<p>Fine, then make it the football field instead of the track.
Or better yet, make it musical theater, which is not fully accessible to those who are blind or deaf.</p>
<p>I don’t get your argument that because all students cannot participate in something, that the school shouldn’t offer it at all. There are plenty of activities at a school that are as good as inaccessible to many students.</p>
<p>Couple comments.</p>
<p>@Singersmom07, unfortunately, there will always be things that we have to pay for in life that we won’t be able to use, whether by choice or by disability. The law doesn’t prevent charging for something that can’t be used by everyone; it simply requires accomodation for those who have a disability. The school will be required to make textbooks available to a person who can’t use a iPad device but won’t be required to give a discount.</p>
<p>Examples:
Swimming pool - not usable by people with certain skin conditions or quadrapeglics
Medical center - not usable by people who are healthy
School sponsored activities that involve food - not usable by people who have food allergies
Stairs - Not usable by people in wheelchairs (should we eliminate stairs then?)
Books in libraries - Not usable by blind (braile books excluded)</p>
<p>@Everyone else:</p>
<p>If the books are cheaper on iPads and Kindles, does that mean that the authors earn less money from the sale of the books? If so, does that create an incentive for them to write more books in the future? Or does that mean books are simply not necessary.</p>
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<p>Not necessarily. The books are cheaper but so are the marginal costs to produce the books. The research and development costs are fixed. With a physical book, you have physical production, distribution, return, inventory, etc. costs to deal with. With an electronic book, most of those costs go away. So the profits can even be higher with ebooks.</p>
<p>Singersmom, I sense this issue affects you or your family personally?</p>
<p>If they start providing electronic options for textbooks more broadbased than they already do, I sure hope that a downward price is reflected. I’ve had a kindle for 18 months … LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it. However, I am not thrilled that since the IPAD’s intitial introduction and various publisher contract negotiations that new books on kindles are now raising in price dramatically. It used to be that you were “guaranteed” $9.99 are less on all books. Now that IPAD’s agreed to pay more to publishers, kindle, et. al, have had to either be denied access to these publishers or re-negotiate for higher amounts for e-book rights. I thought the whole idea of e-books was that you didn’t have to spend as much on pricey runs of books that might not get purchased, etc., etc., but now the prices are increasing instead of decreasing. Rubbish! Aaargh! and all that … 
I’m afraid the same will be true of textbooks. Theoretically, costs should go down considerably … but I’m sure someone will figure out a reason why they shouldn’t.</p>
<p>zebes, off to read on her kindle … <g> BTW, I love this little gadget so much, I give it anniversary cards. :)</g></p>
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<p>The $9.99 price was the result of a monopoly where the monopoly was based on the Kindle with Amazon controlling that. Amazon makes money on the hardware (Apple’s model) and the book. They were squeezing the publishers because they had the device. Apple does the same thing with iPods and iTunes and the content companies hate it as it limits their profits and removes their ability to do marketing by price.</p>
<p>The iPad gets rid of the monopoly and allows publishers to charge what they wish for their content. I think that this is quite a reasonable free-market arrangement. A willing buyer and a willing seller. You didn’t have that before as there was coercion involved. Amazon could remove your physical books from their catalog if you didn’t offer them e-books at their pricing.</p>
<p>I’m considering the Wall Street Journal deal on the iPad. I think that it’s $19/month. I like the WSJ and can read the electronic version for free on my computer (I have access to paid content) but it would be nicer on the iPad if it was already there in the morning. I would like to support the concept so that it grows. This is a new market and I think that it will have benefits for the US and global economy.</p>
<p>Here is my understanding of the IPad for college text books. Right now I think you can only download e-texts whose companies are linked to Apple. But for those that are, it is great. You can highlight and send your highlighted areas over to your notes. You can click on a term or concept and watch a video on the topic. The cost for a textbook like Chem 101 will be around $90, but you only have access to it for less than a year.</p>
<p>“Further, the ability to take notes, see embedded video, have access to the Internet as one reads, and many useful Apps, adds even further value. One can highlight text, add notes, search by note, etc.”
