Although some schools have adapted the Apple iPad in a few technology schools for this falls school semester, and Amazon has tried in the past for to get higher learning institutions to adopt their Kindle E-Reader for students. Now Barnes and Noble has jumped into the school game by offering a new application for the Barnes and Noble Nook, called Nookstudy.
Nookstudy promises to to allow students to capitalize on over 1 million textbooks and student resources via their application. Barnes and Noble also promises over 500,000 ebooks will be available for free.
Nookstudy will allow students to manage their digital content on their E-Reader, MAC or PC. It will allow the student instant downloads for academic ebooks. It will allow you to search for keywords in lecture notes, syllabuses and more!
This application was developed in part, with extensive feedback from students in High School and Universities, on their needs and desires. This is tremendously interesting departure from most companies trying to get into the School game, rather then just giving them a product, and say take it, or leave it.
The application will be made available this fall, in a pilot project with a few institutions, to work out the kinks in the system before it is adopted on a mass scale.
With the success of the entourage edge, dual book e-reader, with their extensive library of textbooks, and one screen featuring a LCD touch screen and the other an E-INK screen, it will be interesting to see if the Nook could break into the big time with an application to substitute the need to carry an arm load of books. Keep in mind, e-books are more cost effective then their tangible counterparts.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
