Offer them Snickers bars and Twizzlers
and they will come. That's what Batavia High School's Daniel
Russo and a colleague were hoping, anyway, when they gave away
candy at a demonstration table they set up outside the cafeteria
last year to hype the library's new e-book collection.
Their plan worked. Since that first demonstration, techno-savvy
teens at this 1,600-student school west of Chicago have kept
alive a waiting list to borrow handheld devices that let them
read electronic versions of books downloaded from the Internet.
Using the electronic books, students can underline important
passages, jot notes, and look up unfamiliar words with the touch
of a finger.
"We were writing on scrolls and stuff for a while, and that
didn't work out," says 18-year-old senior Phil Peoples. "It's
just kind of good to move on."
The coming thing?
For his and subsequent generations brought up with computers,
e-books simply make sense. Electronic readers with names like
GoReader and SoftBook weigh from 12 ounces to more than two
pounds and hold up to a dozen titles each, eliminating the need
for overstuffed backpacks that can cause back strain. Some feature
a backlight that illuminates the screen, signaling a possible
end to sneaking a flashlight under the covers to read just one
more chapter. And the display's font size and orientation can
be adjusted to suit individual needs. E-books can also be viewed
on desktop computers and personal digital assistants.
But critics bemoan a move away from traditional books that
become softer and more familiar with age, characteristics they
find more appealing than one-dimensional, sterile e-books. Besides,
they contend, research already shows that computers can cause
eyestrain.
"The bottom line is that we should generally be cautious about
increasing the amount of time kids spend on computers until
we know a little bit more about the possible harmful effects,"
says Edward Miller, cocoordinator of a task force studying computer
use and children through the Maryland-based Alliance for Childhood.
"Not that e-books are going to rot your brain, but the experts
tell us that we ought to be going slow."
Companies pioneering the e-book industry already are anticipating
that e-books will be commonplace within five years. Initial
marketing has been to colleges and libraries, so the number
of titles appropriate for K-12 public schools is limited. But
publishers are telling schools experimenting with the technology
that they're banking on a rush of new titles this year that
will change the digital world permanently.
Prospects look promising with one multimillion-dollar investment
after another by companies from Random House to Microsoft. The
software giant expects e-book titles to outsell their paper
counterparts by the end of the decade.
Time Warner Trade Publishing, meanwhile, is launching an unprecedented
online venture with iPublish.com at Time Warner Books, an ambitious
endeavor that will test new ways of producing, distributing,
and selling electronic material. Several best-selling authors
have committed to writing new works exclusively for the site.
Other well-known writers refuse to join the trend until publishers
agree to contract revisions should e-books soar in popularity
more quickly than expected. Some in the electronic book industry
are already predicting that stores will soon feature downloading
stations where shoppers can select the title they want, enter
a code, and have their choice of reading material immediately
transported to a handheld device or diskette.
That capability is another reason schools will benefit from
e-books, supporters say. Publishers can revise material without
waiting for the next costly print run, and it likely won't be
long before they add sound and video to the written word.
"In general, the more important it is to know what's going
on, the more important e-books will become," says Phil Harris,
executive director of the Association for Educational Communications
& Technology. "I didn't know I needed a fax machine until
somebody invented it. I didn't know I needed electronic mail,
either. With e-books, the opportunities to learn have just expanded.
There's no way to avoid [e-books]. They're going to be the thing
of the future."
E-books at school
If that's the case, the future has already arrived at a few
schools across the country in the form of e-book pilot programs.
Batavia High School got seven paperback-sized Rocket eBooks
Readers, which cost $200 each, using a state grant designed
to promote literacy.
"It's cool to read now, with the Oprah Book Club and huge bookstores
like Borders with coffee shops," says Russo, director of the
school's Learning Resource Center. "So we're trying to capitalize
on that. And some students who wouldn't normally be good readers
are interested enough in the electronic parts of it to pick
it up."
Students often request classic titles such as Huckleberry
Finn and Hamlet, although their most popular choices
come courtesy of Stephen King. The horror writer brought e-books
to the masses a year ago, when he released his 66-page novella,
"Riding the Bullet," exclusively on the Internet. Fans downloaded
roughly 500,000 copies in the first 24 hours.
Unfortunately, one of Batavia's Rocket Readers broke less than
a month after its arrival when a student accidentally dropped
it. Such a spill wouldn't have done much harm to a regular book,
and losing a traditional textbook wouldn't have the same financial
implications as a misplaced e-book reader.
Thirty students enrolled in a pilot program at Florida's Winter
Park High School have an incentive to take special care of the
e-book readers they're borrowing for the semester. The participants,
chosen from a variety of academic and socioeconomic backgrounds
to replace their traditional textbooks with the electronic versions,
get to keep the portable devices at the end of the trial.
DigitalOwl, an Internet software company based about three
miles from the 3,200-student school near Orlando, is sponsoring
the program, which also involves an alternative school and nearby
college. The experiment started in January 2000 after a five-month
delay, which DigitalOwl spokesman Matt Gomez says was caused
by publishers unfamiliar with the technology and nervous about
protecting copyrights.
"They needed a case study to show this is a viable market,
and right now we don't have any of that information," Gomez
says of the publishers. "We're telling them it can be done.
We have a feeling it can be done."
But publishers working with the Spring Branch Independent School
District in Houston were satisfied once they learned that e-book
files can be encrypted to prevent copying, according to Barry
Bishop, director of the district's library information services.
Using $7,000 from an education bill the state legislature passed
last year, the school system invested in nearly 300 e-books,
including dictionaries, reference guides, atlases, and such
classics as Jack London's The Call of the Wild. Administrators
bought the titles in the Follett e-Book Collection through netLibrary,
a Colorado-based distributor of electronic books.
The texts are stored on a password-protected web page on netLibrary's
server, which students access via the school library's resource
page. Students are allowed exclusive use of downloaded e-books
for 48 hours. After that, a software program denies access to
the material unless they check the book out again.
Late last year, a Spring Branch elementary school student realized
after soccer practice that he had a report due the next day
and had left his library books at school. With help from his
father, the boy logged on to the school's library site, used
a search engine to find specific e-books, and took notes on
the information he needed.
"And this was late at night, after the public library had closed,"
Bishop says. "That's one advantage."
The next chapter
An e-book sighting is still a relatively rare occurrence, and
many experts expect it will remain that way for some years to
come. Roger Rogalin, president of the McGraw-Hill School Division,
says he has been listening to predictions of electronic books
replacing traditional textbooks for the past 20 years. But so
far, no e-book has been able to match the portability, privacy,
and durability of old-fashioned books.
"At some point," he told American School Board Journal this
past fall, "some electronic device or methodology is going to
meet the parameters with advantages over ink on paper. But I
don't think it's going to happen in my career, and I don't think
it's going to happen in my lifetime."
But others are convinced that, for better or worse, e-books
have arrived, and there's no turning back. Several school districts,
including Spring Branch, are piloting programs in which groups
of students work with nothing but digital equipment. And a growing
number of publishers are churning out electronic textbooks to
sell to schools hungry for a wider selection of up-to-date materials.
As with most technological advances, there's a contingent of
people who are nervous about losing the time-honored, and, perhaps
more important, the familiar.
To these people, electronics will never duplicate the emotional
link they have with the words they read on paper, or the feel
of turning the page to discover what happens next.
Says Miller: "Your connection to a traditional book never fails
because your Internet service provider went out of business."
Robin L. Flanigan is a freelance writer who
lives in Rochester, N.Y.
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