Sustainable green reading in shcools

This is a guest post by Joyce Del Rosario.

Perhaps some of the best learning children do in school and at home is read books. From children’s stories to text books, kids everywhere gain invaluable knowledge from opening the pages of these crucial learning and development tools. 

But for as beneficial as reading is to children, each book that is opened up and used in a classroom and in the home is created using the help of our natural resources. 

Students are ripe for learning. From their young age and throughout their teen years, their minds are under development, absorbing every bit of knowledge they can. This knowledge does not only come from the text they read, but also from the insights and guidance of their parents and teachers. 

Classrooms are a prime spot to introduce green reading. With the captive audience, teachers have the opportunity to mold the minds of the next generation and start them out early with good habits of sustainable living. Here are a few of the ways to incorporate green reading into schools today.

• Have a discussion – The first step that must happen is to engage the students in the concept behind green reading. Having a discussion in the classroom allows students to realize why planting trees is so important, why caring for the environment is so important, and how they can do their part to contribute to a healthier environment. This discussion excites students about the idea of giving back while also giving them more of a reason to read and learn from their textbooks. 

• Teach good practices early on – Some studies have shown that habits take as long as 66 days to create. Students, however, have the mindset of learning something new while they are in the classroom. Because of this, it is easier to get students into the habit of living a green lifestyle from a very early age. When you start teaching the importance of sustainable living and caring for the environment, students will listen and take notice. By just bringing up the importance of planting a tree for each book a student reads, kids can learn from a very early age that they can and should do their part to contribute to a healthier earth. 

• Get parents involved –The teachings of green living should not stop in the classroom. In order to make the biggest impact, it is beneficial to get parents involved. Over the summer, ask the parents to continue raising awareness of planting a tree for each book read. This will inspire more homes in the school’s community to live a more eco-friendly lifestyle, while helping solidify the importance of giving back to the environment. 

• Make reading more interesting – When schools add the extra dimension to reading of acknowledging what students can do to give back to their community, reading books becomes more enjoyable. Kids enjoy the idea of planting a tree and get excited by having the opportunity to do something with nature. Whether the child plants the tree themselves or not, does not matter. The idea that a tree was planted in their honor and because they read a book is enough to spark interest in their minds.

Green reading can make a big impact in a classroom filled with learning minds. When children can find excitement in the books they read for class, learning becomes more fun and lessons hit home on a deeper level. 

About the Author: Joyce Del Rosario is a career and education blogger and she is a part of the team behind Open Colleges and InformED, one of Australia’s leading providers of Open Learning and online accredited distance education.

picture credit: World Bank Photo Collection, Flickr Creative Commons

Will the iPad succeed to conquer the campus?

I heard an interesting report last Friday on NPR's excellent program 'All Things Considered' disucssing a question that I'm sure is occupying many people in the e-readers industry:

Is the iPad a game changer in the market of electronic textbooks?

As the report explained and as we all know, e-readers makes a lot of sense when it comes to students: traditional textbooks are expensive and heavy. Textbooks are also very wasteful from an environmental point of view, as not only they consume a lot of paper, but they also become irrelevant pretty quickly when new editions are published.

The Kindle was the first e-reader that tried to conquer the campuses, but without much success.Last year Treehugger reported on a failure of a pilot test at Princeton University in which 50 students were given a Kindle DX for three of their courses. The Daily Princeteonian explained why:

But though they acknowledged some benefits of the new technology, many students and faculty in the three courses said they found the Kindles disappointing and difficult to use. “I hate to sound like a Luddite, but this technology is a poor excuse of an academic tool,” said Aaron Horvath ’10, a student in Civil Society and Public Policy. “It’s clunky, slow and a real pain to operate.”

Horvath said that using the Kindle has required completely changing the way he completes his coursework. “Much of my learning comes from a physical interaction with the text: bookmarks, highlights, page-tearing, sticky notes and other marks representing the importance of certain passages — not to mention margin notes, where most of my paper ideas come from and interaction with the material occurs,” he explained. “All these things have been lost, and if not lost they’re too slow to keep up with my thinking, and the ‘features’ have been rendered useless.”

