Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital
Storytelling
• By
• Robert Nagle
Preface
• Presentation will be put up on my
idiotprogrammer weblog and probably teleread as well
• If you want to make comments, add them to the teleread blog post about it.
Outline
Preface: Who am I?
• How do you read a book?
• How do you make a book?
How do you read a book?
Geography Does Make a
Difference!
• Houston bus • Lunch hour
• Peace Corps Albania & Ukraine • Back to US
• Lunch hours in Austin • Books on tape
Where do you read a book?
• Bed
• Lazy Boy chair • Bathtub
• At work/on way to work • Dinner table
• Web surfing
• Reading to sleep
• Reading in total darkness (backlighting) • Print Books and dim lamp
How do you read a book?
• Check the reviews; afterwards, check the reviews again!
• Read the first chapter. After end, I always reread the first chapter
• Critical Essays
• Highlighting. High School/College • Word definitions
• Bookmarks-- Always lose my place.
How do you read
a
book?
• One novel vs. several. • Pile by my bed
• Having complete works on my ebook reader • Arnold Bennett, Henry James, Shakespeare • Then you discover hidden gems (and realize
there are hundreds, if not thousands of others) • Alternate versions/editions
Beasts of Burden: Collecting
• 1993 New Braunfels Factory Outlet Store; Buyer’s Remorse
• Moving
• Why People buy a house (and move) • Amazon Wishlists vs. bookstores
Ebook
2007: The Year Flash Memory
Became Dirt Cheap!
• 8 gigs CF card = 80$
• 4 gig Project Gutenberg DVD has 17,000 titles!
E-Books vs. Web Pages vs. Print
Pages:
• Ebooks: Better navigation, TOC, indices, keeps you trapped (must concentrate) ; Sustained
reading is more possible.
• Web Book Reader in Browser: Always Up-to-Date, comments; better design possibilities. but requires online access,
• RSS Feed Reader: Organization is mainly chronological (that’s limiting!). Can serve as offline reader.
Is Reading Just Old-Fashioned?
Text as “Illustrations” for the Art
When will Dylan want to
read/write?
• James Paul Gee’s
Text vs. Audio vs. Video vs. Games
• Read 300-350 words per minute (vs. 140 wpm for audio)
• Easier to scan/browse/search (can find within text)
• Less intrusive/noisy
• Easier to cite/refer to (that might be changing)
Think about 9/11
• How did you find information about WTC? • Did you keep on the TV news that day?
Was this an efficient way to track the event?
• Years later, how would you locate
information about: 1)a victims, 2)the
Why buy an ebook device?
• Space Saving
• Can modify font size
• Quick jumping between books
• Access to all that Public Domain stuff!
• Laptops are hot! Expensive! Heavy! Suck up batteries!
• Won’t help you download John Updike or Saul Bellow, but it will help you download web-only content and young writers
Ebooks and DIY books
• Project Gutenberg produced books • Best Site for ebooks is
www.manybooks.net (all formats).
• What you don’t anticipate is how often you will end up creating your own ebook
(usually out of your own material or out or material from the web).
Ebook: Frustrations,
Disappointment
• Expensive
• Single Purpose Device vs. Convergent Device
• Can’t Transfer Ebooks
• Tied into Ecommerce Store
What People Will Pay And Expect
• $1500: Extreme Portability, Great Battery Life, Great Display, Touchscreen, Multipurpose, DRM
• $600-750: Multimedia, Great Battery, color • $300-400:
– PDA (Multipurpose, Small Screen) or E-ink Device (Great Display, Battery Life), wifi
– E-ink Reader: Grayscale, Outstanding Battery Life and Limited Formats, mp3 player, no wifi
• $200-250: Magic Price Point? (Nothing here?!) Cellphones
2007: Fierce Competition in the
$300-400 space
• Sony Reader
• Not Another E-Book (NAEB-Bookeen) • Jinke Hanlin V3
• Amazon.com Kindle Reader
Ebook Beauty Contestant #1
Jinke V3 (Released Fall, 2007?) Wacom Pen Touchscreen
Mp3 player & Wifi. Proprietary Formats
Ebook Beauty Contestant #2
Sony Reader (Nov 2006) •No Touchscreen, Sort of Complicated
•Buy from Sony Connect Store •Can read Encrypted Books from Sony Connect Store , but
inventory is limited
Ebook Beauty Contestant #3
• Not Another Ebook Reader (NAEB)
• (June-July 2007?) • No ability to read
encrypted content (no buying from Amazon!) • Popular backing from Baen Sci Fi Publishing • Can read both Mobi,
Dark Horse Contestants:
Educational Devices
• One Laptop per Child $150
– Plans to sell it in US?
– Viewed as a learning tool, not an ebook reader
Digital Textbook (Korea)$100 •Touchpad
Scorecard for Judging Devices
• Does it Read/Import HTML?
• Can it automatically create/read RSS feeds?
• Is it easy to use?
Criteria for Evaluating Book
Solutions
• Can students/teachers create their own ebooks? Can you import html files?
