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Kerrie Smith

educator, Adelaide, South Australia

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August 31st, 8:22am 2 comments

e-book essentials for educators

A recent online forum that I led for over a week has brought me to the conclusion that the most essential thing for educators and educational librarians is to get some experience in using e-book readers and reading e-books. The cause needs some champions in their ranks, otherwise it will drown in the "which device?" debate.

The following shows the result of a mini-survey that some of the discussion participants responded to.

Experience_with_e_books
To be quite honest I had anticipated a much greater level of experience, and it certainly seems to me that educators are lagging behind the readers in the real world.

I know, reading a book takes time, and that is a pretty valuable commodity in the educator's world.
But without experience there will be no vision, and there will be no experimentation with pedagogy. Changes in education, particularly the adoption of new devices and new practices, is a horrendously slow process.

But if anything, 2010 will be the year that the e-book in education became a possibility, whichever device you settle on. We desperately need people in our schools, TAFEs and universities who know what they are talking about when it comes to e-books. It is only from there that other issues can be identified and solutions found for their use in education.

This discussion is one that is going on around the world, so it presents an opportunity for Australian educators to be at the cutting edge about the use of one technology in their pedagogical practice, and to show leadership in their own local situation.

And at the very least it will help us with this problem:

Student-heavy-backpack
As always, your comments will be very welcome.

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