The advent of the internet, as we are all aware, has brought upon a generation of “virtual everything”-online shopping, online newspapers, online research to simply name a few. One online concept however,e-books, has certainly succeeded not only in “wowing” the virtual culture we now live in, but along with this surge forward, it has conversely created a need to pull back and re-evaluate this attempt at a “textbook revolution”. E-books yes, are the result of a natural progression of online tools aimed at making our lives more convenient and no where is this more prevalent than in education. The question is then, are we adapting to the e-book phenomenon as well as we think we are? There are two schools of thought on this highly debateable topic.
No one can dispute the positive impact of the e-book concept. Not only they are convenient, immediately accessible from anywhere, environmentally-friendly and easily updateable, but the financial cost benefit between e-books and conventional textbooks is proving to be significant. As a 4th year life sciences student at University of Toronto states, “It was a little surprising my first year seeing some of the prices (of textbooks) because you can easily pay $150.00 or more for a textbook that you will only use for a semester” (Toronto Star, August 25th,2012). Total it up, semester after semester, for the average 3-4 year program and the cost of textbooks alone can get extremely expensive. E-books then, obviously alleviate that financial burden to a certain extent- “investing in electronic textbooks…can be 50-70 per cent cheaper than first edition print editions” (Toronto Star, August 25,2012).
This being said however, and even with all of the unquestionable advantages the e-book provides, there are still those of us out there who continue to utilize and actually prefer the “good ‘ol” traditional hard-copy textbook. According to one U.K. study, “students retain more when they read traditional texts. Reading from a screen is slower and less accurate than reading paper”. Also, according to a July survey this year by University of Toronto bookstore, 78 per cent of students said they did not expect to use an e-book during their 4 years at university!
The advantages and disadvantages of the e-book are clear and the opinions about them vary considerably. The question then becomes-is this too much too soon? Are we a culture moving forward so fast in technological cyberspace that we are forgetting that we are human beings that simply enjoy the satisfaction of “seeing” how much work we have done, how many pages we have read? Have we negated the necessity of “flipping back” through the pages of the text to highlight that important quote or phrase? We may have a ways to go but the e-book has most definately carved itself a place in our society. To say the e-book is a replacement for the conventional textbook however, is a long shot-hard cover textbooks are certainly not going anywhere any time soon!
