Digital vs. Traditional: The Educational Book Dilemma

We are living in an age of science, and it has invented a lot of technologies and wonders that made our life easier. Nowadays the educational system has changed then it was before, and most of the students do not depend on their paper-based books for their study or research. It happens, because people are able to get all the news from the internet easily, which saves more time and they do not need to turn the pages of books. In the article " The Medium Is the Medium", David Brooks discuss impacting of digital and traditional to the reader.

Various schools have come up with online libraries to allow students to access books faster and efficiently. However, there are some heated debates on which one to use in classroom setups, the e-books or the textbooks. Some people believe that digital book harms student performance, while others believe that it helps students to focus on specific tasks than the traditional book. While both are efficient forms of being educative, digital textbooks become more demandable for saving cost, time and portability.

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Digital books are slightly expensive than paper-based books though the production cost of digital books is cheaper. There are many eBooks that are available all over the internet without any high cost or almost free. However, if one tries to find something specifically for his research or study, that will surely take a high amount of charges. Because most of the publishers provide a trial version only and we need to purchase authorization code to get a full copy.

There are some more reasons that many people cannot afford to go for digital textbooks. For instance, a reader needs an eBook reader to get in touch with digital books, and in this market, a simple eBook reader costs much for many families. Even those not in poverty, but with limited disposable income, will be reluctant or unwilling to invest in such a device So, a large number of people are unable to afford digital books. Furthermore, it seems expensive because after finishing a digital book, it is not possible to sell that to someone. Therefore, most students prefer paper-based books instead of digital eBooks.

Even though a digital book has a couple of negative effects, it is very useful as it helps us to find or save any specific book easily and gives comfort while reading. An eBook has a lot of advantages that free us from trouble to find our needs. For example, an E-books saves time from searching the thousands of places in the library to find the right book. Moreover, we can purchase an eBook from cellphones, iPad, iPod, Kindle, laptop or any other electronic devices in no time and it is easy to access. We can customize according to our needs while reading an eBook. For instance, there are many options to change such as font size, color, patterns, font style and so on. If we are unwilling to read any time, we can able to use the audio option to listen to a digital book. Those features make a book lovers life really comfortable. However, there are some negative sides of digital books. For example, our eye sights can be affected if we spend much time watching on the eBook reader. Also, the people who have headache or problem in their eyes, an eBook reader can cause mental pressure or illness.

The last notion of digital books is its portability. We can easily carry it anywhere anytime and won't even have to worry about losing books. Moreover, it is more difficult to carry a paper-based book for a traveler, because it often seems too heavy and takes many spaces. On the other hand, anybody can read their favorable book from a little smartphone or tablet. Also, we can easily search constantly our necessary points and information very quickly and further we can easily publish articles in eBook without printing. At present, popular websites like Amazon or eBay provide a large collection of eBooks in their sites, and people can subscribe without any hassle from online. In those eBooks, the audio, and customize options help those readers, who have any disabilities or dyslexia. For example, the reader can use auto-scrolling or auto reading functions according to their needs. It gives the reader a new taste of comfort. Therefore, the impacts of modern digital books give us flexibility by keeping away to turn pages' form textbook.

As we have seen, the main intention of reading books is still the same but the ways are now getting digitized. The real charm between the paper text and eBook is that our backpack can hold may be fewer such as five or six books but one eBook reader can hold more than a thousand articles. Moreover, as an author's view. Even though some people may feel confused to choose which way they should go for, the cost of digital books, the path of saving time, and get rid of trouble and space are the facts to making digital books thread to the paper-based books. With both having pros and cons accompanying them, it is the tutor or the school to choose the best form of books to be used.