K-State News Insider

A K-State professor who recently published his first digital textbook thinks the days of students shelling out hundreds of dollars on textbooks each semester and lugging around heavy, book-filled backpacks could be over soon — if the emerging digital textbook industry has its way.

“The wave of e-books is just beginning,” said Roger McHaney, professor and interim head of the K-State department of management. “This is an experimental time. I think a lot of professors are kind of sitting back to see what will happen. I’m excited just to try it out and get in on the front of the wave.”

McHaney’s book, “Understanding Computer Simulation,” was released in early October. The textbook updates and revises an out-of-print textbook he had published years ago. Now, through Bookboon.com, the online branch of Ventus Publishing, the book has been brought back to life.

“I think in the future that e-readers are going to be the norm for students,” he said. “The big problem with them right now is the mainstream ones like Kindle don’t do a great job of allowing high-quality graphics to be shown — but they are working on fixing that. Kindle has a textbook e-reader coming out that is going to be bigger and allow for high-resolution color graphics. Eventually, the will even have embedded videos.”

This entry was posted Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 3:38 pm and is filed under Business, Students, education. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.