Online textbooks take the heat

October 17, 2011
Filed under Academics

Imagine students’ reactions when they hear that they do not have to take their 1000 page text    books back and forth from school everyday. It seems that the reaction

Senior Kunny Kou weights the advantages and disadvantages of online textbooks and conventional textbooks

s would consist of overjoyed students cheering, but instead it has students rubbing their overworked eyes and frustrated about access to their textbooks.

“[Online textbooks are] difficult because you have to scroll down instead of just flipping. It irritates your eyes,” freshman Kaytlin Hopkins said.

Hopkins isn’t the only one that shares the sentiment; www.MayoClinic.com agrees that looking at a computer screen for too long can cause eye strain. According to Mayo Clinic, “eyestrain occurs when your eyes get tired from intense use, such as driving a car for extended periods, reading or working at a computer.”

However, it is also reported that eyestrain is not permanent, and can go away by resting one’s eyes.

Eye strain is not the only reason students may face difficulty in regard to the online textbooks.

“They’re useful, but it’s a pain sometimes because if you forget your ID or the computer doesn’t work then you can’t do your homework,” senior Cynthia Quintanilla said.

Issues such as forgetting an ID number or password are prevalent among high school students and could also hinder a student’s ability to gain access to his or her textbook.

“I think that it’s harder to answer the questions because you can’t flip back and forth between questions and information. Secondly, I can’t open it on my phone,” senior Junior Montoya said.

With so many students who use a smartphone, it only makes sense to have the textbooks function on such devices. Instead, smartphones such as the iPhone cannot read PDF files (the format the textbooks are in), making students unable to use their phones to access the textbooks.

Although all students do not have smart phones, most have computer access in their homes.

Nowadays, computers are found in almost every household, but reliable Internet access is not as common, forcing students to go to places such as the library or a friend’s house to access their online textbooks.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea if [students] don’t have access to the Internet,” junior Aisha Kamara said. Unreliable Internet access adds on to the various cons of online textbooks.

Though online textbooks have disadvantages, they also have their advantages. For example, any mistakes found can be corrected faster than with physical textbooks.

Mistakes in textbooks are not a foreign issue in FCPS, or even the social studies department. There were major errors found in textbooks last year, and the last thing teachers want for their students is for them to be misinformed.

IB Physics teacher David Tyndall has found mistakes in some physics textbooks, but acknowledges that even though they have mistakes, the textbooks are valuable learning tools.

“Textbooks have problems that are great for students to review,” Tyndall said.

Since the online textbooks were introduced to the curriculum, teachers and students alike have had to change their teaching styles.

“In education we’re a paper and pencil industry; we learn by touching and doing. And if we take away that, we might take away a learning style that helps students gain knowledge,” IB English teacher Niki Holmes said.

By Christine Tamir