The latest statistics tell us more kids are reading e-books.  But the progress bar has not advanced nearly as far as prognosticators expected or manufacturers hoped.  A Bowker executive, addressing a recent Digital Book World conference, reported on findings culled from a survey of about 1,000 teens and some 2,000 parents and caregivers of young children.  Among older kids, 19% have tried e-books but only 6% read them witn any regularity. As for younger ones, only 25% of parents even own an e-book reader.  Among children 7 to 12 only 13% read on e-readers and 11% on tablets.

Is that a bad thing?  Not necessarily.  Though more and more adults are adopting digital reading habits, they are encouraging their kids to read print books and in fact promoting something akin to Luddism, such as sending them to schools where no digital devices are to be found (see High-Tech Kids in No-Tech Schools).  At bedtime they will put their Nook or Kindle down and go into their child’s bedroom to read a print-book bedtime story. So  when it comes to e-books it’s a matter of Do as I say, not as I do. And though picture book apps, including stories that “tell” themselves without parents present, are great fun, they just don’t seem to have the same appeal as the warm body and familiar voice of mommy or daddy.

Schools and libraries do not seem to be tripping over themselves to promote e-reading either. One good reason is that the children’s print business is one of the few sectors of the publishing industry that are thriving, so there is a strong financial incentive for publishers to maintain the p-book status quo.

But children form their own opinions about e-books and many reject them for very practical reasons. Because mobile phones are the device of choice for teens, the small screen size and short battery life are deterrents to e-reading.  The price of e-readers is prohibitive for many kids, who get along fine with borrowing books from the library or from each other.  And speaking of borrowing, DRM restrictions on sharing e-books is another dampening factor for teens, just as it is for adults.

For years we have expressed skepticism that, due to their high distraction quotient, screens are the best medium for young readers (see The Medium is the Screen, the Message is Distraction), and (with the exception of autistic children), there has been little recent evidence to the contrary.   In a recent New York Times article, K, J. Dell’Antonia reported an observation by Lisa Guernsey of the New America Foundation’s Early Education Initiative that “when we read with a child on an e-reader, we may actually impede our child’s ability to learn.”

“Children sitting with a parent while an e-reader reads to them, Dell’Antonia writes, “understand significantly less of what’s read than those hearing a parent read. Researchers at Temple University, where the study was done, noted that parents reading books aloud regularly asked children questions about the book: ‘What do you think will happen next?’ Parents sitting with the child while a device read to them (like a LeapPad or some iPad apps) didn’t ask these questions, or relate images or incidents in the book to the child’s real life. Instead, their conversation was focused on how to use the device: ‘Careful! Push here. Hold it this way.’” (Details in Why Books Are Better than e-Books for Children)

Does that mean that the next generation will reject e-books?  Not likely.  But as research develops about the reading habits and learning and retention of children using e-books, we may see a greater balance between electronic and printed books than the e-fatuation that has us in its grips today. If we don’t – well, see Digital Distractions Producing a Nation of Morons?

Richard Curtis

The Digital Revolution has created more paradoxes than a quantum physics think tank.  Silicon Valley parents sending their kids to schools that outlaw computers  (see High-Tech Kids in No-Tech Schools).  Elderly people who read faster on screens  than they do on paper (see Old People Do It Faster).  Children who don’t learn well on screens, except for autistic ones who thrive on iPads (See this video)   Students who prefer expensive paper textbooks to cheaper e-texts (see Surprise: Students Prefer Print Textbooks).

The New York Times’s Matt Richtel and Julie Bosman have produced yet another oddity: “Parents who themselves are die-hard downloaders of books onto Kindles, iPads, laptops and phones…. .want their children to be surrounded by print books.

“Parents also say they like cuddling up with their child and a book,” the Times team writes, “and fear that a shiny gadget might get all the attention. Also, if little Joey is going to spit up, a book may be easier to clean than a tablet computer.

“’It’s intimacy, the intimacy of reading and touching the world,’” said a parent who reads books on his iphone but print books to his daughter. “’I know I’m a Luddite on this, but there’s something very personal about a book and not one of one thousand files on an iPad, something that’s connected and emotional, something I grew up with and that I want them to grow up with,’” said another.

For Their Children, Many E-Book Fans Insist on Paper

Richard Curtis

The jury is still out on the academic benefits of e-books, “There is very little evidence that kids learn more, faster or better by using these machines,” says Larry Cuban, professor emeritus of education at Stanford University.

Researchers and psychologists report that screens create distractions for students. (See The Medium is The Screen. The Message is Distraction). And even students are far from convinced that they learn better and faster or retain as much (See Students Give E-Textbooks a Failing Grade)

These would appear to be the reasons why many parents have reservations about schools that rely on high-tech educational tools.

