lab license, it costs more. They don't make it easy to deploy either. I gotta hack their product up and create disk images to deploy them. Then if the user wants to use them they have to authenticate the license online, which also causes issues.

The fact is, when it comes to University and K12 education in this country, they aren't going to change their business model for text books and if they do it won't be a simple way of doing it.

I got some students, a small amount, that take an advanced physics course over at the college. I have to install their ridiculous physics text book by hand because of licensing and how the product is designed.

Also, here is the biggest killer for the iPod/iPad. Every single digital text book we have (and we own licenses to about a dozen or so) runs off flash. No flash, no text book.

[Hal Itosis]

Quote: Originally Posted by tlarkin The software requires the CD/DVD, which is totally asinine. I am not going to hand out 6,000 CDs or DVDs to students. I am not going to burn copies when they lose them, and they will. So I had to package it up for network deployment by including an actual image of the disk in my package. Then go into the package contents and tell the app to point to itself for the resources.

iBooks [and possibly other sources] will solve all of that. Books will be downloaded, thus... no CD/DVD issue. Flash? Hahahahaha. Flash will not be an issue with newly digitized books.

--

I understand the 'any time soon' bit... but most people have no problem seeing the inevitability of it all. It's the future: from being lightweight, searchable, easily revisable (updatable) text... all with no cutting down trees. It's virtually a done deal. The "devil" is simply in the details. Like Amadeus said: it's all in my noodle... the rest is just scribbling and bibbling.

[cwtnospam]

True, although the iPad isn't a Flash killer. It's just the thing that makes it obvious to everyone that Flash is already out-dated.

[tlarkin]

Quote: Originally Posted by Hal Itosis iBooks [and possibly other sources] will solve all of that. Books will be downloaded, thus... no CD/DVD issue. Flash? Hahahahaha. Flash will not be an issue with newly digitized books. -- I understand the 'any time soon' bit... but most people have no problem seeing the inevitability of it all. It's the future: from being lightweight, searchable, easily revisable (updatable) text... all with no cutting down trees. It's virtually a done deal. The "devil" is simply in the details. Like Amadeus said: it's all in my noodle... the rest is just scribbling and bibbling.

Every single text book we have here that is digital runs in a web browesr app and is powered by flash. Every single one of them. If the developers keep doing it, they will still use flash. That is because most of them have some sort of interactive lessons with animations. Like all those technical drawings you would see in science books that would have different arrows pointing to different things, now it is all animated. Take Chemistry? Now actually see how atoms of a molecule flow in real time, and have interactive lessons on how to identify quantum numbers. There is a reason they use flash and I don't see them stopping.

Don't get me wrong I am all about no media to install software. I don't buy video games at stores anymore, I buy them through steam usually so I can download them anytime I want to.

The problem is, that business sides of things are the dinosaurs. They run it the old fashioned way and they aren't about to change their business model when it comes to text books. Do you think you need to buy a new text book on say English every year? Does the language change that much that you need to spend 10s or 100s of thousands on getting a new book? How about math?

A subscription based online license for a text book would be really efficient and ideal. It would allow them to also update the book online and correct their mistakes. Ever read how many mistakes get published in text books? However, when you look at that from a business stand point, the old people running the racket aren't going to accept change, even though it is inevitable. They want to make their money and they will keep doing so as long as they can, and perhaps forever.

[NovaScotian]

I've seen some impressive demonstrations of HTML5 that make me believe that Flash is not long for this world.

[tlarkin]

Quote: Originally Posted by NovaScotian I've seen some impressive demonstrations of HTML5 that make me believe that Flash is not long for this world.

I will believe that when developers stop using it. Personally, I could care less to be honest and I know most of my friends that do web development do not like flash. So maybe you are right.

[Jay Carr]

Quote: Originally Posted by tlarkin Text book companies have a huge racket going on, and I don't see them converting to digital copies any time soon. Why would they? Their business model currently would make them more money.

Two major reasons:
1) Colleges/Professors really like the idea of interactive books, so the content providers are pushing for it.
2) Printing costs are ridiculous. They can still charge $130 for a text book and just skip the printing costs. Since Textbook publishes basically have us trapped, they can get away with it, and make a whole bunch of money.

PS -- Oops, I was a page behind. Looks like Hal Itosis already covered this...

[cwtnospam]

Quote: Originally Posted by NovaScotian I've seen some impressive demonstrations of HTML5 that make me believe that Flash is not long for this world.

Like this one?

[Jay Carr]

Quote: Originally Posted by tlarkin A subscription based online license for a text book would be really efficient and ideal. It would allow them to also update the book online and correct their mistakes. Ever read how many mistakes get published in text books? However, when you look at that from a business stand point, the old people running the racket aren't going to accept change, even though it is inevitable. They want to make their money and they will keep doing so as long as they can, and perhaps forever.

Ha ha, that's very true. So, another question, what if colleges decide to use this system to self publish textbooks? My university already does minimal self publishing, I bet you could do just that much more with an iPad.

[NovaScotian]

I think Jay's got something. MIT, Harvard, and several other universities have in-house presses. If text book prices keep climbing and student demand is there, authors won't mind if it's a digital copy.

