eBooks (14)

This infographic terrifies me. As an English major, I love books and everything about them. One of my favorite things is opening a new book, smelling the ink, feeling the crisp pages between my fingers. Unless you're an avid reader, you probably don't appreciate these petty things about a book, but my fellow English people will definitely agree. Anyway, the reason that this terrifies me is because soon enough, classrooms will no longer have books; they'll have eBooks. To me, this almost seems a backward thing to do though. eBooks, though they are great on the outside, I think that they could do more harm than good in a classroom. Having the freedom of an electronic device in a classroom is inevitably a dangerous solution to real books. Also, with funding within school districts and the economic strife that we are in right now, I think that keeping regular books in classrooms have more economical benefits. One, they can be used and used and reused. Two, other than losing pages or ripping, they cant't break like an eReader would be able to, Three, they are a lot cheaper in bulk than eBooks and eReaders are simply because there's no liability aspect of bound books. Four, if a student breaks, even by accident, an eReader, they are going to be expected to re-buy that item, and they are not cheap, therefore not necessarily affordable to everyone, whereas a paperback book could be afforded by most. Though I think that eReaders and eBooks are great (for some people and places), they do not have a place in the classroom.