• Do they have permanent licenses to the books they buy?
• What notetaking capability is possible? group notes?
Uses of an educational reader
• Critiques of Laptops for Kids. But access to greater variety of material
•Reduce costs of print textbooks (700$/yr)
•Newer editions 60% more expensive than older editions •Teachers are often not aware of actual prices of textbook even when they ask
High Costs of School Textbooks
Ebook Readers/Books don’t solve the Pedagogical problems of teaching material. Instead, they increase the
Making Textbooks Affordable
• Why Can’t Teachers Collaborate on their own textbooks/course material? Norton Anthology of Literature, Package A and B ($100)
• Key questions are: ensuring quality, packaging in an ebook friendly format and providing course outlines/objectives/study material
• Makes it easier to introduce already free material into the classroom and make it available at
DIY Textbooks
Sophie Reader
(www.sophieproject.org)
• Open Source produced by Future of the Book • Can embed graphics, audio and video
• “Networked Book,” saved on net, with ability of readers to embed comments on pages;
• Authors can pull resources from web repositories
• Based on Voyager/Voyager Japan/T3 authoring platform • Funded partly by Mellon Foundation
• Beta version of Reader out by Sept 2007; 1.0 out by December.
Dot Reader
http://www.dotreader.com/)
• Software for Laptop. • Allows annotation by
readers/students; with web servers letting you store comments
• They’ve solved the chicken or egg problem! (USB Keychains/Flash
Media)
• Both Sophie and Dotreader have
Adobe Reader
• It’s a print standard, not a reflowable standard
• Works horribly on devices
• Creation Tools are expensive
• Advantages: Excellent Accessibility and Multimedia Capabilities (+ Flash)
• Adobe Digital Editions—new reader suited for reflowable content (but what about
Producing a PDF Book
• Not simple for individuals• MS Office doesn’t have a plugin for PDF conversion, and yet Openoffice does
• Online Zamzar file conversion site does it for free. http://www.zamzar.com/
• Google Docs:
Other Tools: DIY Books
• Web Scrapers/ Sunrise Desktop
Designing for Creativity
• Web Developer’s interest in understanding group dynamics
• If you create a versatile-enough platform that is open to all kinds of input, massive creativity will ensue
Constraints on Creativity
• Public domain has been cancelled until 2018. We are stuck at the year 1922.
Ex. All Quiet on the Western Front
• Pre-1972 American Music Won’t go into the public domain until 2067
– (Many American musicians are already in public domain in Europe, but not in USA: Elvis, Frank Sinatra, Louie Armstrong, all early Jazz)
Media companies thank you!
• Using Trademark to Suppress Creativity
– Harry Potter™, Star Wars ™, Simpsons™
• Fair Use: Lessig: fair use is having the
freedom to pay a legal team to defend you in court
Progression
• Modernism
• Postmodernism
How to Be Creative without Being
Sued
Group Memepools
• Someone suggests a topic/question and your assignment is to write on it.
http://www.iampariah.com/memeslist/
FRIDAY Memes: Answer these
Questions
What are the Top 5 "Mom" songs
What is the toughest decision you've ever had to make? Who have you been most disappointed by in your life? What is the nastiest thing you've ever done to someone?
Do you own a car? What make and model? Do you consider cars a boring point A to B appliance or does talk of V8's and turbo-charging make your eyes light up?
SUVs : practical and roomy or gas-guzzling monstrosities? Your dream car is...?
Do you gamble?
Have you ever rode a horse?
Shared Universes
• Popular in Sci Fi Novels, comics • Star Trek, Star Wars
• One Author creates the universe, and individual people add to it.
• Media companies want control
• Challenge: how can students find out about shared universes where it is
Geographically-based Stories
• Sex map in Manhattan
Hyperlinks over words and names
Fan Fiction & Branding
• Sequels to Star Wars, TV shows,
• Noncommercial fan fiction is tolerated unless it becomes too famous.
• Quicksand: Company encourages user-submissions on its own site, but users have to agree with terms of service. • “Remix Factories” on company sites;
Which creative writing projects
tend to work and why?
• Are individual contributions recognized and browsable by name?
– No more digital maoism
• Minimize intersections between people’s stories; that reduces need to maintain consistency
between them
• Sitcom writing vs. storywriting. (Continuity is in the actors, not the style).
Interactive vs. Linear Storytelling
• Reading linear stories is less strenuous • Interactivity is overrated
– Scarcity of good players/actors
– When the reader/player makes choices, then he is limited by his own meager imagination
– Andrew Glassman: How is a story improved by our making decisions in ignorance of their implications?
Novel as Porous Form
• Jane Smiley: unevenness can become an aesthetic
Fictional Blogs
• Celebrity blogs (Batman Blog, George W. blog)
• You can impersonate somebody you’re not. But is anybody reading it? (Ethics?) • Fictional bloggers can respond to other
Unexplored Possibilities
• Alternate Reality Games: Text as Clues to a Game in Virtual Space or Meatspace
