Thing 20: ebooks

I had no idea that FREE books could be found and downloaded online! I know that many of my friends have purchased Kindle's and Ipads and that they were downloading books onto them, but they had to pay for each of their books, just as they would in a bookstore. For some reason, I hadn't realized that I could actually download books onto my computer. Through my navigating of the sites provided for Thing 20, I did find that most of the books that could be downloaded for free were the classics. I actually downloaded Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen to read on vacation this summer from the site Project Gutenberg. Another observation that I made was that, aside from the classics, many of the other free availabilities were novels whose titles and authors I hadn't ever heard of before.

Upon further navigation through different sites like the NHS ebooks, Salem Literature, and Marshall Cavendish, I found a wealth of resources/reference materials. I was especially impressed that the NHS ebooks linked up to the Gale Virtual Reference Library. I have used Gale for research projects and have always found what I needed. These are all excellent sources to be used by classroom teachers for things such as research projects.

The benefit of ebooks is that the references and/or novels are available to everyone at the same time, unlike in a library where you have to be put on a waiting list if someone has already taken the source out. On the other hand, and this is just my personal opinion, I would hate to see a library get rid of all of their "print" materials in favor of ebooks (as I heard of a school in Massachusetts doing). There's something about the feel and smell when you crack open a book that you're about to read or the sadness that you feel when you've finished a book where you've fallen in love with the characters and know you will miss them. I'd be very sad if my grandchildren never have this experience someday.

Because so much is being made "easier" or more easily accessed, I fear that we're going to become a society where people will no longer leave the house because they can basically do everything from paying their bills to taking college courses online. Mankind would lose their ability to have a face-to-face interaction. How sad! As it is, many experts are blaming the obesity epidemic on the fact that everything is being automized by computers, including power windows in cars. I think that there definitely needs to be a balance.