I personally think that e-textbooks are something that can be a great learning asset, but not all students or courses are ready for an e-textbooks. To use the technology the students have to have the ability to purchase a tablet or an e-reader device, which some might not be able to afford. I do not know if a device like that would be covered by financial aid, but if so it may have to be a requirement for the course. I think eventually society will get to the point where this will become the standard for large schools, but I think smaller schools will be left behind for a long time.

Some courses would not work as well with an e-textbook setting. While it might be a great concept for an A&P course to have an e-book, with videos that show the skeletal and muscle system or how the heart beats, many of books are already very large in just text. Once you add videos and links the size of that file would further increase and take up more space on the currently limited sizes of tablet hard drives.

I feel strongly about this and have pushed to get this started on campus because I think this would be a great tool for students. Most e-textbooks have interactive videos that show more on a subject or even have an easily searchable glossary. Also it is much more convenient to carry books around for 12 credits of classes on an iPad or Kindle than in a backpack.

One of the biggest issues schools run into is cost for the books. You have to adapt your school bookstore as a purchasing center for the textbook, or at least help the student get online to purchase the book. Then is it a matter of the students download the book off of a shared server hosted by the school and stored in the cloud, or do they download from the site and the book is stored on their device to be downloaded again if deleted. I feel from my experience that the cloud is a better system. Have the book stored on  cloud drive that students can access through a portal with an I.D. (like a campus connection account). From there they pay a minimal fee, perhaps 1/4 the price of the standard text. They can house the book on their device for up to 180 days, but they have to authenticate to the cloud every 45. This would work almost like an iPod having to resync the device. After the authentication after 180 days, the book would remove itself and the license would be available for another student. If the student wanted to purchase the book they could buy the paper text, or the e-book for 1/2 the price.