The NPR report also mentioned the fact that Reed College in Portland, which ran this year a trial with the iPad, did the same thing last year with the Kindle. The feedback on the Kindle was very similar to the one from Princeton:

..Montgomery-Amo says they're hoping to have better luck with the iPad than they had with the Kindle.

"That went … I think horribly would be a good way of putting it," he says. "The problem is that the Kindle is less interactive than a piece of paper in that the paper, you can quickly write notes in the margin or star something or highlight something, and the Kindle was so slow at highlighting and making notes that the students stopped reading them as scholarly texts and started reading them like novels."

The result, according to Montgomery-Amo, is that his students didn't understand the material as well as they did when using a traditional textbook. To make matters worse, he says the Kindle proved unable to keep up with the class discussion — it would take half a minute to load a page and by then, the discussion would have lost its momentum.

This is bad news for Amazon, but might be good news for Apple. But is it? What did the students think about the iPad? Well, according to NPR's report, they were much happier with it:

Senior Michael Crane and junior Rebecca Traber say that even though they've only had their iPads for a few weeks, they've already been pleasantly surprised.

"I thought it would just kind of be a fun toy," Crane says. "It still is a fun toy, but it also … makes it really easy to read articles for class. In fact, I read pretty much all my articles for all my classes on this now. The instant boot time I think is really nice because if I have half an hour somewhere, I don't have to set up my laptop to get my articles out."

"I actually found it startlingly easy to annotate," Traber says. "You just swipe your finger and you highlight."

The question remains whether these positive experiences will be eventually transformed into actually buying the iPad. Well, not so fast. The students interviewed for the report bring up several issues that will get them to think twice before buying one: the price of the iPad, it's easier to do many functions on laptop (even just writing) and the keyboard (as one student said - "I don't like the keyboard at all.").

There's no doubt that we're heading towards a digital age of e-textbooks. It's just a matter of time. The bottom line is that it's a win-win especially for students. The only question is which e-reader will learn to adjust itself to meet students' special needs - it looks like the iPad is much better positioned for that right now, but I'm sure Amazon haven't said the last word.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

Do most of the students really prefer physical books on eBooks?

Congrats to all the students who had their graduation ceremonies today, as well to those who have them tomorrow! We think about this generation as one who feels much more comfortable with electronic information and devices, at least much more than my generation (X generation) or the Baby Boomers. But is this true?

A new survey found out that when it comes to bank statements or bills it's definitely accurate, but when it comes to books or magazines the picture is more complicated.

The nationwide poll, conducted by Eric Mower and Associates and commissioned by Domtar, one of North America's leading paper companies, found that while college juniors and seniors believe going paperless helps the environment, fewer than 30% would give up printed books, magazines and newspapers, photos or official documents.

Here's another interesting finding of the survey:
"When it comes to studying at school, 52% of students like materials on paper. 23% report they prefer hard copies of most notes and professors also print out class materials. Another 29% of students said that while they like hard copies, their professors tend to send out electronic copies."

You might be suspicious and wonder if the results has anything to do with the fact that the survey was commissioned by a paper company. I know that I would. I teach students and I see a reality that is a bit different, where a growing number of students feel more comfortable with paperless materials.

Yet, I read this week on The Register that "Amazon's Kindle DX is flunking out of college. According to a report by The Seattle Times, the $489, 18.9 ounce (0.54kg) Kindle DX, with its 9.7-inch monchrome e-ink display, is getting bad grades from college students."

The report on The Seattle Times mentioned that "At the University of Virginia, as many as 80 percent of MBA students who participated in Amazon's pilot program said they would not recommend the Kindle DX as a classroom study aid (though more than 90 percent liked it for pleasure reading)." Why? Well, one of the students quoted in the article explained that "You don't read textbooks in the same linear way as a novel. You have to flip back and forth between pages, and the Kindle is too slow for that. Also, the bookmarking function is buggy."

Amazon, according to the article, seems to be taking the student feedback seriously. The company last month announced software upgrades enabling Kindle users to sort books into collections and zoom in on PDF documents.

