Reading around the world - mission accomplished

 

My top six books: top row Egypt, Poland, Canada, bottom row Austria, Palestine, Barbados

Earlier this year I wrote about my project to read at least one novel from every country and self-governing territory I have visited (see post, Reading around the world, with a little help from my network). I counted 56 of them and I have now completed my task, taking about a year and a half. I have never read as intensively before, not even during my undergraduate years studying English literature. It has been a wonderful experience, especially because I asked friends from each country for recommendations thus adding a personal touch to each book. Some books I chose myself since I had no obvious contacts in that country but the vast majority were recommendations. I had of course already ticked off quite a few countries before I started, namely the UK (hundreds of titles over the years), Ireland, Sweden, Russia, France, Finland, Denmark, Norway and Iceland. 

As I mentioned in my earlier post my only problem country was Liechtenstein. I searched and searched for a novel from there in a language I can read but found nothing. My German is too basic to tackle a novel and the only books I could find were in German. The only book I found was a rather disjointed compilation of folk tales and history complied by a Canadian who had become fascinated by the country. Luxembourg also proved rather elusive and I had to settle for poetry by the excellent Anise Koltz. Maybe I will try a novel in French from Luxembourg though it will be a test of my dormant knowledge of that language. Otherwise I read the vast majority of books in English but also a few in Swedish and Danish.

Since most of the books were recommended by friends they weren't always exactly what I might have chosen myself. Some were tough reading, but they were all rewarding in their own way and this was a good way of widening my choices beyond my own preferences. Although the books come from very  diverse countries and cultures there deal with universal themes: family, home, love, loyalty and their absence. People may do things differently around the world but we have the same hopes and fears. 

My top titles

Many friends have asked me which books I liked best. They all had their merits and it's impossible to make any sort of ranking list but after careful consideration, here is my list of six particularly memorable titles, in no particular order.

Egypt: Naguib Mahfouz - Cairo Trilogy

A magnificent family saga tracing a Cairo family's fortunes through a turbulent period in Egypt's history as it tries to free itself from British colonial rule and the struggle between tradition and modernity. The story is told from different perspectives and shows the tensions between generations and genders. The strict patriarchal order shown at the start is soon shown to be full of contradictions as is the modernist attitudes that develop later in the book. All the characters have their flaws as well as virtues and we develop an understanding for all of them. Three books in one and a major read, but well worth it. Mahfouz won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1988.

Poland: Olga Tokarczuk - Books of Jacob

An epic novel about the Jewish 18th century cult leader Jacob Frank who claimed to be the Messiah and developed a considerable and devoted following among dissident Jews in Poland and central Europe. Although Jacob is the central figure we learn about him through the eyes of many followers and critics.He has undoubted charm and charisma but is also a manipulating narcissist with no empathy or humility and we have little or no sympathy for him. The book is meticulously researched and the level of detail is sometimes overwhelming, but at the same time fascinating. The atmosphere is dark and intricately described, full of mysticism and philosophical discourse and the lasting impression of the book is more about this atmosphere than the events described.

If pushed I would probably put this one at the top of my list simply because it was so powerful. It's not an easy read and deserves to be reread to really appreciate it but I will certainly never forget it. I can clearly see why Tokarczuk won the Nobel Prize for literature.

Canada: Richard Wagamese - A ragged company

A moving and very thought-provoking story of four homeless drifters in a nameless Canadian city trying to survive in the brutal winter where some homeless people freeze to death if they can't find shelter. All four have had tough times, suffered cruelty and bitter disappointment and ended up on the streets. They are survivors but have found strength in each other's company. They spend their days in cinemas watching movies, an escape to other worlds. They get to know a former journalist who still has a home but has lost his bearings in life and also finds solice in the cinema. He then becomes a sort of mentor for the group especially when their fortunes turn dramatically.

One day one of the group finds a lottery ticket that proves to be a jackpot winner and suddenly the group are rich. This could so easily become a rather clichéd novel about how their lives are transformed by unexpected riches but not here. They use their winnings wisely to help them find a new home, not so much physically but more emotionally. It's a touching story about roots, home, love and companionship and although there are some harrowing episodes it leaves a lasting taste of hope.

Austria: Robert Seehaller - Fältet (Eng. The field)

A haunting collection of memories from the occupants of the cemetery of a small Austrian town. Each chapter features memories of people who have recently died and by piecing together these narratives we get to know the town and the events and dramas that have taken place there in recent years. The field in the title is the name the locals have given to the cemetery. Some chapters are inter-related as we read different perspectives of the same event. Some are tales of loneliness and disappointment, others are full of hope and redemption. Some chapters are very short, only a couple of paragraphs, and are impossible to interpret beyond guesswork. I enjoyed the thoughtful and rather melancholic atmosphere of this book. 

Palestine: Radwa Ashour - The woman from Tantoura

The tale of a woman and her family forced to flee from their Palestinian village in 1948 as Israeli forces took over large parts of Palestinian territory. Her father and brothers are killed as are many of the village's men and the survivors head north to exile in Lebanon's refugee camps (where their descendants still live, 75 years later). She is a survivor and brings up her children in exile, always longing for the home that has been forever lost. Tragedy strikes again in the 1982 massacre in the refugee camp of Shatila but once again she manages to survive. It is not so much a political book but the story of a woman's courage and resourcefulness to keep her family going through so much hardship. In the end there is hope since her sons find prosperous lives far from the restrictions of the refugee camps. The woman stays however holding on to her memories of home.