You would imagine that the one class of parents that embrace “screen learning” would be denizens of Silicon Valley. Yet, as the New York Times‘s Matt Richtel reports, “the contrarian point of view can be found at the epicenter of the tech economy, where some parents and educators have a message: computers and schools don’t mix.” In fact, in the Waldorf School of the Peninsula, “the school’s chief teaching tools are anything but high-tech: pens and paper, knitting needles and, occasionally, mud. Not a computer to be found. No screens at all. They are not allowed in the classroom, and the school even frowns on their use at home.”

The school, one of a chain, is not an experiment but one of a chain of institutions founded on the belief that “computers inhibit creative thinking, movement, human interaction and attention spans.” The parents are the likes of a Google communications executive and a former employee of Intel and Microsoft who is currently working at a high-tech start-up. “The idea that an app on an iPad can better teach my kids to read or do arithmetic, that’s ridiculous,” says one father.

But there is one category of youngster that seems to be thriving on screen learning: autistic children. “The iPad might be the difference between communicating with the outside world and being locked into a closed state,” writes John Brandon on FoxNews.com. Autistic kids respond to the devices in ways that are absolutely thrilling to parents and educators and promise breakthroughs in understanding the mysterious condition.

One three-year-old could not articulate even the most basic of needs.  Yet an iPad helped to bring him out of his mental cage. “The iPad has given us our family back,” his mother rejoiced. “It’s unlocked a new part of our son that we hadn’t seen before, and given us insight into the way he connects with his world.”

Richard Curtis

At Rhode Island College, a freshman copied and pasted from a Web site’s frequently asked questions page about homelessness — and did not think he needed to credit a source in his assignment because the page did not include author information.

Oops! Let’s take that again:

“At Rhode Island College,” reports Trip Gabriel in the New York Times, “a freshman copied and pasted from a Web site’s frequently asked questions page about homelessness — and did not think he needed to credit a source in his assignment because the page did not include author information.”

The second iteration of the above paragraphs represents another author’s words, properly attributed and indicated by quotation marks. The first version dropped the attribution and quotation marks. In my haste to prepare this post I might well have dropped them inadvertently. It happens all the time when well-meaning and essentially honest authors confuse their research notes with their own original texts.

But the deliberate lifting of other people’s texts without credit or quotation marks is a spreading plague, and the worst of it is that its young perpetrators have so completely lost their moral compasses that many haven’t a clue that there is anything wrong with it. As a result we are spawning a generation of cheaters.

Gabriel cites a survey by a research institute that found that “about 40 percent of 14,000 undergraduates admitted to copying a few sentences in written assignments.”

“Perhaps more significant,” the reporter ads, “the number who believed that copying from the Web constitutes ‘serious cheating’ is declining — to 29 percent on average in recent surveys from 34 percent earlier in the decade.”

Finally, Gabriel cites anthropologist Susan D. Blum, who attributes weakened undergraduates’ consciences to uncertainty about their own personas, reinforced by social networking in the Digital Age. “If you are not so worried about presenting yourself as absolutely unique, then it’s O.K. if you say other people’s words, it’s O.K. if you say things you don’t believe, it’s O.K. if you write papers you couldn’t care less about because they accomplish the task, which is turning something in and getting a grade. And it’s O.K. if you put words out there without getting any credit.”

All this may be completely true but it doesn’t account for the root causes of young people’s diminished sense of right and wrong.  Here we have to look to their parents.  What is happening in the home that the simplest of moral distinctions is all but extinguished?

Details in Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in Digital Age

Richard Curtis

Good morning, Earnest Young College Graduate, and thank you for coming in for an interview with our publishing company.  As you noticed on the walls of our waiting room, in our 150 year history we have published many of the world’s most distinguished authors. And behind every one of them was a great editor.  We think you have the potential to be one too. However, we have some questions about your qualifications.

I don’t see on your resume any proficiency in XML programming, statistical analytics, e-book formatting, metadata management, Web design, information architecture and app development. Surely you are aware that these are the skills that editors must bring to the modern publishing process. What’s that you say?  You got straight 4.0′s in English lit?  That’s very interesting. We’ll get back to you. Next candidate, please.

We’d hate to think that that’s what tomorrow’s job interview is going to sound like but if Joseph Walker, writing for FINS, is right, students will have to rethink their curriculum selections if they hope to become tomorrow’s Maxwell Perkins.

Walker reached this conclusion after covering a conference sponsored by the Book Industry Study Group attended by 80 book publishing execs pondering “how to transform their stagnating print empires into thriving businesses by 2020.”

“Their radical solution,” Walker writes. “Invest in digital.”

“Two years ago if we had this conference, these issues wouldn’t have even surfaced, but now they’re front and center,” BISG’s executive director said.

Though representatives from Simon & Schuster, Random House, HarperCollins and other houses tried to be upbeat about the future, others were pessimistic.  Bob Stein, former director of a book-related think tank, suggested that traditional publishers drag too much weight to make the transition to digital. “In all likelihood, the innovation won’t come from one of the big six publishers. It’s likely to come from someone who doesn’t even consider themselves to be a publisher,” Stein said.

