In Greece the government pays for 99% of students’ textbooks which as you can imagine is no small cost. Well, in the video (below) Greek opposition leader George Papandreou recommends all students be given a sum of money each to purchase a Kindle (or like device) to replace the typical textbooks that students are given and the government spends a fortune on.
As John Aravosis from AmericaBlog points out, there is the issue of getting rights to the books required, as well as the costs involved in converting old books into digital format. Also, the cost of replacement should the child lose/break the Kindle is worthwhile considering, because lets face it, 5/10 kids are likely to have theirs lost.
Nevertheless, that aside, will ebooks lead to the death of textbooks?
Brilliant idea. I fully support the transition. Kindle is awesome and yes indeed I believe the text-book is coming to an end quite soon.
I have a Sony Reader and I love it. While trying to decide which to purchase I went with the Sony Reader because I can also download PDFs to it, unlike Kindle.
This would be a great way for schools to go green!
Very good idea,
i hope we will get a subsidised kindle in Germany, too.
Excellent! What if they pushed for the company to turn it into a cellphone? I’d think students would take better care of it.
The idea is good, but there’s something about this that feels out-of-date. The b&w lcd display etc. I know for something like this you want little distraction. But something tells me, unless the delivery of this technology will be it’s downfall!
the entire new generations should be thankful now.
The text-book yeah, but not the end of the traditional book, that will take much, much longer