May 2007 — Features
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Digital Publishing :: Out of Print
Digital book file formats vary, Potash points out. A PDF file, for example, is usually searchable, and the reader can sometimes apply highlighting and annotations from the PC. Some digital books are readable from a cell phone or PDA running Adobe's Acrobat eBook or the Mobipocket Reader. Digital audio books can be downloaded to an MP3 player. And Adobe eBooks have built-in textto- speech capabilities so that a reader may have the book read aloud by the computer.
I don't think teachers want to stand up at the chalkboard and lecture anymore. It's not where they want to be these days.- Ken Tong, Ballard High School
"This is disruptive technology," Potash says. "It's changing education in fundamental ways."
Givens elaborates. "If we're going to prepare our students to live and work in the 21st century, we have to make sure that they are comfortable with 21st-century tools," she says. "They become the most proficient with these tools when they are connected to content, when they are an integral part of the core curriculum areas-language arts and reading, math, science, and social studies-across the spectrum."
More Than Letters on a Screen
Mark Bretl agrees that a revolution is afoot with the arrival of electronic textbooks in K-12 environments, but he finds it difficult to work up much enthusiasm for PDF files. Bretl believes that interactivity and multimedia are the keys to this new incarnation of the textbook, which the founders of Kinetic Books, where Bretl is vice president, call, aptly, "kinetic textbooks." The Seattle-based company develops and publishes a line of interactive textbooks built from the ground up, directly for use with computers.
"When we first sat down and thought about textbooks," Bretl says, "we asked ourselves, If we put this thing on a computer, what can we really do with it? We concluded that you can do a lot more than put letters on a screen." Kinetic textbooks combine a complete course of instructional text with simulations, animations, audio, video, and multiple self-assessment tools for students, among other features.
Company co-founder Bruce Jacobsen, formerly the general manager in Microsoft's Kids/Games Business Unit-and before that, president of RealNetworks-retired from the software business in 1998. A year or so later, he began working as a volunteer physics tutor at Seattle's Garfield High School. Watching physics students struggle with the subject inspired him to start the company.
To date, Kinetic Books has produced three levels of introductory physics textbooks, and a math course is in the works. The products are delivered on a CD or through online installation. Both options are compatible with Windows- and Macbased computers. "At this point in the evolution," Bretl says, "we're still dealing with early adopters, teachers who say, ‘Hey, this can help me get my students involved better than the print text.' I believe the real driver in this market is that teacher you would have loved to have in school, the one who goes the extra mile to make the class interesting. Those are the people who are picking up on our products the fastest."
