ebooks, textbooks and digital storytelling

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Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling • By • Robert Nagle www.teleread.org/blog • May 11, 2007

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Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling. By Robert Nagle www.teleread.org/blog May 11, 2007. 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. - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Page 1: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

• By

• Robert Nagle

• www.teleread.org/blog

• May 11, 2007

Page 2: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

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.

• I have delicious links for everything

• http://del.icio.us/rjnagle/uhlecture

Page 3: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

Outline

Preface: Who am I?

• How do you read a book?

• How do you make a book?

• How do you anticipate a Story?

Page 4: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

How do you read a book?

An Idiographic Analysis

Page 5: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

Geography Does Make a Difference!

• Houston bus• Lunch hour• Peace Corps Albania & Ukraine• Back to US• Lunch hours in Austin• Books on tape• Boston/DC mass transit• Waiting in line

Page 6: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

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• Reading on the Run• RSS Reader on my pda

Page 7: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

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. • technical manuals--often in medias res

Page 8: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

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• Whitman’s Song of Myself (Deathbed Edition vs.

All the Rest).

Page 9: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

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

• Eventually everything becomes 99 cents!

Page 10: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

Ebook Revolution,

2004

Page 11: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

2007: The Year Flash Memory Became Dirt Cheap!

• 8 gigs CF card = 80$

• 4 gig Project Gutenberg DVD has 17,000 titles!

• Bruce Sterling: envisioned LOC in his pocket

Page 12: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

Horn of Plenty

Page 13: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

“Bestsellers” for Today

Page 14: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

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.

• Print: “Smell of the Book,” Ability to look at two pages at once; Better Font & Layout Variety.

Page 15: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

Is Reading Just Old-Fashioned?

• Youtube, Secondlife, HBO, PS2

• Publishing Industry in decline?

• A crisis in literacy?

Page 16: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

The Bane of Publishers

Page 17: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

My childhood books

Page 18: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

Text as “Illustrations” for the Art

• Kingdom Hearts

Page 19: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

When will Dylan want to read/write?

• James Paul Gee’s “semiotic domains” or “situated meanings”

Page 20: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

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)

• Lower production costs

Page 21: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

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 terrorist plot, 3)the president’s response, 4)the timeline, 5)people’s opinions about why it happened

Page 22: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

Devices, Devices, Devices

Page 23: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

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

• BUT Da Vinci Code is cheaper as a used print book than an ebook.

Page 24: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

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).

• Scanning your own books? 1863 Houston Sci fi short story

Page 25: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

Ebook: Frustrations, Disappointment

• Expensive

• Single Purpose Device vs. Convergent Device

• Can’t Transfer Ebooks

• Tied into Ecommerce Store

• Manufacturer’s Mistake: assuming that people buy these things so they can buy more content (aka the “Itunes Fallacy”)

Page 26: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

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

• $100-150: Bought on Ebay; Old Devices that still work wonderfully when used solely for reading (battery life sucks?!)

• $50 Keychains, mp3 memory sticks,

Page 27: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

2007: Fierce Competition in the $300-400 space

• Sony Reader

• Not Another E-Book (NAEB-Bookeen)

• Jinke Hanlin V3

• Amazon.com Kindle Reader

But will it drive prices down?

Page 28: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

Ebook Beauty Contestant #1Jinke V3 (Released Fall, 2007?)

Wacom Pen Touchscreen

Mp3 player & Wifi.

Proprietary Formats

SD Card holds up to 4 gigs.

Page 29: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

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

•Can Read PDF, DOC, but not HTML!

Page 30: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

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, HTML, Doc, PDF

Page 31: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

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

•Provided for all Schools and Students between 2008-2011

Page 32: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

Scorecard for Judging Devices

• Does it Read/Import HTML?

• Can it automatically create/read RSS feeds?

• Is it easy to use?

• How much flash memory does it support?

Page 33: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

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?

• Built in Dictionaries? Foreign Language dictionaries?

• Cut/Paste, Printing from Desktop?

Page 34: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

Uses of an educational reader

• Critiques of Laptops for Kids. But access to greater variety of material

• Teacher-created anthologies

• Reduce backsprain

Page 35: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

•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 amount of material available to students and make it easy for them to access this material away from the laptop.

Page 36: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

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 home.

Page 37: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

DIY Textbooks

• www.stingyscholar.com

Page 38: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

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. • Tie-ins with One laptop per child project. • Decentralized Servers? • Ambitious, buggy, mindshare? Adobe? Standards?

Page 39: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

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 some commitment to open standards

Page 40: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

Mobipocket Creator—free Ebook Creator

Page 41: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

Mobipocket: Adding Content

Page 42: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

Building the Ebook (With Password Protection?)

Page 43: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

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 devices?)

Page 44: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

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:

– Save as HTML, PDF, doc, txt– Revert to previous versions– Collaborative editing– Can use as Text Editor for most blogging

software (XML-RPC)

Page 45: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

Other Tools: DIY Books

• Web Scrapers/ Sunrise Desktop

• Photo Albums with Stories attached to them. “Text is illustration for the photo”

• RSS Readers

Page 46: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

3. How to Anticipate a Story

Page 47: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

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

• Yochai Benkler’s Wealth of Networks: Peer Production produces great results (i.e, Wikipedia). But what about creativity?

Page 48: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

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)

– When Andrew Sister’s 1936 hit song Bei Mir Bist Du Schon enters Public Domain, all of us will be dead.

Page 49: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

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

• Educational Exemptions: Teach Act

Page 50: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

Progression

• Modernism

• Postmodernism

• Anti-postmodernism

Page 51: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

How to Be Creative without Being Sued

• Creative Commons Search for text/multimedia• http://search.creativecommons.org

Page 52: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

Jamendo for Creative Commons Music

Page 53: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

Group Memepools

• Someone suggests a topic/question and your assignment is to write on it.

http://www.iampariah.com/memeslist/

Also: Poets like to do this

Page 54: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

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?What is the most fantabulous thing that has happened this week?

Houston Memepool: Weekly 100 Word Podcast Theme: Baseball

Page 55: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

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 legal/encouraged to create for?

Page 56: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

Geographically-based Stories

• Sex map in Manhattan

• The Unknown

Page 57: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

Hyperlinks over words and names

Hyperlinks over place names

Lots of paths for reading this story

Page 58: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

Ficlets

Page 59: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

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; BMW, commercials

Page 60: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

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).

• Contributors have the ability to play one persona

Page 61: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

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? – Glassman compares it to calling an automated phone

system.

Page 62: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

Novel as Porous Form

• Jane Smiley: unevenness can become an aesthetic

• Moby Dick

Page 63: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

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 fictional bloggers (Lonelygirl15)

Page 64: Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling

Unexplored Possibilities

• Alternate Reality Games: Text as Clues to a Game in Virtual Space or Meatspace

• Remediations: Texts turned into multimedia experiences