Post on 26-Dec-2015
Ebooks, Textbooks and Digital Storytelling
• By
• Robert Nagle
• www.teleread.org/blog
• May 11, 2007
Preface
• Presentation will be put up on my idiotprogrammer weblog and probably teleread as well
• If you want to make comments, add them to the teleread blog post about it.
• I have delicious links for everything
• http://del.icio.us/rjnagle/uhlecture
Outline
Preface: Who am I?
• How do you read a book?
• How do you make a book?
• How do you anticipate a Story?
How do you read a book?
An Idiographic Analysis
Geography Does Make a Difference!
• Houston bus• Lunch hour• Peace Corps Albania & Ukraine• Back to US• Lunch hours in Austin• Books on tape• Boston/DC mass transit• Waiting in line
Where do you read a book?
• Bed• Lazy Boy chair• Bathtub• At work/on way to work• Dinner table• Web surfing• Reading to sleep • Reading in total darkness (backlighting)• Print Books and dim lamp• Reading on the Run• RSS Reader on my pda
How do you read a book?• Check the reviews; afterwards, check the
reviews again! • Read the first chapter. After end, I always reread
the first chapter• Critical Essays• Highlighting. High School/College• Word definitions• Bookmarks-- Always lose my place. • technical manuals--often in medias res
How do you read a book?
• One novel vs. several. • Pile by my bed• Having complete works on my ebook reader• Arnold Bennett, Henry James, Shakespeare• Then you discover hidden gems (and realize
there are hundreds, if not thousands of others)• Alternate versions/editions• Whitman’s Song of Myself (Deathbed Edition vs.
All the Rest).
Beasts of Burden: Collecting
• 1993 New Braunfels Factory Outlet Store; Buyer’s Remorse
• Moving
• Why People buy a house (and move)
• Amazon Wishlists vs. bookstores
• Eventually everything becomes 99 cents!
Ebook Revolution,
2004
2007: The Year Flash Memory Became Dirt Cheap!
• 8 gigs CF card = 80$
• 4 gig Project Gutenberg DVD has 17,000 titles!
• Bruce Sterling: envisioned LOC in his pocket
Horn of Plenty
“Bestsellers” for Today
E-Books vs. Web Pages vs. Print Pages:
• Ebooks: Better navigation, TOC, indices, keeps you trapped (must concentrate) ; Sustained reading is more possible.
• Web Book Reader in Browser: Always Up-to-Date, comments; better design possibilities. but requires online access,
• RSS Feed Reader: Organization is mainly chronological (that’s limiting!). Can serve as offline reader.
• Print: “Smell of the Book,” Ability to look at two pages at once; Better Font & Layout Variety.
Is Reading Just Old-Fashioned?
• Youtube, Secondlife, HBO, PS2
• Publishing Industry in decline?
• A crisis in literacy?
The Bane of Publishers
My childhood books
Text as “Illustrations” for the Art
• Kingdom Hearts
When will Dylan want to read/write?
• James Paul Gee’s “semiotic domains” or “situated meanings”
Text vs. Audio vs. Video vs. Games
• Read 300-350 words per minute (vs. 140 wpm for audio)
• Easier to scan/browse/search (can find within text)
• Less intrusive/noisy
• Easier to cite/refer to (that might be changing)
• Lower production costs
Think about 9/11
• How did you find information about WTC? • Did you keep on the TV news that day?
Was this an efficient way to track the event?
• Years later, how would you locate information about: 1)a victims, 2)the terrorist plot, 3)the president’s response, 4)the timeline, 5)people’s opinions about why it happened
Devices, Devices, Devices
Why buy an ebook device?
• Space Saving• Can modify font size • Quick jumping between books• Access to all that Public Domain stuff!• Laptops are hot! Expensive! Heavy! Suck up
batteries! • Won’t help you download John Updike or Saul
Bellow, but it will help you download web-only content and young writers
• BUT Da Vinci Code is cheaper as a used print book than an ebook.
Ebooks and DIY books
• Project Gutenberg produced books• Best Site for ebooks is
www.manybooks.net (all formats). • What you don’t anticipate is how often you
will end up creating your own ebook (usually out of your own material or out or material from the web).