Barbados: Karen Lord - Redemption in indigo

A charming book of magic and wonder, based on African folk tales mixed with Caribbean traditions. In a world where everyday life is influenced by the whims and sometimes mischievous designs of spirits called djombi, a young woman finds a magic stick, the chaos stick. This belongs to the Indigo Lord who desperately needs to recover it because his magic powers are limited without the stick. He eventually finds her and takes her away to far-off places and adventures. They learn to respect each other and the Indigo Lord finds that this mortal is much cleverer than most humans. I loved this book because it was a welcome break from the tragedy and suffering of so many other books. A real feel-good book but with with depth and food for thought.

What next? I will just keep reading more from these countries and maybe widen my search to countries that I haven't visited but where I have friends or countries that I wish I could have visited. This project has opened my eyes to all the literature beyond the Anglo-American tradition that I was brought up on. I would like to read more African literature since all the books I read from there so far have been very rewarding. I need to move south of the Sahara for new perspectives.

The list 

UK, Ireland, France, Sweden, Russia, Finland, Norway, Denmark and Iceland were already well read before this project started.

Austria: Robert Seehaller - Fältet (Eng. The field)

Barbados: Karen Lord - Redemption in indigo

Belarus: Uladzimir Karatkevich - King Stakh’s wild hunt

Belgium: Lize Spit - The melting

Bosnia & Herzegovina: Ivo Andrić - The Pasha’s concubine and other tales

Bulgaria: Georgi Gospodinov: Time shelter

Canada: Richard Wagamese - A ragged company, Jack London - Call of the wild

Croatia: Miroslav Krleza - Harbours rich with ships

Czech Rep: Franz Kafka - Metamorphosis, Jaroslav Hasek - The good soldier Svejk

DDR (East Germany): Christa Wolf, - They divided the sky

Egypt: Naguib Mahfouz - Cairo Trilogy

Estonia: A H Tammsaare - Vargamäe, The misadventures of the new Satan

Faroe Islands: Jörgen-Frantz Jacobsen - Barbara, William Heinesen - De fortabte spillemænd (Eng. The lost musicians)

Germany: Alfred Döblin - Berlin Alexanderplatz

Greece: Theodor Kallifatides - Ännu ett liv (Eng. Another life)

Greenland: Niviaq Korneliussen - Blomsterdalen (Eng. Flower Valley)

Hungary: Sandor Marai - Embers

Indonesia:Y B Mangunwijaya - Durga / Umayi

Israel: Amos Oz - A tale of love and darkness

Italy: Tomasi di Lampedusa - The Leopard, Sibilla Aleramo.- A Woman

Jordan: Abdelrahman Munif - Cities of salt

Lebanon: Amin Maalouf - The rock of Tanios, Iman Humaydan (ed) - Beirut Noir

Latvia: Nora Ikstena - Modersmjölken (Eng. Soviet milk)

Liechtenstein: Tales of Liechtenstein, then and now

Lithuania: Zemaite - Marriage for love

Luxembourg: Anise Koltz - At the edge of the night

Malaysia: Tan Twan Eng - The garden of evening mists

Montenegro: Olja Knezevic - Milena and other social reforms

Morocco: Tahar Ben Jalloun - The pleasure marriage
Netherlands: W F Hermans - Beyond sleep

Oman: Abdulaziz al Farsi - Earth weeps, Saturn laughs

Pakistan: Mohsin Hamid - The reluctant fundamentalist

Palestine: Radwa Ashour - The woman from Tantoura

Poland: Olga Tokarczuk - Books of Jacob

Portugal: José Saramago - Blindheten (Eng. Blindness), Alla namnen (Eng. All the names), Richard Zimler - The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon

Qatar: Abdulaziz Al-Mahmoud - The Corsair

Romania: Dan Lungu - I’m an old commie

Slovenia: Drago Jancar - I saw her that night

Spain: Miguel de Cervantes - Don Quixote

Sri Lanka: Romesh Gunesekera - Reef
Switzerland: Friedrich Dürrenmatt - The pledge
Trinidad & Tobago: V S Naipaul - A house for Mr Biswas

Tunisia: Albert Memmi - The desert, Hassouna Moshabi - Solitaire

Turkey: Orhan Pamuk - Snow, The black book

UAE: Maha Gargash - The sand fish
Venezuela: Ana Teresa Torres - Dona Ines vs oblivion

Åland: Ulla-Lena Lundberg - Is

Reading around the world

  by pietroizzo

I can recommend that you watch this TED talk by Ann Morgan (below), My year reading a book from every country in the world. She decided to read a book from every country in the world and here she describes how she succeeded. It was not an easy task since only a fraction of the world's published fiction ever gets translated to English whilst the best-selling titles in English tend to be translated to almost every other language. She considered herself very well read but realised that her perspective was of course almost exclusively that of the English speaking countries, in particular the UK and the USA. Her challenge was a daunting one since many countries had little or no accessible literature for speakers of English or other major western languages. She succeeded thanks to networking, spreading the word on social media and benefitting from some remarkable crowd-sourcing when stories were translated into English but volunteer enthusiasts.

This is a heart-warming success story and a tribute to the collaborative and open culture on the net that so seldom gets media coverage. It also highlights the potential of crowd-sourced translation to bring literature from developing countries to a global audience. Very few, if any, commercial publishers will risk commissioning English translations of works from, say, Burkino Faso, Kazakhstan or Laos but groups of students, teachers or writers could share the task and produce open e-books, not for commercial gain but as showcase for the country's writers. It's a similar model to sites like Jamendo that offer free music with Creative Commons licenses that can be downloaded and reused. The musicians make no money from this but can gain global reputation and recognition that may result in commercial opportunities later on. Time for an open literature movement to promote world literature?



