Before we take the e-book plunge - redux

Just after finishing yesterday's post I encountered this terrific report: Digital Books and Your Rights: A Checklist for Readers by the Electronic Freedom Foundation.

The report raises a couple questions that I am ashamed, as a card carrying member of ALA, that I did not think to ask:

Does the service protect your privacy by limiting tracking of you and your reading? ...

Is the service censorship resistant?

Both of these questions have significant library/school counterparts and may be more important than the ones I asked yesterday:

1. Will your e-book service protect the privacy of your students and staff? Good librarians have always been diligent about protecting the privacy of their patrons. I would expect the same privacy to extend to users of electronic materials. I have no issue with collecting aggregated data on usage, but we don't want to be able to track individuals reading records.
2. If you "selling" a collection of e-books, who is doing the choosing and how are you dealing with "banned books," a multiplicity of viewpoints on topics, and controversial topics? Will these collections be bland for the same reason textbooks are bland (your content can't anger nut cases on the left or right of the political spectrum: See "Foiling the Language Police").

I need to give more thought to intellectual freedom issues surrounding e-books in libraries. Read the EFF report. It's a great starter!

Before we take the e-book plunge

There must be something in the water lately since two of my corporate friends (yes, I have friends) called to pick my brain about what our district's plan is for adding e-books to our library/curriculum resources.

The plan is that there is no plan.

I've been wondering why I've dragging my feet even thinking about how our district should be using e-books, let alone creating any pilot projects or a long-term implementation. The only e-books that I see that are currently practical/useful are non-fiction books (mostly reference) that are accessed on research stations or from home computers. Relatively small bits of information extraction are their primary use - not extended reading.

My hesitation stems from a tremendous amount of uncertainity about e-books in general. Although I am a personal e-book reader and Kindle owner, I recognize this is a technology in churn. I hesitate as a public employee/educator to make a choice that results in someone having choosen BetaMax or 8-track look brilliant in comparison.

In order to avoid the ready-fire-aim approach to any technology implementation, I always look for two possible reasons we might decide to invest time, effort, credibility and money in a new thing:

• Can I do the same thing I've been doing, but a significant cost savings?
• Can I substantially improve learning opportunities for students and staff? (If Race for the Money Top gets implemented, the question may only be "Can I increase test scores?")

So these are the persistant questions I have about instituting e-books in my district that I would have of any vendor who wants me to buy them:

1. What kind of device is required to read your e-books? What does it cost and how would you suggest I provide ready equipment access to all my students ? Can more than one reader access an e-book at a time? Can they put the e-book on a personally owned device, on portable devices, and can your e-books be accessed outside of school? Is there a time limit on how long a student can use one of your e-books?
2. Will your e-books work with many different devices or just one proprietary device? Can your e-books be read on a device that also allows productivity software (word processing, multimedia production, etc.) to be used and that had a good webbrowser? Can text from your e-books be copy/pasted into student documents?
3. How might your e-book collection be a better value than a print collection? Let's use these numbers as a starting point. Print collection of 10,000 volumes = $200,000 investment. Book life-span 20 years.  Used by 500 students. Cost of print collection per year per student: $20 (at 5% annual replacement rate.) Remember to factor in the cost of the equipment needed to read your e-books.
4. Do your electronic texts offer any features that would help beginning/struggling readers? Text to speech, built in glossary or dictionary, video or animation, artificial intelligence? Do your e-books actually help kids read or just keep non-readers entertained? Do your e-books promote group discussions, reviews, commentary?
5. If the collection is actually a subscription, not a purchase, how do I know that your company won't increase the price to a point we can't afford it? Or modify the collection so that teachers can't rely on having individual titles when building curriculum? Or that you won't align with a single publisher or three and limit the access to titles by other publsihers? How do I know the titles you are offering are high quality, aligned to the curriculum, developmentally appropriate?
6. How can I evaluate the use of your e-books?

Any e-book implementation plan we have must INCREASE access to books to more students for more of the time. And save the district money as well. At the present time, I believe schools are adding e-books to be trendy, cuttin' edge - not to improve education.

I'm looking forward to hearing from librarians and teacher willing to prove me wrong. Really!

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There is a SIGMS event tomorrow evening. Maybe Dr. Farmer has some answers for me! NOTE THIS HAS BEEN RESCHEDULED FROM FEB 18!

Tapped In Event - "Using E-Books in Your Library Program: An International Perspective"

Thursday, March 18 at 8pm ET/7pm CT/6pm MT/5pm PT

Facilitator: Lesley Farmer

Description: In this day, we must be mindful of preparing our students to function as global citizens. Attend this live chat event to discuss opportunities for developing international project-based learning in your school or district.

Directions to join the SIGMS Tapped In event:

1. In advance, go to www.tappedin.org and click on the link at the top left to sign up for free membership. Complete the short online form to join.

2. Receive your email confirmation to complete the registration.

3. Next, log in as a member at the welcome screen.

4. Scroll down on the top frame and click on the "Tapped In After School Online Event Calendar" link 5. Click on today's event "NEW!! ISTE International Media Specialists - eBook Collections" link 6. On the next page, click on the "Cybrarians" chat room. We will meet in this room.

Question of the week

 

What is the image above? Bees around a hive or flies around bullshit?

It's one of the GoogleApps for Education emoticon choices in e-mail. A student asked me what it was (with a sly grin.)

I went for beehive, but personally, that's not how I would use it.

But then I'm a long time fan of the term bullshit anyway.