A couple of weeks back Ectaco announced their new 9.7 inch E-Ink eReader (WiFi and Touch Screen), nothing special in that, but the big news about this is that it will be the first colour E-Ink device to be available for purchase!

The jetBook Color EDU.12 has been in development since earlier this year in Russia and will be made available in the States during Q4 2011. The new eReader is actually being pushed as a K-12 device, or as Ectaco put it, “Educational eTextbook tablet with Test System, Home Assignments, Remote Tutoring and eBook studies”.

Anyone outside of the education system us unlikely to get their hands on one, or want to for that matter, as the it seems to be tied heavily to the “Teacher’s Console” and purchasing looks to be only possible via the Ectaco website; so you’ll probably need appropriate credentials.

There’s plenty more details on the jetBook K-12 website but I’ll list some of the main features here;

• Color e-Ink 9.68″ PVI EPD touch screen (1600×1200) using Electromagnetic Resonance Technology.
• 32GB of memory.
• Rechargeable 2350mAh Lithium-Polymer battery lasting for 10,000 page turns.
• Plug-in GPS module that allows parents to locate their child or the unit itself with a few clicks.
• Text-to-speech module for pronunciation of books
• Script character recognition in combination with an EMT panel allows students to write on the screen.
• Teachers can restrict the download of any programs or content that is not related to the class.
• Screen serves as an ID card for the student displaying a schedule of classes (updated daily via Wi-Fi or 3G).
• Send students grades, exams, homework, and messages.
• Fully interactive SAT course that will train, test, and raise students’ SAT scores.
• Features the content of a 50-state reading list
• A Speed Reading course
• Talking Oxford Dictionaries narrated by professional linguists
• Foreign language courses that teach any of the 52 available languages and provide great support to ESL students.

Pictures of the EDU.12 are hard to come by at the moment but from what we can see the device will suffer from one known limitation of E-Ink, which is that the colours aren’t generally very vibrant (suffering from low contrast and “pastel” colours) compared to the screens found on the current crop of tablets.

Still, every new advancement in screen technology brings us closer to the perfect screen – great clarity, very low powered, full colour, fast refresh, usable in bright sunlight, etc. – so hopefully this will be a success and provide the R&D teams with more funding to continue development.

I could only find a couple of visuals for this new eReader; an image from Liliputing and a video (in Russian) on YouTube, which shows the device for a total of about 5 seconds (jump to 2:05 and then again just after the 3 minute mark).

The private education sector in the UK is being forced to become more competitive in  the current economic climate. We are not talking about the Etons and Harrows who will always have waiting lists but the lesser know schools which take in pupils with average ability and learning difficulties with the aim to have them leave with the best exam results possible.  This is the sector that needs to attract more pupils.

So how do you attract more pupils? One of the key ways is to use Value Added Scores which compare the pupil’s ability when they enter the school to that of when they leave. If a school is taking pupils with predicted C or D grades at GCSE and sending them out with A or B grades then that school becomes an attractive proposition for parents. The problem is how to achieve such a rise in grades.

One of the best methods is to offer more courses that cater to a pupil’s strengths. However this does lead to the problems of providing staff to teach them and a classroom to teach them in. The staff problem is relatively easy to overcome as most good teachers can teach most subjects to GCSE level.

The second problem of where to teach them is a challenging one. No school achieves one hundred percent utilization of their classrooms. At the same time no teacher wants to carry around all the textbooks required to teach their course around with them all day. So it would seem that the obvious answer is to give the pupils the textbooks so they can take them from lesson to lesson. The problem is of course that some pupils will forget them, causing the inevitable disruption to the start of the lesson as pupils are moved around so they can share. The other problem is the amount of weight a pupil would need to carry around with them.

So this leads to the proposition of using eBooks. This, along with the use of interactive whiteboards, makes the course mobile and so no longer tied to the room with textbooks in. This allows the school to better utilize the spare classrooms in any given period and therefore able to provide more courses for their pupils. This means that the school is able to target more suitable courses to a pupil.

From a pupils point of view they are unlikely to forget something that is required for every lesson. If they do then it would be possible to lend a pupil a spare device from the school’s library or boarding house and load it with the textbooks required for the day.

So, the use of eBooks could provide a practical solution to a private schools dilemma of having to offer more courses directed towards the “average” pupil to help them achieve better Value Added Scores without the need of more classrooms. Schools which are early adopters of this new technology also benefit from the added marketing value as being seen as innovative and “hi-tech”.

So it’s win-win for the eBook then? Well not quite, there are several issues which need to be overcome with eBooks, not least of which is the cost of the devices and licensing of books. I will discuss these issues in future articles.

[Andy is an IT professional within the British education system and has agreed to share his thoughts on how eBooks can benefit schools.  -- Mike Cook]