• Scanning your own books? 1863 Houston Sci fi short story
Ebook: Frustrations, Disappointment
• Expensive
• Single Purpose Device vs. Convergent Device
• Can’t Transfer Ebooks
• Tied into Ecommerce Store
• Manufacturer’s Mistake: assuming that people buy these things so they can buy more content (aka the “Itunes Fallacy”)
What People Will Pay And Expect
• $1500: Extreme Portability, Great Battery Life, Great Display, Touchscreen, Multipurpose, DRM
• $600-750: Multimedia, Great Battery, color• $300-400:
– PDA (Multipurpose, Small Screen) or E-ink Device (Great Display, Battery Life), wifi
– E-ink Reader: Grayscale, Outstanding Battery Life and Limited Formats, mp3 player, no wifi
• $200-250: Magic Price Point? (Nothing here?!) Cellphones
• $100-150: Bought on Ebay; Old Devices that still work wonderfully when used solely for reading (battery life sucks?!)
• $50 Keychains, mp3 memory sticks,
2007: Fierce Competition in the $300-400 space
• Sony Reader
• Not Another E-Book (NAEB-Bookeen)
• Jinke Hanlin V3
• Amazon.com Kindle Reader
But will it drive prices down?
Ebook Beauty Contestant #1Jinke V3 (Released Fall, 2007?)
Wacom Pen Touchscreen
Mp3 player & Wifi.
Proprietary Formats
SD Card holds up to 4 gigs.
Ebook Beauty Contestant #2
Sony Reader (Nov 2006)
•No Touchscreen, Sort of Complicated
•Buy from Sony Connect Store
•Can read Encrypted Books from Sony Connect Store , but inventory is limited
•Can Read PDF, DOC, but not HTML!
Ebook Beauty Contestant #3• Not Another Ebook
Reader (NAEB)• (June-July 2007?)• No ability to read
encrypted content (no buying from Amazon!)
• Popular backing from Baen Sci Fi Publishing
• Can read both Mobi, HTML, Doc, PDF
Dark Horse Contestants: Educational Devices
• One Laptop per Child $150
– Plans to sell it in US? – Viewed as a learning tool, not an ebook
reader
Digital Textbook (Korea)$100
•Touchpad
•Provided for all Schools and Students between 2008-2011
Scorecard for Judging Devices
• Does it Read/Import HTML?
• Can it automatically create/read RSS feeds?
• Is it easy to use?
• How much flash memory does it support?
Criteria for Evaluating Book Solutions
• Can students/teachers create their own ebooks? Can you import html files?
• Do they have permanent licenses to the books they buy?
• What notetaking capability is possible? group notes?
• Built in Dictionaries? Foreign Language dictionaries?
• Cut/Paste, Printing from Desktop?
Uses of an educational reader
• Critiques of Laptops for Kids. But access to greater variety of material
• Teacher-created anthologies
• Reduce backsprain
•Reduce costs of print textbooks (700$/yr)
•Newer editions 60% more expensive than older editions•Teachers are often not aware of actual prices of textbook even when they ask
High Costs of School Textbooks
Ebook Readers/Books don’t solve the
Pedagogical problems of teaching material. Instead, they increase the amount of material available to students and make it easy for them to access this material away from the laptop.
Making Textbooks Affordable
• Why Can’t Teachers Collaborate on their own textbooks/course material? Norton Anthology of Literature, Package A and B ($100)
• Key questions are: ensuring quality, packaging in an ebook friendly format and providing course outlines/objectives/study material
• Makes it easier to introduce already free material into the classroom and make it available at home.
Sophie Reader (www.sophieproject.org)
• Open Source produced by Future of the Book • Can embed graphics, audio and video• “Networked Book,” saved on net, with ability of readers to
embed comments on pages; • Authors can pull resources from web repositories • Based on Voyager/Voyager Japan/T3 authoring platform• Funded partly by Mellon Foundation• Beta version of Reader out by Sept 2007; 1.0 out by
December. • Tie-ins with One laptop per child project. • Decentralized Servers? • Ambitious, buggy, mindshare? Adobe? Standards?
Dot Reader http://www.dotreader.com/)
• Software for Laptop.• Allows annotation by
readers/students; with web servers letting you store comments
• They’ve solved the chicken or egg problem! (USB Keychains/Flash Media)
• Both Sophie and Dotreader have some commitment to open standards
Mobipocket Creator—free Ebook Creator
Mobipocket: Adding Content
Building the Ebook (With Password Protection?)
Adobe Reader
• It’s a print standard, not a reflowable standard
• Works horribly on devices• Creation Tools are expensive • Advantages: Excellent Accessibility and
Multimedia Capabilities (+ Flash)• Adobe Digital Editions—new reader suited
for reflowable content (but what about devices?)