One reason he may be right is that publishers just can’t compete for top-notch talent in the technical arena. “According to Payscale.com,” writes Walker, ” the median salary for a software developer at a book or newspaper publisher is $61,100, compared to $69,000 at Internet companies like Google or Facebook. For an IT product manager, the salary gap can be as much as $20,000, with book publishers paying $66,200 compared to $84,900 at an Oracle or Microsoft and $83,200 at a Google.”

Read Apple iPad, Amazon Kindle Boost Job Growth at Publishers, then retrieve your resume, delete the senior thesis on the influence of Chaucer on Dickens and start boning up on XML.

Richard Curtis

Long ago humans possessed a tail, but today it is vestigial.  Will the same be said one day about human imagination?

Reading Lawrence Downes’ thoughtful speculations in the New York Times about the impact of interactive books on children, we have to wonder if our descendants will be devoid of one of the key characteristics that separate us from all other species. His concerns are intensified by a study that “found children swimming in a media ocean.” “What,” he wonders, “does interactivity do for the imagination, as reading a book gets closer and closer to watching television?”

Downes’ dark ruminations were inspired by a visit to Apple’s virtual bookstore, “a wonderland of unbound creativity and astonishment. The text is just the beginning, an anchor for pictures that glow and unfold, characters who talk and tumble, words that pronounce themselves and music that enlivens everything…. But does digital interactivity engender mental passivity? As fingers flick and flit, making pixels work harder, what do brain cells do?”

What indeed?  If they don’t do anything, they will atrophy and fade into oblivion, making us little better than cabbages gazing at screens.

Richard Curtis

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by The New York Times.

Watching Books

For some time we’ve been wringing our hands about the potentially deleterious effect of e-books on children. Our concerns were provoked by studies that the distracting nature of screen devices have a negative impact on kids’ ability to concentrate and retain information.  And the jury is still out on e-textbooks.  (See Digital Distractions Producing a Nation of Morons?)

However, there’s some promising news that as a vehicle for pure pleasure-reading, e-books are becoming a big hit with children.  We have the New York Times‘s publishing-beat reporter Julie Bosman to thank for this ray of sunshine in an otherwise cloudy forecast.

In E-Readers Catch Younger Eyes and Go in Backpacks Bosman quotes editors like Susan Katz, president and publisher of HarperCollins Children’s Books: “Adult fiction is hot, hot, hot, in e-books, and now it seems that teen fiction is getting to be hot, hot, hot.” And Jon Anderson, publisher of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing: “Boy, a lot of kids got e-readers for Christmas…If it follows the same trend as adults, it’s the start of an upward curve.” And Matthew Shear, publisher of St. Martin’s Press: “The young adults and the teenagers are now the newest people who are beginning to experience e-readers.If they get hooked, it’s great stuff for the business.”

So, instead of asking sociologists and psychiatrists about the effects of e-books on young minds, maybe we should be asking…kids?

Richard Curtis
Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by the New York Times.

We’ve been saying for years that students aren’t ready to embrace e-textbooks (See Students Give E-Textbooks a Failing Grade), and now the prestigious Book Industry Study Group confirms it.  In a survey called Student Attitudes Toward Content in Higher Education, BISG informs us that 75% of college students prefer printed textbooks instead of e-texts. Publishers Weekly cites student preference for print’s “look and feel, as well as its permanence and ability to be resold.”

The other salient finding was that price is the biggest factor textbook buying decisions, with many of those surveyed buying off Amazon, buying used or previous or international editions or renting (11%). Twelve percent said they prefer e-textbooks.  But the eye-opener was this: “More than 40% of survey respondents said they bought a textbook from a pirate Web site, or know others who have (15% said they personnally have bought a textbook from a pirate site and 25% said they knew some one who had). Many reported copying their friends’ textbooks.”

Details in BISG Survey Finds Students Prefer Print

Richard Curtis

The iPad may be rolling up the educational market, but you can’t actually roll up an iPad.  A few years ago we posted a piece about a remarkable computer suitable for campus use that actually does, literally, roll up.  It’s accompanied by one of our favorite videos.

Here’s a reprint of that blog:

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We predicted that five years from now there’ll be a tablet PC under every student’s arm. We were wrong. It won’t be under their arms. It will be suspended from their shoulders. Or at least it will be if PC manufacturers are smart enough to adopt Orkin Design’s Rolltop, astoundingly “rolled out” and then rolled back up again in the demo video below.

A writeup says, “The device of the flexible display allows a new concept in notebook design growing out of the traditional bookformed laptop into unfurling and convolving portable computer. By virtue of the OLED-Display technology and a multi touch screen the utility of a laptop computer with its weight of a mini-notebook and screen size of 13 inch easily transforms into the graphics tablet, which with its 17-inch flat screen can be also used as a primary monitor. On top of everything else all computer utilities from power supply through the holding belt to an interactive pen are integrated in Rolltop. This is really an all-in-one gadget.”

Richard Curtis