This is the age of smartphones and tablets where communication is possible from every corner of the world. The internet technology has made it possible for the easy transfer of information across the world. These technologies have in fact revolutionized the world of knowledge and the world as a whole. Now it is the time for technology to revolutionize the world of education. But before it happens in India, there are many changes and up gradation that needs to the introduced in terms of infrastructure so that India too will be a part of that revolution.

Application by Apple gets a warm welcome

Apple has recently introduced an application to support E-textbooks and has become a hit within a few days time. Statistics show that the application recorded 350,000 downloads within the first three days. Experts in the field of education and educationist are of the view that E-textbooks are the key to the future education.

Digital Text books - An essential part of education

Digital textbooks will become an essential part of education since future generations will be technology savvy. In the present world, where significance of computer has increased, e-textbooks will reduce the cutting down of trees to produce paper. In addition to this the schools children do not have to carry heavy bags with text books in it. But there are issues with the availability of adequate resources.

Issues to be considered

Presently, there are many issues which require more time to overcome. To get the full benefits of e-textbooks, we need to provide students with easy access to internet. But as of now, such an easy access is not possible across the country. So we have more to do in the direction of setting up infrastructure for internet connectivity.

Expectations are high

Still the expectations about e-textbooks are very high, and there is lot of excitement over the easy availability and other features of the e-textbooks. The trend that is observed today is that children do not like to read books, but they spend more time on computers. Children prefer to read online than reading textbooks, and online reading is something they do without any compulsion. Most of the parents feel that digital textbooks are of great advantage since it will encourage the students to study even without compulsion from the part of the parents.

Advantages of e-textbooks

Digital textbooks form the basic requirement in any e-classroom. There are many advantages for an e-classroom over a traditional classroom. In the case of e-classrooms, students will be engaged withanimations and other audio video materials that will make learning easy. This is not possible in the case of traditional class rooms. In addition to the advantage of carrying all the study materials in one’s palm, digital textbooks present the opportunity to learn using different mediums such as audio, text and video.

In the present condition, even though the opportunity for e-textbooks seems to be less in India, most of the booksellers consider it has a bright future.

In the present trend of digital education which is now being introduced in the schools across the country, digital textbooks is an integral part which will automatically become a part of the system. As this is progressing, students are increasingly becoming familiar with the digital medium. Another advantage with the digital textbooks is that, it will contain evaluation features such as tests and assessments incorporated into it that will provide real time indication of the students performance.

An Indian example of e-textbook

Attano, an online market space for educational content and e textbooks, introduced e-textbooks in 2009, in India. This was made possible by converting text books into interactive books with figures and diagrams. They offer digital textbooks from primary grade to 12th grade. The makers of the e-textbook claim that the product that they have developed is user friendly, that even a six year old child can use it. The e-textbook is targeted at individual buyers, which can be purchased like a text book from a store; the only difference being that the e-textbook can be purchased online.

More narrative and interactive

The e-textbooks explain the concepts along with figures so that it is easy for the students to understand. For instance, if the chapter is on heart and its functioning, the e-textbook show a digital picture of the heart which will be easy for the students to understand as they learn by seeing, even if it is a digital picture.

Currently digital books are not interactive

At present most of the digital textbooks that are available in India do not have interactive features and such books offer contents such as novels and fictions. Digital textbooks in the field of education are entirely different with text, pictures, tables and references. Digital textbooks firms are trying to make it more interactive by including audio, video, assessments and other information sources such as Wikipedia and online dictionaries.

CBSE too for e-textbooks

According to an official from the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), the board has taken up the idea seriously, but it is too early to make any comments on the subject. The official said that digital textbooks are interactive and interesting as well, which encourages students to learn.

Where India stands in the internet world?

Based on the statistics provided by Internet World Stats, a global website that monitors and records the internet usage across the world, India is in the third position in terms of internet usage with about 100 million internet users, which forms 8.4 per cent of India’s population and 4.7 per cent of world’s internet users.

To replace textbooks with e textbooks in India will take time as lot more has to be done in terms of the infrastructure and even developing meaningful content for the devices. Many of the education service providers have started with it and the outcome is encouraging. May be we will have to wait for few more years till all the schools in India will start using e-textbooks which we believe will revolutionize education in India. Let us hope that it will happen soon.