Another difficulty in reading around the world is that the vast majority of world languages are not even on the net yet according to an article in The Atlantic, The Internet Isn't Available in Most Languages.

At the moment, the Internet only has webpages in about five percent of the world's languages. Even national languages like Hindi and Swahili are used on only .01 percent of the 10 million most popular websites. The majority of the world’s languages lack an online presence that is actually useful.

So even if the infrastructure and technology are available there is simply very little to read there for millions of people. The popular social media lack instructions and templates in most languages making them impossible to use. We need to find innovative strategies to widen the linguistic range of the internet and ensure that there is relevant content for all. The notion that open educational resources, MOOCs and so on can make education accessible for all will not happen until those resources are available in many more languages than today. The lack of linguistic diversity on the net deserves more attention and we need to find ways to stimulate the development of digital content in all languages. A lot can be done by volunteer grassroots initiatives, providing free open platforms, training and support, but more stimulus, especially financial, is required from national and international organisations.

Your book just tweeted

I always like to find examples of how digital and analogue can interact with and complement each other and that there is not always a conflict between the two. Penguin Books in Brazil have gained considerable media attention recently by releasing a smart bookmark that communicates with you via Twitter (see article in Springwise, Smart bookmark lets authors tweet at readers who have neglected their novel). The premise is that we are so distracted by social media today that it's easy to start a book and then forget it. Now the book gets a voice in the digital cacophany.

The concept is well demonstrated in the video below but basically it's a physical bookmark that contains a light sensor, timer and a nano-processor with wifi. You leave it in your book and if you don't open the book for a while the bookmark will tweet you a gentle, witty reminder in the style of the book's author. If you still don't pick up your book you will continue to receive regular reminders. Exactly how the tweets come in the style of the book's author is not explained in the articles I have read but I suspect that each book comes with its own bookmark preloaded with that author's potential reminders. You probably can't use that bookmark in any other book though an interesting development could be allowing the bookmark to register the new book via its barcode.

Yet another example of the internet of things where just about everything in our lives will be able to communicate.


PENGUIN BOOKS | Case Tweet For a Read from Rafael Gonzaga on Vimeo.

True confessions - digital or analogue?

  by Jill Clardy

I often get comments from colleagues that I must spend all my waking hours in front of a screen and do I ever have time for non-digital activities. While I admit to spending a considerable part of each day online and that the borderline between work and leisure time disappeared a long time ago, I thought I'd reveal just how analogue and retro I can be in certain circumstances. So here is my summer confession - I'm not as digital as I might seem.

BOOKS or MOOCs. I write a lot about MOOCs and am fascinated by the whole phenomenon which twists and turns every week. I've tested quite a few (actually completed one of them) and have written over 80 blog posts and several articles on the subject. However I must admit that I'm a book lover and have an ever-expanding library at home. I cannot contemplate not having at least one book on my bedside table and they are mostly non-fiction, generally history or nature. I learn a lot that way and am not prepared to sacrifice my book time to take a MOOC. Another factor that restricts my participation in MOOCs is that I spend so much time reading articles, writing blog posts and articles and engaging in online discussions that I feel I am participating in a never-ending personal MOOC so when I do sign up for a course it gets in the way of my normal work flow. Maybe I could be accused of not practicing what I preach but I like my own personal learning strategy and prefer it to the imposed schedule of a course.

E-books. I should say that books are books and whether they are on paper or on a screen matters very little but although I happily read both formats, there is a crucial difference in favour of paper that is based purely on my collector instinct and probably also a hint of vanity. I like to add a newly read book to my bookshelves (ie trophy cabinet) as evidence of my reading. There's still a certain status and satisfaction of having rows of crammed bookshelves and I can proudly claim to have read at least 90% of the contents. On the other hand no one notices your e-book collection, if indeed you can collect something as intangible. Admittedly this used to be equally true of the music collection that once occupied many shelves but has now completely disappeared into the cloud. Books may well go the same way but I still get great satisfaction out of owning a book rather than simply having access to one. Call me old-fashioned ...

Newspapers and magazines. One of my most important daily rituals is eating breakfast while reading the morning paper. I go through it from start to finish and read whatever seems interesting. Once breakfast is over I rarely look at the paper again. If for some reason there is no morning paper I'm rather lost. I check my iPad instead but it's not the same process. In the paper version I check all the headlines and often come across something interesting that I would never have clicked on in a digital version. I still subscribe to several print magazines each month and I read them from cover to cover (I even save them in long lines of boxes on the bookshelves!). I have cancelled a few subscriptions over the years with the intention of reading them on the net instead but that simply doesn't work. I even subscribed to a wonderful service called Readly which allows you unlimited access to a couple of hundred magazines for a monthly fee of about €10. I cancelled that when I realised I have ever used it. Somehow I have different reading strategies for print and digital formats; I skim/surf through digital content often in a non-linear manner whilst I read print from start to finish and tend to read more deeply. With digital content there are always exciting distractions just a click away whereas when I'm reading print copy those distractions are much further away. I realise there is no good reason why I shouldn't go digital but I don't, not yet anyway.

Tickets. Yes I still print out rail and air tickets and take them on my travels rather than use my mobile. I've tried using my mobile and of course it works but I don't completely trust the battery power of my mobile. If I have my tickets only on the mobile and the battery dies when I need to show the tickets what do I do then? A new mobile might be the answer but I still like to have the "real" tickets with me as a comfort.

I could probably add several more categories but the moral of the story is that we all adapt to the digital world in different ways and the presence of a digital solution does not always mean the end of the "analogue" version. We all find our own mix and that applies both in our private lives and in education. I wish we could move away from pointless arguments about whether digital is better than print, e-learning better than classroom and so on and instead focus on how technology is creating new opportunities.

