Amazon Lets Students Rent Digital Textbooks 174
Posted
by
Soulskill
from the disrupting-the-textbook-cartels dept.
from the disrupting-the-textbook-cartels dept.
nk497 writes "Amazon has unveiled a new digital textbook rental service, allowing students to choose how long they'd like access to an eBook-version of a textbook via their Kindle or app — with the retailer claiming savings as high as 80%. Kindle Textbook Rental will let students use a text for between 30 and 360 days, adding extra days as they need to. Any notes or highlighted text will be saved via the Amazon Cloud for students to reference after the book is 'returned.' Amazon said tens of thousands of books would be available to rent for the next school year."
Re:Bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Right to read (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html [gnu.org]
Richard Stallman's famous parable about the Right to Read, and what will happen if intellectual monopoly laws continue to grow.
It's amazing how RMS, obstinate as he is, has been so prescient.
The story's about what will happen when we're all converted to electronic books.
Good idea (Score:2, Insightful)
You sound like a college professor, who has a hard time believing your area of study isn't interesting to all your students.
For most college classes text books are an expensive and near useless expense, Especially for those Undergrad required courses that the student needs the book for the class then never uses it again... Some students never even use the book during class as they learn better by hearing the lectures vs. from reading a book.
Many college books are introduction based books so after they take the class and advanced to the next ones the content of the intro book is so basic that it is useless now.
Sure some books a student should keep but not all of them. And if you are going to Pay $150.00 for a text book where during the class you have read 3 chapters in it. (50 pages) on a topic that you are not interested in but needed to take the class to graduate. Then have a choice of selling that book back for $15.00 or just being able to rent the book for even $50.00 for the semester you may be better off.
In a classroom of 100 students (who will pass the class). 1 or 2 is so interested in the topic that they will love the book and read it front to back and keep it for it has enlighten so. 20 will read the requested readings and have useful notes on it, 20 will have done the requested reading, 40 will do the required readings just because it will be on the test, and rest will pick out info they need for the test and bluff the rest.
Re:Bad idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Didn't you take notes in those courses?
In my first semester I made the error to rely on the text book (well, at least in one course). After that, I wrote complete notes for any course. Which resulted not only in me having the complete material covered in the course without paying anything, but also having it memorized much better than by using the book, because it all went through my brain in order to get into my notes.
Did I say I didn't take notes? I often find that in a field that I have continued to study or use, going back to the textbook is more useful than going back to my notes. In fact, I sometimes find that sections of the textbook that were less useful to me when I was learning the material become more useful as a way to solidify and enhance my knowledge. If the material has been digesting in my brain for a few years, the reliable and thorough explanations in a good logical textbook make more sense than they ever did before.