I like the idea of textbooks being digitalized. In the article, it mentions that in the long run having digitalized versions of books would be cheaper. So, all of the money not being spent on our textbooks could go to other things for our school. Another reason why I feel like this is a good thing is that it would be a lot easier to keep track of. If you have all of your textbooks on one e-reader or computer, then the only way to lose them would be to actually lose your e-reader. One negative would be the navigation of the textbooks. For the first part of the school year last year, I had an online textbook for a class. Overall, I didn’t like it because navigating it was really difficult and a lot more time consuming than navigating through an actual textbook.
Thinking about digitalizing textbooks makes me think about how e-readers are starting to become more popular. I think there are a lot of great things about e-readers; buying books on them is a lot easier and cheaper than actually going out to a bookstore and getting them. I just worry that with them becoming more popular, actual books are going to become less popular. In the future if e-readers are the main thing people are reading from, what will happen with actual books? I prefer reading actual books to reading on an e-reader, but I just worry about the future of books.
I think that there are so many benefits to either side of the issue, but personally, I like the traditional textbooks. There's something about a computer screen that gives some of us kids (especially myself) the attention span of a gnat. It also isn't as healthy for you eyes. However, I do think that ebooks would be really environmentally friendly, however, there's just so much to worry about, like the job market and internet access and such.
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