Would this work on Kindle 3, or is Kindle DX the best for viewing such textbooks?
College Students Can Now Rent Textbooks Electronically From Amazon
31–40 of 44 posts
Re: College Students Can Now Rent Textbooks Electronically From Amazon
#32Speaking as a student, I'm still confused as to why we need the textbook industry at all for certain subjects. Is it really necessary to make an annual book for subjects that don't change significantly from year to year?
I've personally seen new editions feature nothing but shuffling of the contents. They've even started selling "loose-leaf" editions, meaning that it's just a collection of binder-punched pages. Why? No new textbooks = no used textbooks = no competition from third party vendors selling used textbooks. No one wants to buy a bunch of pages in a binder.
Seems to me that an open-source textbook should be written once and updated incrementally as needed. Up-to-date information could be available online for those with slightly dated textbooks. Of course, the universities, McGraw Hill, Chegg, Amazon, and numberless other interests wouldn't gain much from this situation.
Re: College Students Can Now Rent Textbooks Electronically From Amazon
#33Speaking as a student, I'm still confused as to why we need the textbook industry at all for certain subjects. Is it really necessary to make an annual book for subjects that don't change significantly from year to year? I've personally seen new editions feature nothing but shuffling of the contents. They've even started selling "loose-leaf" editions, meaning that it's just a collection of binder-punched pages. Why?…
Speaking as a student, I'm confused as to why you think your predecessors will give you their textbooks in good condition, or even at all!
Some students mark up their textbooks. Others (like me) have a lot of books that will be valuable long after I graduate.
The problem isn't that we don't need new textbooks every year, it's that we don't need new editions every 3 years with updated numbers for the homework problems and a new picture on the front. That system invalidates used books that are in perfectly good shape, and should be abolished by professors who will stand up to the bookstore and let them know that they don't want the new edition.
Re: College Students Can Now Rent Textbooks Electronically From Amazon
#34As a college student, I see a few problems with switching purely to electronic textbooks. 1) I would have to verify in every class that it's okay to be using a laptop or tablet - that's been the case in most of the classes I've had, so it's unlikely to be a huge problem, but still. 2) It is extremely unlikely that a laptop or tablet would be permitted in open-book tests (which, while uncommon, do occasionally show up…
I just checked how much my textbooks for the next semester will cost. Around $700, used. Ouch No kidding! Years back, in college, I hunted around and bought a copy of the textbook required for a course on discreet math. It was small and very expensive. Later I learned that some enterprising students had gotten a copy from the school library and, at $0.10/page, photocopied it (or at least the parts needed) and saved a…
I've been known to use the scanner instead. Then it's free.
Re: College Students Can Now Rent Textbooks Electronically From Amazon
#35Speaking as a student, I'm still confused as to why we need the textbook industry at all for certain subjects. Is it really necessary to make an annual book for subjects that don't change significantly from year to year? I've personally seen new editions feature nothing but shuffling of the contents. They've even started selling "loose-leaf" editions, meaning that it's just a collection of binder-punched pages. Why?…
I am a student and I worked with publishers last semester for a while to get interactive electronic textbooks published. I got to view things on the inside and what I've concluded is that the publishers don't actually care about students.
They are marketing to the schools and universities first and foremost because they are the ones who actually make the buying decisions. All the publishers try to do is make something that looks better their competitors and lets colleges cram more students into the classrooms. I don't ever remember them saying "students need this" but rather "universities want to see this". It is a broken system that relies on lazy/overworked teachers and massive hulking collegiate bureaucracies.
Good electronic textbooks won't come from companies that made shitty paper textbooks.
Re: College Students Can Now Rent Textbooks Electronically From Amazon
#36Speaking as a student, I'm still confused as to why we need the textbook industry at all for certain subjects. Is it really necessary to make an annual book for subjects that don't change significantly from year to year? I've personally seen new editions feature nothing but shuffling of the contents. They've even started selling "loose-leaf" editions, meaning that it's just a collection of binder-punched pages. Why?…
Speaking as a student, I'm confused as to why you think your predecessors will give you their textbooks in good condition, or even at all! Some students mark up their textbooks. Others (like me) have a lot of books that will be valuable long after I graduate. The problem isn't that we don't need new textbooks every year, it's that we don't need new editions every 3 years with updated numbers for the homework problems…
As a former student, I don't think I've ever acquired a single textbook that wasn't used. The vast majority of them were in flawless condition, the others just had some highlighting that I found actually quite nice.
Re: College Students Can Now Rent Textbooks Electronically From Amazon
#37As a college student, I see a few problems with switching purely to electronic textbooks. 1) I would have to verify in every class that it's okay to be using a laptop or tablet - that's been the case in most of the classes I've had, so it's unlikely to be a huge problem, but still. 2) It is extremely unlikely that a laptop or tablet would be permitted in open-book tests (which, while uncommon, do occasionally show up…
I just checked how much my textbooks for the next semester will cost. Around $700, used. Ouch No kidding! Years back, in college, I hunted around and bought a copy of the textbook required for a course on discreet math. It was small and very expensive. Later I learned that some enterprising students had gotten a copy from the school library and, at $0.10/page, photocopied it (or at least the parts needed) and saved a…
A friend of mine once brought a photocopied version of a 500p book to the open book final exam. The prof was the author of the book and went up to the student during the final exam.
"You photocopied my book???", and the student was "Yes, that is exactly what I did." Then they had a bit of skirmish.
In the end, the prof backed off -- and that is a good thing. He made us buy his 100$ book and, essentially, do proofreading for him. He was also a visiting prof, so none of this 100$ was going to be recoverable next year...
Re: College Students Can Now Rent Textbooks Electronically From Amazon
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
While electronic textbooks do let you skip randomly between pages, it would end up being a mixture of memorizing page numbers and looking at the table of contents. Have you ever actually used a Kindle textbook? There's a bookmark feature that allows you to immediately jump to preselected pages in the book. It's infinitely more useful than having a bunch of stupid physical placeholders in a textbook that you need to j…
Also, I can search my textbook. Can you? Yes, it's called an Index.
Not unless your book's index contains every word and phrase in the book.
Re: College Students Can Now Rent Textbooks Electronically From Amazon
#39An even better idea that's starting to gather momentum is free, open source textbooks:
http://creativecommons.org/tag/open-source-textbook
The textbook industry definitely deserves to be put out of business for their sleazy practices, like publishing new editions of basic textbooks every couple of years so that students can't resell the old ones. (Are there really new developments in basic calculus every couple of years?)
Re: College Students Can Now Rent Textbooks Electronically From Amazon
#40STARTUP GODS: Deliver a solution that will smash the evil exploitative textbook industry, whilst rewarding the authors and teachers.