MOOC Book Project

 by Abdulla Al Muhairi

If you're going to write a book about MOOCs then the obvious method to use is to crowdsource it, in other words ask the world to help you. That's what the MOOC Book Project is all about. They propose an outline for the book chapters and invite interested authors to submit an abstract by the end of March. From those abstracts the editors, Dr. Joseph Rene Corbeil (Associate Professor, University of Texas at Brownsville), Dr. Maria Elena Corbeil (Associate Professor, University of Texas at Brownsville) and Dr. Badrul H. Khan (Honorary Distinguished Professor of E-Learning, Egyptian E-Learning University) will then select the best prospects and invite them to submit full chapters by the end of June. The chapters will be then subject to a double blind peer review as in most scientific journals. If all goes to plan the book should be out by mid-2015.

The book will examine MOOCs with case studies investigating the following eight dimensions:

• Pedagogical - teaching and learning in a MOOC.
• Technological - infrastructure, scalability etc.
• Interface design - look and feel of the platform.
• Evaluation - assessment methods etc.
• Management - maintenance and distribution.
• Resource support - online support and resources.
• Ethical considerations - diversity, accessibility.
• Institutional - administration, academic affairs.

This book will focus on cases describing issues or challenges experienced by IT and e-learning practitioners, faculty, or students during the design, development and implementation of, or participation in, a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). Using Khan’s eight-dimensional E-Learning Framework, authors are invited to submit chapter proposals for cases addressing one (or more) dimensions of the framework. Through analysis, reflection, and discussion of illustrative MOOC cases, missteps in the design and delivery of future MOOCs can be minimized or avoided.

This is an interesting venture and I look forward to following its progress.

Next best thing

 by tom.belte

We have enormous respect for the written word. Reading a book has high cultural status that is somehow linked to the fact that it is printed on paper. However other means of telling a story never attain the level of respect that printed texts have. Even reading the digital version somehow has a lower status to reading a "real" book. Further down the respect list come listening to an audio book, watching a film of the book or playing the game. If a child sits all day reading a book we praise them but spending all day watching films or playing complicated interactive computer games is regarded as less praiseworthy and can even be seen as a problem. Somehow the written word is the "real thing" whereas all other media are seen as less serious versions; the next best thing.

I started thinking about this after hearing a talk from a colleague, Anette Svensson of Jönköping University, who has been studying attitudes to different forms of storytelling in schools and how we always give priority to text. This is strange since the written word was originally the next best thing to the spoken word. The oral tradition of ancient civilisations was all about spell-binding narrators who could tell inspiring tales that could last for hours. These were passed down from generation to generation as spoken narratives before finally being written down by poets like Homer. The written form of the Iliad was therefore a pale copy of the real thing which lacked the expression, drama, gestures and eye contact of the live performance. The art of storytelling is seldom practiced in schools unfortunately.

The point is that we should value different media and treat them on their own merits. There are always arguments about whether the film was as good as the book but it's better to discuss whether or not it was a good film. In education all focus is on written communication and success is dependent on mastering this skill. Of course it is important but in today's multi-media world it's surely time to accept examination assignments as films, games or podcasts which often demand a wider understanding of the subject matter than simply writing a text.

There has been a similar attitude to distance and online learning; a substitute for the "real thing" - classroom teaching. As a result we have tried to construct online equivalents of the traditional teaching environment with virtual classrooms, recorded lectures and lots of school vocabulary with e- on the front. Online courses are not respected highly in universities and often it's the most inexperienced faculty members who teach them, though now with the advent of MOOCs all the top professors want to get in there since there's a potential audience of millions out there.

We need to concentrate on learning using different media and different spaces (physical and online) rather than seeing one as a substitute for the other. There are different physical learning spaces that are great for some activities and poor for others. The same applies online. The key is to see how each space can facilitate learning and meaningful interaction. The classroom is not default any more, there are other arenas too just as we should not simply focus on text communication and neglect all other media. Judge each on their own merits.

Copyright Bermuda Triangle

 by Dave Stokes

The book shops of the world are crammed with titles and more books are published today than ever before. However once a book has been available for a few years it disappears from the shelves and unless the publishers think it worth a new edition it will become extremely difficult to read the book unless your local library happens to have a copy. This is one major problem with current copyright law. Popular titles will of course be republished regularly but the vast majority will not be worth a publisher producing a new edition and as a result they will become unavailable outside a few libraries or second-hand bookstores. Millions of books are lost until the copyright period expires.

This problem is well illustrated by recent research summed up in an article by Rebecca J Rosen in The Atlantic, The Hole in Our Collective Memory: How Copyright Made Mid-Century Books Vanish.

"A book published during the presidency of Chester A. Arthur has a greater chance of being in print today than one published during the time of Reagan."

The article examines research by Paul J. Heald at the University of Illinois who has analysed all books available on Amazon to see how different decades in the last 150 years are represented. The copyright Bermuda Triangle is clear in the statistics presented. Books available from the 1850's are double the number of titles from the 1950's. Basically you can buy and access millions of currently published titles plus just about everything pre-1923 but very little in between. So millions of books are hidden away because they're not worth republishing and copyright prevents them from being published digitally. Heald sums up the situation:

"Copyright correlates significantly with the disappearance of works rather than with their availability ... Shortly after works are created and proprietized, they tend to disappear from public view only to reappear in significantly increased numbers when they fall into the public domain and lose their owners."

