Bringing Education up to Speed through Technology

[Steakpirate]

I recently got an internship with a high-tech startup called Kno, Inc. They're trying to bring the field of Education up to speed technologically with the rest of America, using a tablet PC for textbooks and students' other scholarly needs.

 

Sadly, as a lowly intern, one of my duties is to achieve a survey count. So while you're checking out this spiffy new piece of tech, you might do me a favor and take two minutes to fill out the survey. If you do, please set the "Referrer" field to Benjamin Wagner. Thanks!

 

 

The Kno in Action

 

An Article About the Kno

 

The Survey

 

The Kno Website

 

 

One of the perks of being an intern is that I get a device to play with and show off, so you're interested or have any questions feel free to reply.

[Steve E]

...One of the perks of being an intern is that I get a device to play with and show off, so you're interested or have any questions feel free to reply.

Hi Steakpirate. It's been a while.

Congratulations on the internship. I hope it proves to be a valuable educational experience for you.

 

The Kno Tablet looks nice, of course, but it's knocking heads with Apple's iPad. Not the best position to be in right now. If their true goal (beyond making a profit) is making life easier for students, I wonder if they'd be better served by a Kno App that operated against books stored in an iPad. What do you think? (Careful. You might get yelled at if you suggest it to them.)

 

The book-like double-tablet approach is aesthetically pleasing but I have to wonder if the reduced screen size (especially for reading a textbook) is problematic. Do you find it as comfortable as reading the actual textbook? Is it more comfortable to hold (comparative weight also being a factor)? Are electronic textbooks significantly cheaper in your experience? Are there enough titles?

 

As for the survey, it's been many years for me since my institutional education days, so I don't think I qualify. (Why would they care what I think? They clearly want to hear from students.) So I'm going to pass on that.

 

Nice hearing from you again.

-Thoth

[Steakpirate]

Hi Steakpirate. It's been a while.

Heya Thoth! I hope you and the others have been well. I've been busy with school and such, though I've a few short stories to show for it.

 

Congratulations on the internship. I hope it proves to be a valuable educational experience for you.

Me too! And perhaps mildly lucrative.

 

The Kno Tablet looks nice, of course, but it's knocking heads with Apple's iPad. Not the best position to be in right now. If their true goal (beyond making a profit) is making life easier for students, I wonder if they'd be better served by a Kno App that operated against books stored in an iPad. What do you think? (Careful. You might get yelled at if you suggest it to them.)

They're definitely considering it, but the goal is to translate the student experience to a digital device—books, notes and all. The textbooks are the major selling point, specifically being able to carry around digital copies of the same textbooks your classmates are using (potentially with additional content) that is searchable, bookmark-able, and that you can write directly on. It's definitely huge compared to the iPad, but the iPad is not a portable computer. Even if you strapped two iPads together, I don't think they would be comfortable to take notes on without a stylus.

 

The Kno runs a modified version of Ubuntu, and, aside from it being somewhat boxed in to their software, is a fully-fledged tablet PC. Comparatively speaking, the Kno is equipped with big-boy processors and graphics cards. If the iPad has the power to adequately replicate what the Kno does, I have no idea how it's so thin.

 

The book-like double-tablet approach is aesthetically pleasing but I have to wonder if the reduced screen size (especially for reading a textbook) is problematic. Do you find it as comfortable as reading the actual textbook? Is it more comfortable to hold (comparative weight also being a factor)? Are electronic textbooks significantly cheaper in your experience? Are there enough titles?

The reason the Kno's screen is so honking big (14.1" across diagonally) is to provide a 1:1 digital replica of the book, so that it is just as easy to read as the hardcopy, and the page count is identical. Electronic textbooks are definitely cheaper (20-50%), but to be honest that's not quite enough of a discount. Given that there is next to zero cost of production beyond creating the initial source book, I'd like to see textbooks come down to $12-$35 (instead of $45-$150). Physical books can also be resold (Although there may be some plan for this in the future for digital books). Hopefully as electronic textbooks become more popular, the price will be driven down.

 

At 5.6lbs for the dual screen, the device is a little hefty and awkward, but generally so are textbooks. It's not something you'd want to study with standing up for an extended period of time, but you don't generally do that with your textbooks either. Ideally, the fact that it's carrying all your textbooks, notebooks, and documents, and continues to be a computer should make up for the weight difference between the Kno and a standard textbook.

 

As for the number of titles, they have deals with most of America's major textbook distributors. They're at around 80,000 and growing. Sadly, this does not include most of my textbooks. For the most part, the distributors produce the titles I need, but deals for those particular books have apparently yet to be negotiated.

 

Because they don't have many of my textbooks, I have only spent a small amount of time specifically reading on the device. (It only arrived a few days ago.) I've looked at a few of the sample textbooks, a PDF copy of one of my textbooks, and a few other documents. I can tell you thatmy scans of the D&D 4.0 handbooks look absolutely gorgeous on the device. It seems to be fairly reasonable to read on, but I'll get back to you after I've tried doing some honest studying on the device for a few hours.

 

As for the survey, it's been many years for me since my institutional education days, so I don't think I qualify. (Why would they care what I think? They clearly want to hear from students.) So I'm going to pass on that.

That's fine. It was kind of uncool of them to give me a quota, but they want to ensure they get their money's worth from the people who don't contribute as much as I do.

 

Nice hearing from you again.

-Thoth

You too! I'd like to make a return to the Storyist community (as well as my neglected novels-in-progress). It's looking like I might have the time this semester.