Producing a PDF Book• Not simple for individuals • MS Office doesn’t have a plugin for PDF
conversion, and yet Openoffice does • Online Zamzar file conversion site does it
for free. http://www.zamzar.com/• Google Docs:
– Save as HTML, PDF, doc, txt– Revert to previous versions– Collaborative editing– Can use as Text Editor for most blogging
software (XML-RPC)
Other Tools: DIY Books
• Web Scrapers/ Sunrise Desktop
• Photo Albums with Stories attached to them. “Text is illustration for the photo”
• RSS Readers
3. How to Anticipate a Story
Designing for Creativity
• Web Developer’s interest in understanding group dynamics
• If you create a versatile-enough platform that is open to all kinds of input, massive creativity will ensue
• Yochai Benkler’s Wealth of Networks: Peer Production produces great results (i.e, Wikipedia). But what about creativity?
Constraints on Creativity
• Public domain has been cancelled until 2018. We are stuck at the year 1922.
Ex. All Quiet on the Western Front• Pre-1972 American Music Won’t go into the
public domain until 2067– (Many American musicians are already in public
domain in Europe, but not in USA: Elvis, Frank Sinatra, Louie Armstrong, all early Jazz)
– When Andrew Sister’s 1936 hit song Bei Mir Bist Du Schon enters Public Domain, all of us will be dead.
Media companies thank you!
• Using Trademark to Suppress Creativity – Harry Potter™, Star Wars ™, Simpsons™
• Fair Use: Lessig: fair use is having the freedom to pay a legal team to defend you in court
• Educational Exemptions: Teach Act
Progression
• Modernism
• Postmodernism
• Anti-postmodernism
How to Be Creative without Being Sued
• Creative Commons Search for text/multimedia• http://search.creativecommons.org
Jamendo for Creative Commons Music
Group Memepools
• Someone suggests a topic/question and your assignment is to write on it.
http://www.iampariah.com/memeslist/
Also: Poets like to do this
FRIDAY Memes: Answer these Questions
What are the Top 5 "Mom" songs What is the toughest decision you've ever had to make? Who have you been most disappointed by in your life?What is the nastiest thing you've ever done to someone? Do you own a car? What make and model? Do you consider cars a boring point A to B appliance or does talk of V8's and turbo-charging make your eyes light up? SUVs : practical and roomy or gas-guzzling monstrosities?Your dream car is...? Do you gamble?Have you ever rode a horse?What is the most fantabulous thing that has happened this week?
Houston Memepool: Weekly 100 Word Podcast Theme: Baseball
Shared Universes
• Popular in Sci Fi Novels, comics
• Star Trek, Star Wars
• One Author creates the universe, and individual people add to it.
• Media companies want control
• Challenge: how can students find out about shared universes where it is legal/encouraged to create for?
Geographically-based Stories
• Sex map in Manhattan
• The Unknown
Hyperlinks over words and names
Hyperlinks over place names
Lots of paths for reading this story
Ficlets
Fan Fiction & Branding
• Sequels to Star Wars, TV shows,
• Noncommercial fan fiction is tolerated unless it becomes too famous.
• Quicksand: Company encourages user-submissions on its own site, but users have to agree with terms of service.
• “Remix Factories” on company sites; BMW, commercials
Which creative writing projects tend to work and why?
• Are individual contributions recognized and browsable by name? – No more digital maoism
• Minimize intersections between people’s stories; that reduces need to maintain consistency between them
• Sitcom writing vs. storywriting. (Continuity is in the actors, not the style).
• Contributors have the ability to play one persona
Interactive vs. Linear Storytelling
• Reading linear stories is less strenuous • Interactivity is overrated
– Scarcity of good players/actors– When the reader/player makes choices, then he is
limited by his own meager imagination– Andrew Glassman: How is a story improved by our
making decisions in ignorance of their implications? – Glassman compares it to calling an automated phone
system.
Novel as Porous Form
• Jane Smiley: unevenness can become an aesthetic
• Moby Dick
Fictional Blogs
• Celebrity blogs (Batman Blog, George W. blog)
• You can impersonate somebody you’re not. But is anybody reading it? (Ethics?)
• Fictional bloggers can respond to other fictional bloggers (Lonelygirl15)
Unexplored Possibilities
• Alternate Reality Games: Text as Clues to a Game in Virtual Space or Meatspace
• Remediations: Texts turned into multimedia experiences