e-learning - future of education?

Saturday, July 22, 2006

The end of the books?

This text is taken from the The end of the books? article published in The Guardian.

Is it really end of the books? That questions is asked by almost of all publishers.

"Perhaps the biggest issue for the future is whether electronic versions of textbooks will supplant the traditional paper versions. E-books have the advantages of being easily searched and annotated, instantly accessible, portable and capable of being linked to other multimedia. Dictionaries, encyclopedias and technical manuals are especially suited to being published in electronic form. "

Some publishers still believe that traditional books are better!

Rod Bristow, president of Pearson Education UK, the leading textbook publisher in the UK, believes there will be no diminution in the role of the textbook. "It's very hard to deliver what you get in a textbook more effectively in other ways. Textbooks are extremely convenient," he says.

But as usually, the future is unknown! However....

"Simon Midgley thinks we will see a multiplicity of media in future, rather than one medium replacing another. If you look at the history of media in general, when a new medium comes along, it does not usually replace an earlier one; it just adds to it. "Books came first, then radio, cinema, video and computing. None of these things has replaced the book. That's great because it enriches choice for the customer."

5 Comments:

  • This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 3:31 pm  

  • Books will never die.. There are a lot of people who still like to read a book, a newspaper or a magazine sitting comfortable in a chair with a cup of tea rather than sitting in front of the computer reading something..

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 5:30 pm  

  • hi forty4,
    e-books will sure replace educational books for students and such. they are more convinient and also much lighter ;)
    regarding entertaining literature... i don't think so. people still like holding paperbacks or hardcover books instead of palm or laptop.
    what it currently looks like is that computer games (not e-books) are replacing paper-books, since kids prefer to plau rather than read

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 3:06 pm  

  • This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 10:25 pm  

  • This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 7:37 am  

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