[Hal Itosis]

Quote: Originally Posted by tlarkin Every single text book we have here that is digital runs in a web browesr app and is powered by flash. Every single one of them. If the developers keep doing it, they will still use flash. That is because most of them have some sort of interactive lessons with animations. Like all those technical drawings you would see in science books that would have different arrows pointing to different things, now it is all animated. Take Chemistry? Now actually see how atoms of a molecule flow in real time, and have interactive lessons on how to identify quantum numbers. There is a reason they use flash and I don't see them stopping. Don't get me wrong I am all about no media to install software. I don't buy video games at stores anymore, I buy them through steam usually so I can download them anytime I want to. The problem is, that business sides of things are the dinosaurs. They run it the old fashioned way and they aren't about to change their business model when it comes to text books. Do you think you need to buy a new text book on say English every year? Does the language change that much that you need to spend 10s or 100s of thousands on getting a new book? How about math? A subscription based online license for a text book would be really efficient and ideal. It would allow them to also update the book online and correct their mistakes. Ever read how many mistakes get published in text books? However, when you look at that from a business stand point, the old people running the racket aren't going to accept change, even though it is inevitable. They want to make their money and they will keep doing so as long as they can, and perhaps forever.

Even Flash is caving to the might of the Apple:

• Home / Technologies / Flash Professional CS5 / Packager for iPhone
  
• Developing for the Apple iPhone using Flash [sic]

Tom, you can post until this thread reaches 1000 pages... but, there's just no stopping it.

[Adobe needs to comply or be crushed by HTML5 + H.264 (or whatever it's called).]

EDIT:
- the publishers who don't get on board will lose customers.
- the schools who don't adapt will lose students... etc., etc.

[schwartze]

Quote: Originally Posted by cwtnospam Like this one?

Did you get the same unsupported browser message as me?

Camino Version 2.0.1 (1.9.0.16 2009120123)

[cwtnospam]

Sure, in Camino and Firefox. No problem in Safari and Chrome though. You need a browser that can do html5. I doubt it will be long before most (not IE) can support it.

[tlarkin]

Quote: Originally Posted by Hal Itosis Even Flash is caving to the might of the Apple: Home / Technologies / Flash Professional CS5 / Packager for iPhone Developing for the Apple iPhone using Flash [sic] Tom, you can post until this thread reaches 1000 pages... but, there's just no stopping it. [Adobe needs to comply or be crushed by HTML5 + H.264 (or whatever it's called).] EDIT: - the publishers who don't get on board will lose customers. - the schools who don't adapt will lose students... etc., etc.

I am not disagreeing with you, but I am saying that is how the current business models are ran. I think that text books are the old and busted way to apply learning to students. I think digital, search-able, and update-able, text books is the future.

Also, on a personal note, most developers that make educational software aren't that great. I really dislike almost all their installers and where they put certain files. I mean for crying out loud, one of them put an app, which was part of the edu app in /Library/Application Support, which was not authorized via group policy, so I had to go into WGM and authorize that path as acceptable for apps to run via MCX. Why on earth would a developer do that?

The textbook companies can be paralleled to the music industry. They run a dinosaur of a business model, and are scared of losing revenue. They will be forced to change an innovate some day, but that day still may be a while.

[aehurst]

Quote: Originally Posted by tlarkin The textbook companies can be paralleled to the music industry. They run a dinosaur of a business model, and are scared of losing revenue. They will be forced to change an innovate some day, but that day still may be a while.

Went round and round with them a few years back. We wanted to get certain text books in electronic format so a computer could be used to read assignments to blind students, or alternatively we could print passages in braille without having to retype the book (which would be a copyright infringement).

Eventually came to some kind of compromise with them as I recall, but you're right, Tom, they do not want to change.... locked into the brick and mortar mode.

[NovaScotian]

Read this: Book Publishers Stop Scaring Me by Susan Piver. They haven't learned a thing.

[cwtnospam]

Quote: Originally Posted by NovaScotian Read this: Book Publishers Stop Scaring Me by Susan Piver. They haven't learned a thing.

From that article:

Quote: And who can blame them -- corporate mega structures are schooled in consolidation as the primary means of growth, not fleet-footed, shape-shifting responsiveness to change. But now we're in a world where getting bigger is not the answer, getting smaller is.

I'm torn, because I love technology but I hate what humans (mostly those that control large corporations) are doing with it. On the one hand you have industries like music and print publishing that are resisting the beneficial change that is needed: we can't keep wasting resources on needless print, packaging, and transportation of products that can and should be delivered electronically. On the other, you have many (most) large corporations using technology to reduce their workforce size while keeping prices high. Essentially, they're ensuring that the benefits of higher productivity never trickle down to the working class, and that is a long term recipe for catastrophe. Do they think that eventually they won't need workers, and if so, who will their customers be?

I'd like to think that the publishing industry is reacting similarly to the way the recording industry did because they're stalling while they look for a way to keep their revenue streams going so they can keep their workers employed, but we all know that's not going to happen.