It looks to me though that even though now the electronic reading devices might not provide a superior alternative to printed textbook, this situation will change in 5 up to 10 years. Better technology, more user friendly features and the option to get the textbooks in a much cheaper price should do the work for electronic textbooks. I also believe that the number of students willing to exchange their printed books in electronic books is much greater than 30%, but at the same time, the real test is how many students will actually do it and not just talk about it.

What do you think? Please comment and let us know!

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

Eco-Libris is contributing to a demonstration of a green campus residence hall

An important part of our work at Eco-Libris is the educational part - increasing the awareness to the need in change in the book industry and getting readers more aware of their books’ footprint. We do it in several ways with both businesses and organizations.

Today I’m happy to report on our latest collaboration with Strategic Energy Innovations (SEI), a non-profit that is working with colleges and universities in California to create showcase spaces that demonstrate sustainable residential living options to students.

Two days ago, SEI and the University of Redlands launched in a special event a demonstration of campus residence hall (Meriam Hall) designated as a sustainable living/learning community at the university. The effort is part of the CHEER (Campus Housing Energy Efficiency Retrofit) Program, funded by Southern California Edison, and implemented by both SEI and Quantum Energy Services and Technologies (QuEST).

This current project focused on the hall lounge, lobby and kitchen and the apartment occupied by the community director. It included a library to which Eco-Libris donated 50 new trees to balance out 50 books that will be placed at the library. We also provided our stickers saying “One tree planted for this book” to be placed on the books. Not only that but SEI put there a sign with explanation on the concept and tips for students on how to green up their reading.

Some of the green products in the demonstration included:

n EnergyStar® rated Refrigerators for the common kitchen and student apartment

n Highly efficient light bulbs for students’ rooms,

n A couch, recliner, tables, chairs and a bookcase in the lounge made from eco-friendly or recycled materials and

n Motion sensor light switches.

The changes in Merriam are designed to help show ways that students can live comfortably while reducing their ecological impact. The residence hall is expected to serve as an example to the campus in many ways, serving as a model for university-wide purchasing practices, increased recycling and other environmentally friendly efforts.

We are very proud to be part of this demonstration and hope that it will contribute to getting students to think about the materials their textbooks and books are made from and how they can be more sustainable.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Plant a tree for every book you read!

The greenest and coolest student in class

Let's say you come to class with ruler or notepad made of recycled materials. Wouldn't you like that they won't be only green, but also will be well-designed, and more than that - wouldn't you like everyone to know that your ruler was once 3 plastic cups??

Well, now it's doable. Remarkable, a UK company, offers a wide range of office supplies that are well-designed, made of recycled materials, and it is written on each of the items they sell what it was in its previous life. They make recycling not only green, but also cool and fun. Their philosophy, as they say, is "to create recycled items that are well-designed, great quality and a joy to own."

Now, who can resist showing off everyone in the class that their pencil was once a CD case, or that their mouse pad is made of recycled car tires??

Check out what they have to offer here.

Raz

Eco-Libris: Plant a tree for every book you read!

balancing out rented textbooks

It seems that everyone is getting prepared to school/ college/ university and so is Eco-Libris.

Today, Chegg.com, a leading local student marketplace and provider of the revolutionary textbook rental service,Textbookflix.com (http://www.textbookflix.com/), announced the launch of a new program "Chegg for Trees", where it partners with Eco-Libris to balance out textbooks that will be rented via this service. The good news are that we already balanced out 500 textbooks!

This is a great program that both reduces the costs of students on textbooks and contributes to the environment by planting trees, and Eco-Libris, which aims to make reading more sustainable, is proud to be part of it.

Sooo, students, whether you're a freshman getting ready for your first year, or a graduate student on your way to Masters or PhD - don't forget to check out this site, http://www.textbookflix.com/, see if you can rent some textbooks, and save money and help the planet at the same time ;-)

You are welcome to take a look at the news release that was issued today by Chegg.com: http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release.do?id=761343

And of course, good luck to all the students out there!

Raz