English Grammar: Digital Book Reader

Tuesday 23 October 2012

Digital Book Reader

When I was a graduate student, one of the many ways I earned some desperately-needed cash was working as an in-house textbook reviewer for several publishing houses. An in-house book reviewer's job is to read and fact-check a book, and to catch any remaining copy editing errors before the book goes to press. After reading and extensively commenting on a number of books, I developed some very strong ideas as to what is particularly effective in a textbook -- ideas that I plan to use in my ornithology textbook. But I always thought my ideas were screamingly obvious to anyone who writes or reads a textbook. But apparently, they aren't so obvious because I've not seen any textbooks that put many of my ideas to use.

Well, until now. I have recently been reading a new textbook,Principles of Biology. This book not only applies a number of superb strategies for teaching scientific concepts, but it goes one step further by including the best aspects of internet-based digital media; interactive diagrammes, data tables and other interactive exercises, and video. This is not a traditional print textbook that's been digitised, it is a trulyelectronic textbook.