Since no-one is going to make any money from selling this vast resource why not let them be available as simple e-books for free? At least they will be available and read by some. Maybe they could be sold for micro-payments, a bit like the music service Spotify, where subscribers pay a low monthly fee and can read whatever they want. That way the authors could at least earn a little from their title instead of zero if it is out of publication as at present. I'm not suggesting that we do this for best-sellers but for the millions of forgotten books that are now languishing in the Bermuda Triangle of copyright.

Can you own a digital purchase?

  by Jemimus

If I buy a book, a music CD or a DVD movie I own it and when I get tired of it I am free to sell it to someone else. This principle of ownership seems simple enough but in the digital world it suddenly ceases to apply. An article by Dan Gillmor in the Guardian, In our digital world you don't own stuff, you just license it, describes a recent American court ruling against a start-up, ReDigi, who proposed to start a market for people to resell digital music.

"Had the users of the startup, ReDigi, been selling used CDs via any number of online stores, there would have been no issue. But the music in this case was stored in computer files, so the doctrine of "first sale" – your right to resell what you've bought – didn't apply.

ReDigi tried hard to live up to the spirit of copyright law. It created a system where the uploader of a "purchased" iTunes song would lose access to the music after the file was transferred to the new "buyer's" computer. Yeah, right, said the record company and the judge – there's no way to ensure that the "seller" wasn't keeping the song anyway."

The same problem applies to e-books, e-magazines and all types of digital content. Because it's so easy to make perfect digital copies the companies argue that you can't really own digital content, simply the right to access it yourself and that right is not transferable. Many libraries have encountered difficulties in lending e-books and often have to pay considerable sums to be able to lend such content.

June Breivik points out another absurdity with digital content in a post about how e-books are often much more expensive than the printed equivalent (blog post in Norwegian).

Is the high price some kind of compensation for the fact that once bought the content may be copied? The ruling against ReDigi would suggest that we need to rethink our principle of ownership when it comes to digital products and that you merely pay for the right to borrow rather than own. Many digital content services are subscription based and if you stop paying the subscription your content is no longer available.

But if I pay money for something that I don't really own and do not have the right to resell, the price for this service should logically be much lower than the purchase of the physical equivalent which include reselling rights? It seems that the content companies are still uncomfortable with digital formats and are applying an analogue business model that doesn't quite fit. I don't have the answer but new models are needed to avoid absurd examples like the above.

From creation to curation

Now that there is a wealth of open content available the focus has turned from content creation to curation, packaging and advanced search. A recognized weakness with OER is finding the right resources with some degree of quality assurance. So now there is a growing list of new tools that find the right resources and package them in convenient forms.

One example of this is Boundless. This compiles free e-textbooks from open educational resources. Boundless helps you replace your standard course textbook with an e-book of open content including texts, images, film, sound and animation. The resulting e-book can be accessed by laptop, tablet or mobile and is instantly available to all students. It can be used as a supplement to a printed course book or can simply replace the printed version. It's all free, at least in its present beta version but there are of course premium services such as SmartNotes.

As more and more solutions like this emerge the role of the textbook publishers becomes very insecure. The arguments for free online e-books are irresistible for students and highly attractive for cash-strapped educational authorities, many of whom are looking at the open textbook sector already. The key factor in this competition is quality assurance. How trustworthy is the material retrieved by services like Boundless? Is it equally well selected as the equivalent material in the printed textbook? The printed textbook has been written as a logical progression with clear developed themes whereas the digital version is a mix of completely independent modules. Quality in open e-books depends on effective tagging including parameters for subject matter, objectives, learning outcomes, age group, level and so on. As the meta data improves and resources are produced with more thought for reuse then solutions such as Boundless will become increasingly attractive.

Definitely worth investigating further.

Read a short review of Boundless on Edudemic: The Future Of Textbooks Is Free … And It’s Now Available.

Apple take aim at textbook market

The last couple of days have been dominated by Apple's announcement of its new iBooks2 app and the iBook Author tool. The reviews came thick and fast from news sites and bloggers and 24 hours later it's not easy to find a new angle to write about. The main points of all the hype are:

• Apple will distribute interactive multimedia "textbooks" for schools and colleges via iBooks for $14.99 or less.
• The textbooks are optimized for iPads.
• iBooks Author will be available free for teachers, writers and students to write their own interactive textbooks and publish them.

As you can see in the video below it certainly looks impressive and throws down the gauntlet to the academic publishing industry that has so far been rather reluctant to leave its printed comfort zone (at least here in the Nordic region). The ability to take notes, highlight and compile revision material and flash cards is extremely attractive and the ability to access all your course material on a device lighter than many standard textbooks is extremely attractive to students. As so many schools invest in one laptop/iPad/tablet per pupil the race is on to fill these devices with compelling and immersive learning resources. Apple of course wants to dominate this sector and by rolling out iBooks2 they hope to persuade more local authorities, schools and colleges to join the Apple family.



It's probably the authoring tool that has attracted most attention and controversy. The fact that teachers and students will be able to publish their own multimedia e-textbooks is extremely empowering and can very well leed to a major shift in the production and use of course literature. Schools can save a lot of well-needed cash by not needing to buy class sets of textbooks every year and the teachers can publish their own material. One article that was particularly positive to the opportunities of iBooks Author was 5 Ways iBooks Author Changes the Education Landscape.

However the big catch is that once created the content is tied in to Apple and cannot be distributed outside their walled garden. I simply can't share my book to anyone who cannot use iBooks and my content cannot be given a Creative Commons license. This is a point that many bloggers find unacceptable, for instance Marshall Kirkpatrick on ReadWriteWeb:

"It's hard to wrap my brain around the cold cynicism of Apple's releasing a new tool to democratize the publishing of eBooks today, only to include in the tool's terms and conditions a prohibition against selling those books anywhere but through Apple's own bookstore. There's just something so achingly awful about it."