You will NOT be able to multi task, having many applications open at the same time on the Ipad like on a computer, as is has the same operating system as the iphone. That is one of the the “knocks” about the ipad at this point.</p>
<p>I would expect students to have an iPad and a laptop in their studying environment just as you would often have a physical textbook and your laptop when doing your homework. What I’m looking forward to in the workplace is being able to bring work product to another office to show someone something. Right now, I go to the other person’s office and ask them to come to mine to look at the problem. Alternatively, I send the problem to the printer which is far away, go to the printer room, bring the piece of paper to their office and we work on it there, and then throw the paper in the recycle bin.</p>
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<p>I would be interested in seeing how you like it on the iPad. I subscribed it to on my nook and while I’m happy with the experience of reading books on the nook, I didn’t care for the WSJ on the nook at all.</p>
<p>What a great discussion going on. I was curious as to how people look at new technologies. Personally, I love the feel/look/smell of an actual paper book and have not yet signed on to the I Pad craze (and I still don’t have an I pod either). I am all for giving my D all the advantages, and if this gizmo works like it is supposed to and saves her back, I’m all for it. I don’t know if Cornell is on this bandwagon yet, but given the proper promotion from Apple, I think it could really catch on. Also, it was mentioned that the I pad can’t do multiple applications, so having them placed in college campuses is really beneficial to the programmers as they try to figure out ways to work with and improve their system.</p>
<p>I prefer hardcover books. They mgood on a bookshelf full of them in my office.</p>
<p>And they won’t be quickly replaced by new technologies.</p>
<p>I really don’t care for the online format either. I’m wondering if it would look better without the ads. I’d have to log in to see and I’m too lazy to go through the process right now. One of the WSJ folks said that they did a redesign just for the iPad and he really likes it - he said that it gave it more of a papery feel. The WSJ approach of having very short snippets is standard stuff - you have to open it up and then see more ads. With the paper version, you can often just scan the first page and have enough information for your day. You definitely can’t do that with the online version.</p>
<p>I don’t think that I’ll be able to buy an iPad for a while. Preorders are supposedly shipping starting on the 12th right now. I really want to play with one in the store for a while and even getting my hands on one might mean a long wait in the local store.</p>
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<p>That’s a function of the operating system so Apple would have to enable that. I do expect hackers to jailbreak the device and get Linux up and running on it. That seems to be a popular sport among some geeks.</p>
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<p>I have two books in my bookshelf in the office. I have thousands at home. At work, just about everything is online or onLAN. At my son’s school, they already have access to a ton of technical books online through subscription.</p>
<p>But those books in your home or office do make a great backdrop when the local news station comes over to shoot you for an interview on an esoteric science topic.</p>
<p>I think they should exercise the supply and demand model in the favor of the students and not tie this to the iPad but rather, attempt to offer the electronic books in multiple formats compatible with the iPad, Kindle, Windows, and Mac at a minimum. There’s no good reason for the college to go out and purchase thousands of iPads whose cost will likely just end up being charged to the students somehow anyway. Virtually every student already has a laptop or desktop that would be perfectly capable of handling electronic books so it’d be ideal to make them available for the tools that already exist in addition to these new ones. The digital rights management issues can be handled with Windows/Mac just as they are with the other devices.</p>
<p>Regardless of the media used the publishers and authors will make their cut (assuming the digital rights management works well to prevent piracy). What will be saved are the production and ancillary costs such as - cutting trees to make paper along with the environmental impact of harvesting the trees from the landscape, use of chemicals in the making of the paper, use of fuel in transporting the trees to the mills and transporting the paper to the bookmakers and transporting the books to the bookstores (books are heavy!), use of space to store all the books in the bookstores along with those costs, and finally, the students’ backs. Also saved s/b the passing on to the consumer of the production costs associated with these steps that can be skipped of putting print to paper and distributing it in this archaic form.</p>
<p>Having the books available in electronic format will potentially help the 99% of students who’ll be able to use that format. For the remainder, hopefully the publishers will allow for the books to be electronically ‘spoken’ to assist the blind and hopefully the device and software makers will design the user interfaces to allow a blind person to navigate whether by touchscreen or voice command or some other means. Opening it up beyond just one device, i.e. the iPad or Kindle, and having the electronic format use become ubiquitous will introduce competition so the device manufacturers will have more incentive to develop these advanced features. There are students right now with physical issues that prevent them from carrying heavy loads of books that this form can immediately help with.</p>
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<p>I guess I’m just skeptical of the range of books that will be offered. The more hard copy exceptions, the less you end up saving, and since the cost of the iPad is going to get passed along in some way to the student anyway, at a certain point it stops making economic sense. Since I don’t often have a need for the textbooks outside my room, I find many of the other benefits to be somewhat hollow. I guess that’s just personal bias.</p>
<p>I actually don’t listen to either radio or an mp3 player. Agh, I’m too young to be a tech curmudgeon.</p>
<p>Anyway, there was [a</a> thread](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/high-school-life/727894-digital-textbook-initiative.html"]a”>Digital Textbook Initiative - High School Life - College Confidential Forums) about digital textbooks on HSL after CA announced a plan to introduce them (can’t remember the details - original link is dead - but I think they would be mandatory). Most of the discussion was related to high school obviously, though a lot of issues overlap. I found it interesting, looking back, that a lot of the questions I had should be answered by the iPad. The question of selection is still a big concern though.</p>
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They have the potential to be more available if you think about it. I’ve ordered some books (ex: history books printed over 50 and over 100 years ago) from Amazon where they only have 1 or 2 in available and sometimes don’t have what I want available. With electronic delivery they don’t need to try to keep these old seldom ordered books in stock - they only need to convert them to electronic media once and store the small file and then they can deliver it as many times as they want even if the publisher wouldn’t be willing to go to print on it or if there’s no publisher at all. It’s far easier, and a key - more profitable, to offer vastly more books through electronic means rather than keeping the dead tree version in stock on a shelf somewhere.</p>
<p>From Amazon’s Kindle site - “Over 1.8 million free, out-of-copyright, pre-1923 books are available to read on Kindle…”</p>
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But look at you using an online blog! Maybe you’ll inch to the other tech.</p>
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<p>So instead of professors being photographed in their offices in front of an impressive book collection, they will be photographed with an iPad on their desk.</p>
<p>From what I understand almost all major textbook publishers will have their products ready for the iPad. The reason it makes sense for these companies to rent their books to students is that the main competition they face is from used textbooks. This competition is eliminated with the iPad. Here is a link to what the textbook experience on an iPad will be like for many texts. No textbook can compete. Make sure to check out the video.
[CourseSmart</a> - iPad](<a href=“eTextbooks | Rent or Buy Online Textbooks | VitalSource”>eTextbooks | Rent or Buy Online Textbooks | VitalSource)</p>
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<p>This image would clash with the tweed sport coats with elbow patches.</p>
<p>idad - thanks for the link.</p>