While the Kindle has largely failed with students as a replacement for printed textbooks, some colleges plan to test new e-reader devices whose promoters argue that two screens are better than one.
One of the new e-readers is called Kno, which was announced in June and will be given to about 100 students at three colleges. The Kno sports two 14-inch screens, allowing users to read on one screen while writing notes on the other. With a pen stylus, students are able to highlight text and make annotations as they read. Both screens are LCD rather than the e-ink technology used in the Kindle, which means they can display in color, but they could be harder on the eyes for long reading sessions. The company plans to make the product available on the market just before Christmas.
Kno’s founder, Osman Rashid, argues that students who have tested the device so far found it more portable than a laptop computer. “They think the laptop becomes the new desktop, because this gives them everything they need during the day,” Mr. Rashid said.
The company has struck deals with four major textbook publishers, including Cengage, McGraw-Hill, Pearson, and Wiley.
Meanwhile, the Edge, another dual-screen device aimed at the education market, will make its debut in 50 college bookstores this fall. The Edge contains both a 9.7-inch e-reader screen and an LCD screen—making it sort of like a Kindle strapped to an iPad.
Like the Kno, the Edge primarily serves as a textbook reader, although it also offers applications, because it relies on Google’s open-source Android platform. Both devices feature Web browsing, e-mail access, and audio recording.
The Edge sells for $539 and is available for order online. The Kno will announce its price in the fall.
10 Responses to Some Colleges to Test Dual-Screen E-Reader Devices
kim1234 - August 9, 2010 at 8:04 am
The question remains: will it have text to speech for the Learning Disability and visually challenged populations, and speech recognition software for students who are challenged with dominate hand limitations.
emmadw - August 9, 2010 at 9:50 am
Following on from Kim’s queries … Will the text to speech be set up so that you can have a setting that suits visually impaired users (e.g. including text descriptions of images) & the differing needs of dyslexic students (e.g. just reading out selected ‘hard’ words) Maybe also the option of an external keyboard, for those who prefer keying in their comments to handwriting them.
hsuvpsa - August 9, 2010 at 10:03 am
Will the devise have off screen navigation for persons with limited vision?
bmljenny - August 9, 2010 at 1:48 pm
I’m so sick of seeing this eyestrain claim trotted out all the time. Where is there any recent research on eyestrain being worse on CURRENT color displays vs the Kindle’s e-Ink? The Nielsen Norman Group recently did some reading speed tests and reading text on paper beat both color and e-ink screen reading, but they did not look specifically at eyestrain.
wmartin46 - August 9, 2010 at 1:50 pm
Anyone have any idea how many people are legally blind on US campuses? It’s astounding that so few people can stand in the way of any kind of research/trials of clearly “first generation” e-book technology. There are so many issues that stand in the way of these devices being acceptable to “sighted” people that stopping them because of this vary small number of people seems irrational.By the way, my experience is that most “academics” are not very well versed in “technology”, much less the state-of-the-art, or the 5-year trends in “technology”. Text-to-Speech has come a long way in the past 5-odd years. The following links are to some more-or-less off-the-shelf software for text-to-speech functionality:—AT&T:http://www2.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/demo.phpNeoSpeech:http://www.neospeech.com/?gclid=COL6gMz2rKMCFSFciAodciBH5gNatural Readers:http://www.naturalreaders.com/?gclid=CMTp2-L2rKMCFQpKgwodSTMLggOddcast:http://www.oddcast.com/home/demos/tts/tts_example.phpAcapela:http://www.acapela-group.com/text-to-speech-interactive-demo.htmlRead The Words:http://www.readthewords.com/–(This is not an advertisement, or endorsement, for any of these products–just a statement of existence.)I think that most people will be surprised at the quality of speech available from the demos. What’s not clear in these demos is “how much computer” does it take to do these conversions? The e-book readers of today are still pretty small, and it’s quite possible that it will take a lot of “shoe-horning” to get the quality of speech that is possible from today’s software.What should be on the table is alternatives for “sight-challenged” people, such as server/laptop-based software that deals with the issues of people with this disability better than the small amount of screen real estate, and compute power that is available in the current generation of these devices.It would be a real shame to see e-book reader development move “off-shore”, just to get away from the US DoJ.
dbaldwin831 - August 9, 2010 at 2:34 pm
When it comes to eReaders, one thing that people often overlook is the graduate population. Many of these students are being required to read PDFs. So my question is whether or not either or these devices will handle PDFs in such a way that you can annotate, highlight, markup, etc?? That is where both the Kindle and the Nook have failed miserably. I have owned both, and neither work well. The iPad is the only thing I have found that works seamlessly.
prgreen - August 9, 2010 at 4:53 pm
Instead of wondering what all should be added to these things, why don’t we wait and see how it works for what it’s made to do so far?
rwright - August 10, 2010 at 11:55 am
I think it’s interesting that these products are considered ‘new technology’. I was a retail buyer 15 years ago and manufacturers were developing e-readers back then. The issue at the time was two fold, (1)limited access to the digital format because most publishers didn’t produce their product that way, and (2) delivery format, If I remember correctly, it was battle similar to 8-track and cassette. I’d really like to see one that would work for students and faculty as well. I’d love to have my textbooks in one machine making notes in real time, etc. I don’t see publishers jumping in the aisle to make books available as an independent platform. Most of my publishers use CourseSmart for their e-book offerings.
strypes97 - August 10, 2010 at 4:09 pm
Uh… wmartin46, the technology issue with persons with disabilities relates to discrimination law. The laws that protect the disabled are civil rights laws. So, try to argue your point substituting person with disability to female or African American. It wouldn’t hold water and would receive all kinds of condemnation. Your post brings up the point of storage capacity in relation to text to speech. The argument by disability organizations is that the technology is there. There’s plenty of space to add this feature. The Kindle aready has it in a limited format. What’s happening is that companies are actively discriminating because of the same mentality your post exhibits. There are so few blind people; it’s first generation; let’s say it’s a storage issue. The truth is they just don’t want to bother. They don’t care that they’re cutting out a portion of the society. That’s just wrong.Finally, it’s not just about the blind. Many people have print or reading disabilities. Taking these people into consideration, the numbers are a little higher. Let’s not discriminate against the “few.” Make these companies take the extra time to produce an accessible product for all.
lyncoln - August 12, 2010 at 12:30 pm
dbaldwin,I own one of the Edge devices. To answer your question: the device does display .pdf format files on the e-ink screen and allows for highlighting and free handwriting mark-up of the .pdj documents.