Audrey Watters, as ever highly insightful, takes the discussion one step further in her blog post Apple and the Digital Textbook Counter-Revolution. She sees the whole concept of textbooks as increasingly irrelevant as we are able to access a vast range of material directly on the net. Why do we need prepackaged textbooks at all when we should be encouraging students to fins sources for themselves and use the vast amount of resources that are freely available?

"Once you've recognized that textbooks are just an assemblage of resources and that, in a digital world, there's no reason to bind it together and publish these en masse, then I think you can see a path to liberation from that industry model. You can disassemble, reassemble, unbundle, disrupt, destroy the textbook. It is truly an irrelevant format."

Once again Apple have succeeded in putting a cat among the pigeons and whatever you think about proprietary solutions and walled gardens there is no doubt that this model will inspire competitors to respond. Whatever solution wins the future of education is digital.

Redefining e-books

We keep using new technology to repackage old concepts. A lot of e-learning has simply put classroom practice into a digital framework. You're still in a classroom and what goes on there is mostly or wholly hidden from external view and the material is mostly text-based. Recorded lectures are extremely popular today but again we're simply digitizing the tradtional format and even if many lectures are stimulating and sometimes inspirational we're not exactly breaking new ground. We simply create an alternative version of traditional practice without considering how new technology could actually chage the way we teach and learn.

The same is true in e-publishing. I've written many posts about e-books in the last year or so but I wonder if we should always define the new in terms of the old. Maybe the concept of book is firmly rooted in the printed version and when we make it digital it ceases to be a book? Why just digitize a winning concept - why not change the concept and make the electronic version something distinctly different? That's the theme of yet another good article I've found on Mind/Shift, Blowing Out the Digital Book as We Know It. E-books in black and white divided into pages and loaded on to specially adapted devices doesn't sound too innovative. Does material designed for today's laptops and tablets need to be in book form? Is page division still relevant?

A company called Inkling is trying to design a new form of interactive "textbook" (it is hard to escape the old terminology) that is interactive with fully integrated video, search and social notetaking. Instead of basing the digital version on a published print book they are creating the digital version from scratch. The video below gives you an idea of the concept.


Inking - A textbook case of innovation. from Inkling on Vimeo.

Another contender in this attractive market is Chegg who offer similarly interactive textbooks adapted for use on a tablet. Here's their demo video:



The article on Mind/Shift asks the ever popular question of whether these new forms of digital publishing add morevalue to the learning process than print books and the answer is, as always, that it depends on how you use them. No book adds to the learning process by itself - you need to do something meaningful with the content with the help of a teacher, colleagues or both. Computers, books, mobiles, blackboards, notebooks and so on do not lead to better learning; it's what you do with them all that counts.

Maybe books will not die as many predict. Print books are extremely effective for packaging say fiction and have the clear attraction of not being subject to battery power. Print books will certainly decrease in number but maybe we need to see the digital market as a new concept that will complement some areas of publishing, replace others and create new ways of sharing and constructing knowledge and learning.

The bookless library - good idea but there's a catch

Continuing on the theme of e-books (see earlier posts Why students don't use e-books as much as expected and Library extreme makeover) I'd like to return to the subject of bookless libraries. We've already got banks that have no cash and the paperless office is fully feasible though seldom seen. So what about the bookless library? As sales of e-books and varieties of tablets, e-readers and iPads increase the need for libraries to be filled with books becomes questionable. So let's move out the books and journals and create the library of the future.

But is there a catch here?

There is a problem and that becomes clear after reading an article by Barbara Fister in Inside Higher Ed called The myth of the bookless library.The problem with collections of e-books and e-journals is that the library has to pay a hefty yearly subscription to gain access to them. If you stop paying you lose the collectiuon. Instead of winning freedom by going digital the library commits itself to often extortiate annual fees to maintain its virtual collection. The books you used to buy were not cheap but once they were on the shelf you knew what you had. Not so with much e-literature.

"When you know that a subscription you’ve been spending tens of thousands of dollars on will vanish if you fail to pay the rent, you trim where you can, and for the past thirty years, that’s been the book budget, which is more discretionary than those demanding subscriptions. No wonder university presses and other scholarly book publishers are banding together to license digital book collections by subscription. It seems the only way to guarantee your product will get into libraries is to charge a lot for something that disappears if you stop paying."

Interestingly there is no sign of print book production falling despite the hype. We've never printed as many books as we do now so they won't be disappearing any time soon. It's easy to fall into the trap of seeing all digital resources as free. Yes there are plenty of open educational resources and open access material out there but the publishing industry is busy remodelling its business for the digital market and there's a lot of money being made out there still. The transition to the bookless library will not be such a smooth one.

Photo:
by quinn.anya 

Why students don't use e-books as much as expected

We keep hearing about the boom in e-book sales, especially in the USA, but according to an article in Mind/Shift (Why aren't students using e-books?) students aren't using them as much as expected. You could interpret this as evidence that they prefer print format but the truth seems to be the lack of course literature available in e-format. A survey by e-book provider eBrary shows that e-book sales to students have leveled off over the last three years, whereas the mainstream fiction market for e-books is growing rapidly. But it's not because students don't want e-books; it's simply too complicated. According to the eBrary survey:

“the vast majority of students would choose electronic over print if it were available and if better tools along with fewer restrictions were offered.”

