Maybe I’m just using outdated thinking on this, but I have trouble seeing how e-Textbooks could be widely adopted in a course like ours.  Even with a Kindle-like device, the convenience of flipping between pages to quickly look up little nuggets is going to be very hard to overcome in the digital world.  Of course I’ve never bought a song online either and still buy entire CDs because I like one song so I’m admittedly not cutting-edge on this kind of thing.

Still, it will be interesting to see where the recent proposal of Governor Schwarzenegger in California for schools there to adopt open-source, electronic textbooks goes.  Think of it as Wikipedia for the classroom.

Schwarzenegger’s Push for Digital Textbooks. The Calif. Gov. Wants to Save Money by Dumping Printed Books for Online Texts; Is it Feasible? ABC News. By Michael B. Farrell. June 14, 2009