Sunday, 12 February 2012
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Education IT
Downturn drives popularity of e-books in Asia
The popularily of e-books is on the rise in Asia as the region’s schools and universities look to make cost-savings and save on storage space.
The number of e-books used in schools in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and China rose by 87 per cent in June 2008 compared to the same period in 2007, and that is likely to have accelerated as the economy has worsened.
Use of e-books has increased as the technology has improved. Schools have embraced the benefits of e-books such as reduced storage space, anywhere access and cost-savings made it students are charged to use them.
Currently Kindle and Sony e-reader offer more than 1000 books. But there’s a catch: these devices are only accessible using credit cards with US billing addresses. Plus there have been complaints that the price is still too high, particularly for longer books that students must pay for.
E-books are easily downloadable and can be shared via email, which has raised alarm bells over the opportunity for piracy. Concerns have also been raised over the risks associated with staring at a computer screen for too long, as well as neck and back aches.
‘E-books are useful for students as they allow them to work independently,” Dr Radha Krishna, lecturer for Mathematics at Singapore Institute of Management (SIM) told FutureGov. “They are likely to grow in popularity as they can save money during this economic downturn, and also cut the travel time to and from libraries for research.”
However, e-books are not particularly useful for Mathematics students, as they need more practice and cannot rely on plain text from a book, argues Dr Phil Stephenson, another lecturer in Mathematics at SIM.
A lecturer in Science and Technology, Wei Thing Quek, points out that “E-books are very important because they make it easier to do research, but paper books are still in use as they’re easier to edit.”
Children can now write their own e-books with KooBits, a program designed in Singapore. About 80,000 budding writers across Asia are users of the technology. Students write stories and illustrate them by selecting from a gallery of clip-art images. The technology enables them to animate the images by keying in commands - they do not need to use the more complex Adobe Flash animation software.
Koo-bits is trying to break into China this year and has plans to enter the United States in 2010.
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