Firstly there's a reluctance by publishers to release e-book versions of profitable textbooks and when they are available they cost almost as much as the print versions, despite the problem that you can't lend your e-book or resell it after the course as you can with a printed version. Then there are all the different formats available for different e-book readers, iPads and tablets. It's simply too time consuming and expensive and you can't just buy all your e-books from one place.

Students are becoming increasingly vocal against the high cost of textbooks and their built-in obsolescence - since they're revised each year the second-hand value is zero. E-books are the obvious way forward but the business model needs changing. Publishers are of course reluctant to give up a very lucrative business but the growth of free course literature on Wikibooks or Flat World Knowledge is a significant disruptive force. Integration with social media to create social reading also needs to be developed. The industry needs to streamline and focus on new models rather than simply preserving the traditional model.

"... it does highlight the ways in which students’ needs aren’t being met yet by digital content providers. That means there’s still a huge opportunity here to reshape what the textbooks of the future look like. Openly licensed content, for example, could address students’ concerns about sharing. Better social tools could help meet their needs for social reading and learning. Open educational resources could provide content, while an iTunes model of sorts — one that sold the “song” (or rather the chapter) rather than the “album” (the whole book) could save students money."

Photo:
    by  Stefan Bäsmann 

Textbooks go digital

Here's a nice summary of the state of digital textbooks and where they are heading. If any part of the publishing business needs to go digital it is this one. Too many school and university classes sit reading textbooks that are sometimes over 10 years old and how reliable are they as sources? Digital material can be updated continuously and kept relevant but they're unlikely to be as profitable as the printed versions have been for so many years.

As ever this graphic is probably on hundreds of blogs by now but good things are meant to be spread. Just click on the graphic to see a larger version.


Via: OnlineEducation.net

Cloud library

  by  Extra Medium 

Imagine a place where you can download books, music and films completely free as often as you like. When you're finished with them you just give them back.You never need to buy them yourself and if this place doesn't have what you want they can get it from their network of contacts.Sounds a bit dodgy doesn't it? Some kind of pirate web site? No it's called a library.

The point is that we have been borrowing books and other media for years without any debate about copyright. A new article by Paul Carr in Tech Crunch, Book piracy: a non-issue, doesn't see any reason for fearing the free sharing of e-books. Books have always be read by many more people than buy them, either by borrowing from libraries or friends or from second-hand shops. You can sell maybe 10,000 copies that are then read by 100,000 people. It's very doubtful if you would sell more books if all lending was forbidden and it's better to reach a wider audience than a very narrow paying one.

"To all intents and purposes, books borrowed from libraries mean authors receive no compensation. Meanwhile, every day, millions of people around the world loan books to their friends, or donate books to charities, or leave them on public transport or otherwise share them in ways that negate the need for the recipient to buy their own copy. None of this constitutes stealing from authors, and you won’t hear a peep of objection from the publishing industry or authors."

The problem with e-books is that they cannot be shared very easily and there are strict restrictions on how libraries lend them. Publishers fear they are heading the same way as the music industry but forget that millions of books are shared in accepted ways already. Carr argues that genuine readers will be quite happy to download e-books legally if the price is reasonable and the purchasing and downloading process is simple and hassle free but once you've bought the e-book it's quite natural to lend it to friends and family as we always have done.

Or maybe we pay a standard access fee every month and then read anything we want from the cloud with no need to download at all? The cloud library.

Change perspective

All innovations and new ideas must be tested and questioned before they can be widely accepted but how often to we test and question traditional methods and structures?

I heard a lecture a while back where we were asked to imagine how books would be viewed if they had just been invented in a world where multimedia games and the web were the norm. Reading books would be seen as a solitary activity where teenagers hide themselves in their rooms with no social interaction, no multimedia stimulus and very little physical activity. These strange book-lovers would congregate in quiet and unstimulating buildings called libraries where they all sat silently reading without even talking to each other.

An amusing thought in the light of today's discussions about gaming and social media but it is useful to sometimes look at accepted practice in a new light.

Another case is a blog post by Katie Stansberry on MindShift, 10 reasons to ban pens and pencils in the classroom. It's well worth reading and she presents the same arguments as are often used aginst the use of mobiles in the classroom she shows how dangerous pens and pencils can be. The case against pencils is just as convincing as that against mobiles and it all depends on what you do with these devices. The same device/method/tool can be either a trivial distraction or an invaluable learning opportunity.

I agree that we need to examine and questions innovations but we should not becom complacent in our attitude towards accepted practices. Just because classrooms/lectures/examinations/books/age-based classes etc worked in the past does not mean that they will work today. Keep questioning and re-examining.

Photo:  by  Muffet 

Textbooks - the end is nigh

Textbooks account for a major post in every student's budget but not for much longer. I've written many times on this theme and can find very few arguments in favour of keeping the printed tomes. Textbooks are first in line to go digital. Printed textbooks are always out of date (especially technology and science), cannot be updated without printing a new edition once a year and are very expensive investments considering their short sell-by date. Online resources can be updated daily and are subject to constant peer review. Just try and change a Wikipedia article and see how long your change lasts before being erased if you aren't able to provide references.

  by  timuiuc 

There's an excellent post on the need for course literature to go fully online by David Warlick, Six reasons why textbooks should stop being textbooks. He argues the case for open source textbooks online which can be updated regularly and scrutinized by the most demanding of reviewers - the teachers who use the resources. He gives six convincing arguments for this development that can be briefly summed up as follows:

• Technology exists already
• There's a wealth of content already freely available
• Plenty expertise available (ie teachers)
• Communities are already in place
• Learners should be part of the process
• It's about developing literacy into the digital domain

 He's against the official approval stamp that authorities give traditionl textbooks since today's information society is too fluid to be able to decide that any particular book is approved for several years to come.

