Relection on E-book




Baboom material

 



Searvhing in the Library



The E-book

Imaging three situations, first one is back to the ancient dynasty Han of China, the students in traditional college are reading bamboo material of the masterpiece of Confucius--- The Analects of Confucius( <Lun Yu>). Second one is in the late 1980s, searching the The Analects of Confucius in library, And the other student is in the modern society of 21^st century, reading the e-book of The Analects of Confucius in his ipod, while listening his favorite music at the same time.

Walking through ancient China to modern society, we might feel so light by uploading all the weight of the reading material, from tons of bamboo with limited message to a few grams of LCD screen contains with trillion shortage of information, e-book make our life so convenient now. what’s more, it is easy for us to list other benefits of the e-book.

• When it comes to the ecological aspect, e-books overweight the traditional book, for no trees are required to manufacture paper for the pages of e-books

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    E-books are delivered almost instantaneously. You can purchase, download and start reading them within minutes, without leaving your chair. You don't have to go to a bookstore to buy them, neither wait for them for days, weeks and sometimes more to arrive in the mail.
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   E-books take up less space. You practically don't need any space to store them. You don't need a library or a room for them. You can store hundreds and thousands of e-books in your computer and also we don’t need to worry about their weight.
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   Also E-books can show links, for easy access to more information and related websites and e-book are more  searchable. You can easily search for any information in an e-book, instead of turning page after page.
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   E-books can be contained with audio, video and animations, which can enhance the message that the author is trying to convey.

    

However, there do have some problems that stop e-book to be used for everybody. Like the immature for both software and hardware, and moreover, some people just resist to change their reading habit, they are more comfortable with the paper reading habit. Think all the greatest change in history, it may took people longer time to fully realize the benefit of the new technology.

And when e-books come to the field of academic study, more students may feel the problem that more or less they may get distract by the simple click to the Facebook, Youtube etc. What’s more just like Nicholas Carr, who raises concerns about the long-term implications in The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brain, which was published in June. "The danger is you don't encourage people to think critically and, ultimately, you don't encourage them to think creatively."

So Just like the last course we discussed, nowadays they have the training course for college students which enhance them to better use of the i-pads, e-books included. However, we should also keep in mind, having the training might may provide them with some effective methods, but what counts last for effective learning is students own cognitive style, so it is very important for students to integrate those methods into their own learning style, in this way, we can reduce the phenomenon of "cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and superficial learning".

Also there do have another concerns in China when students are reading the e-books, parents may worried about the myopic phenomenon, for the traditional reading material, they can protect children’s eyesight by changing the color of the paper, so if we can find some solution to eliminate this concerns, there maybe more people using the e-books than now.

At last I am very confident about the e-book's future, it might not eventually replace the traditional book, but I think more and more people will be fasinated about this vivid "book".