What is an eBook?

Although we live in a digital age surrounded by technology, I still have teachers ask, “What is an eBook?”. The e in eBook stands for electronic, just like the e in email.  These are simply digital books that are read from a digital device, like your computer. There are several different eBook reading devices and file formats, but for educational resources, we’ll stick with explaining PDF eBooks on the computer.

Before you begin shopping for teacher’s eBooks, you need to be sure you have a program on your computer that will allow you to read them. Most teacher’s ebooks are offered as PDF files, for which you will need Adobe Reader.  The good news is that it’s free, and it’s simple to download.  Just go to the Adobe website and click a few buttons. Without the Reader, your computer will not recognize an eBook’s PDF files, and will just send you error messages or messages that it does not know how to open the file. Trying to open a PDF file with Microsoft Word or some other word processing program just doesn’t work. It’s like trying to play a CD in a tape deck (if you remember what those are!).

Now that you have your Reader in place, you are ready to browse an educational ebookstore to look at samples and make some purchases.  You will be pleasantly surprised to see full lines of top educational publishers on the internet, since shelf space is really not a problem for eStores!  And saving space now translates to your own shelves.  Since these books are stored on your computer, they keep clutter away from your own desk.  To make things even better, they also let you do your part in saving the planet. No paper or ink is wasted, no fuel is burned to transport the book to you, and you don’t have to use your own fuel or human energy to drive anywhere and pick it up.

Although retail price may be similar, you never have to pay shipping charges for eBooks, and you can access your book instantly. Forget placing an order and then waiting a week (or more).  Have it now.  And once you do get it, searching for something in the book is as easy as the click of a button. You can adjust your page to be as big as you need it for comfortable viewing, and you can highlight and note on pages if your eBook allows it.

Printing is usually permitted for educational eBooks since so many of the activities are designed to be reproduced for the entire classroom. You can print out only those pages that you need and leave the rest. Also, many teacher’s eBooks are now offered in an “enhanced” format,  meaning you can rearrange the contents of the pages and make them exactly how you want them before you print them out.

If you’ve never experienced the world of eBooks, now is the time to start!