"Do textbooks, from the bookstore reflect today’s prevailing information environment? No! But do digital textbooks, that are stamped “Approved” by some government agency, reflect an increasingly dynamic information environment and rapidly changing world any better? I think not! Teachers should be collecting, evaluating, editing and assembling their own textbooks, because it requires them to practice and talk about the contemporary literacy skills of a digital and networked information landscape — in front of their learners."

Instead of publishers and authorities deciding what students shoul read the decision making is now delegated to the teachers and to an increasing extent the students and pupils. New literacy skills are essential for teachers and students to be able to collaborate on what reading (and other media) should be included in a course. This negotiation is a process that leads to a deeper understanding of the subject since all are involved in exploring the latest ideas and theories.

The potential of tools like OER Glue (mentioned in a previous post) points the way forward I think. Using freely available resources teachers and students can together collaborate on compiling course material and resources. The learning experience will be greatly enhanceddue to greater invilvement but before this can be realised we need a change in attitudes towards what we mean by education, teaching and learning. We need new attitudes towards collaboration and new literacies. That is the challenge facing education today. The future is waiting but how do we get there?

Books in the cloud

Bookshelves beware! After the success of streaming music services like Spotify and Last.fm the next logical step is a service which offers you unlimited e-books on the net for a modest monthly fee. So we welcome 24symbols into the digital arena. 24symbols is a social reading service, at present only in a beta version with a limited selection of titles but will no doubt grow in the next few months.

  by  uncafelitoalasonce 

The business model is very familiar. The free version allows you to read books online but you are faced with regular adverts. If you want to lose the ads you have to pay a monthly subscription, starting at $9.99 for the basic option. Just like Spotify you don't download anything, you simply view your books on the web from any device you wish. You can access the book you're reading from any device anywhere and when you've read it you simply move on to another. You have no book collection, simply a list of titles you have borrowed.

It's an attractive deal and the publishing business is in for a very bumpy ride now. Unlimited net-based books would seem to me to be most attractive in two areas of publishing. Firstly the paperback market could well migrate to the cloud very quickly. As more people carry tablets and iPads with them on train or bus journeys those last minute detective novels you buy at the station will become downloads. Few people really want to keep their impulse-bought paperbacks anyway so a digital version can be read and discarded easily. If you don't like the book you just go back to the digital library and choose another.

The other attractive market for "streamed" books is course literature. Many books you buy for a course are of limited interest after the examination and just spend years untouched on the bookshelf. In addition, many course books have a very short sell-by date, especially technology books, and simply having access to these books for the duration of the course will be appreciated by most students.

This type of service could bring many benefits. Old and "out of print" titles could remain in circulation since there is no logic in withdrawing them. In this way a vast number of interesting books could be revived. New books could be published much more cheaply and we could see a flood of new literature and an arena for young authors. On the other hand we heard similar arguments when they introduced commercial radio and TV. The flip side is that we simply get a "greatest hits" selection and the new talent hasn't a chance of getting in.

However I don't see printed books disappearing anytime soon. Here the publishing business differs from music. Music has changed format regularly over the years and we are more willing to accept the changes. Books have been around in their present form for a few hundred years and this is the first change of format since the printing press appeared. The book is more culturally entrenched than the LP or cassette and will take a lot longer to replace. This change won't happen overnight but it's already under way.

Open your textbooks

Today there are vast numbers of textbooks and course material on almost every subject freely available on the net. Much of it has been written by educators and is subject to continuous review and revision. Net-based material can be upgraded immediately to take into account the latest events in the world (the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt for example) in stark contrast to printed textbooks which can often be up to 10 years out of date. There was a case recently of schools using textbooks which referred to the Soviet Union as a major power in the world.

So why then do we still insist that children and students should use printed material and cast doubt on the validity of the net-based material? This could even save schools and students a lot of money and free up the teacher to adapt and create the materials they feel will best support the goals of the course they're teaching.

So here's a short video with David Wiley of Brigham Young University explaining the advantages of using open online textbooks: Education without limits: Why open textbooks are the way forward.

Can you borrow an e-book?

We tend to define innovations in terms of their predecessors. One proposed use for the telephone was to enable people to contact the local telegraph office. The first cars were basically horse carriages without the horse and it took many years before they realised that cars could look different.

  by  Ed Yourdon 

It seems to be the same with e-books as described in a BBC article The rights and wrongs of digital books. If I buy a printed book I can read it and then pass it on to a friend or even sell it. However this isn't possible with digital books and publishers are taking great care to stop us doing so. Since any digital material can be copied in seconds and infinitely they rightly fear that once that particular Pandora's box is opened there'll be no future for the business. So various technologies are used to prevent copying. So if you buy a digital book you can't lend it to anyone whereas the print version is much more flexible. E-books are not really exportable either as publishers stop Amazon and Barnes & Noble from sending them out of the USA or UK. If I can order the printed book from Amazon why can't I get the e-book?

What happens then if you borrow an e-book from the library? What happens after your loan period is up? Does the book just disappear from your reader, self-destructing like the tapes on Mission Impossible? If you can borrow an e-book from the library why would you ever want to buy it? You can't show off your e-book collection to admiring friends so there isn't much point in holding on to them once you've read them. It'll be very interesting to see how libraries lend e-books since they would seem to threaten the publishers' revenues more than ever before. Or maybe they'll have to pay a lot of money for the right to lend.

However, the wealth of protective measures being taken in the publishing industry to restrict e-books from being lent, exported or copied suggests that we're still at the stage of phoning the telegraph office to send a long distance telegram. No-one has really worked out where e-publishing is actually leading us yet.