[marguerite]

Hi, Steak Pirate:

As a some-time professor, I'd have to say that—much as I like the double-screen and the idea of electronic textbooks on this device—I agree with Thoth that Kno faces an uphill battle against the iPad. Am I going to ask my students to pay $900 + the cost of textbooks? No. A student who already has an iPad or a Kindle and can download books onto it will probably choose that option, assuming the books are available as e-books. The others will buy the paper kind, and that's fine too.

 

Also, one of the beefs against the iPad is that it weighs twice as much as a Kindle. This thing weighs five+ times as much as an iPad. That's a lot to lug around, especially when you can buy a Macbook Air for not much more and have a full-fledged computer, not a tablet. (You can buy a full-fledged PC for less than that.)

 

Of course, I'm a historian, so my textbooks are mostly regular books (except in, say, a Western Civ course). Mathematicians and scientists pay a lot more for books and demand a lot more from e-books, so their calculations would be different. But if you cut out the entire humanities market, that does restrict the Kno to a rather small niche. And how many people in that niche won't just use the laptop they have?

 

But all the best to you, and to Kno. I hope the internship leaves you time for writing!

Best,

Marguerite

[Steakpirate]

As a some-time professor, I'd have to say that—much as I like the double-screen and the idea of electronic textbooks on this device—I agree with Thoth that Kno faces an uphill battle against the iPad. Am I going to ask my students to pay $900 + the cost of textbooks? No. A student who already has an iPad or a Kindle and can download books onto it will probably choose that option, assuming the books are available as e-books. The others will buy the paper kind, and that's fine too.

I'm all for digital textbooks being available on the iPad, I just don't think it's an appropriate form factor for the second part of studying, writing.

 

 

Also, one of the beefs against the iPad is that it weighs twice as much as a Kindle. This thing weighs five+ times as much as an iPad. That's a lot to lug around, especially when you can buy a Macbook Air for not much more and have a full-fledged computer, not a tablet. (You can buy a full-fledged PC for less than that.)

I need to spend some time talking with the hardware department before I can get back to you on this one. All I can say is that there must be a reason the device is so large when compared to a Macbook Air. Likely to do with the two displays' processing power and battery power needs.

 

Of course, I'm a historian, so my textbooks are mostly regular books (except in, say, a Western Civ course). Mathematicians and scientists pay a lot more for books and demand a lot more from e-books, so their calculations would be different. But if you cut out the entire humanities market, that does restrict the Kno to a rather small niche. And how many people in that niche won't just use the laptop they have?

Trust me, we literary folk have it easy with our 5-6 novels as course material. I still have to lug around some pretty hefty hardbacks for my GEs.

 

But all the best to you, and to Kno. I hope the internship leaves you time for writing!

And you! My hopes are very similar.

[Steve E]

Heya Thoth! I hope you and the others have been well. I've been busy with school and such, though I've a few short stories to show for it.

I'm almost completely over the apocalyptic hell virus that affected me a while back (spewing from both ends—it was ugly ). But I'm glad to hear that you've finished some of your short stories.

 

Me too! And perhaps mildly lucrative.

(The best internship would be wildly lucrative. )

 

They're definitely considering it, but the goal is to translate the student experience to a digital device—books, notes and all. The textbooks are the major selling point, specifically being able to carry around digital copies of the same textbooks your classmates are using (potentially with additional content) that is searchable, bookmark-able, and that you can write directly on. It's definitely huge compared to the iPad, but the iPad is not a portable computer. Even if you strapped two iPads together, I don't think they would be comfortable to take notes on without a stylus.

I'm confidant that both products will continue to improve, although there seems to me that more people are working on the iPad. Somebody will think of how to put the Kno on it. It might as well be Kno Inc..

 

The Kno runs a modified version of Ubuntu, and, aside from it being somewhat boxed in to their software, is a fully-fledged tablet PC. Comparatively speaking, the Kno is equipped with big-boy processors and graphics cards. If the iPad has the power to adequately replicate what the Kno does, I have no idea how it's so thin.

Good question. How does the MacBook Air squeeze so much into so little space? (Those Apple engineers must be geniuses.)

 

The reason the Kno's screen is so honking big (14.1" across diagonally) is to provide a 1:1 digital replica of the book, so that it is just as easy to read as the hardcopy, and the page count is identical. Electronic textbooks are definitely cheaper (20-50%), but to be honest that's not quite enough of a discount. Given that there is next to zero cost of production beyond creating the initial source book, I'd like to see textbooks come down to $12-$35 (instead of $45-$150). Physical books can also be resold (Although there may be some plan for this in the future for digital books). Hopefully as electronic textbooks become more popular, the price will be driven down.

Let's not let them go down too far. Textbook writers have to eat too.

 

At 5.6lbs for the dual screen, the device is a little hefty and awkward, but generally so are textbooks. It's not something you'd want to study with standing up for an extended period of time, but you don't generally do that with your textbooks either. Ideally, the fact that it's carrying all your textbooks, notebooks, and documents, and continues to be a computer should make up for the weight difference between the Kno and a standard textbook.

There's no question in my mind that the Kno is superior to a fully-loaded backpack. I've carried fully-loaded backpacks. I just don't see professors getting away from paper for a long time. Consider the Architectural and (Arts & Crafts) Arts courses. Also, you may need a portable printer. But getting rid of some textbooks and notebooks and such is still a good start.

 

As for the number of titles, they have deals with most of America's major textbook distributors. They're at around 80,000 and growing. Sadly, this does not include most of my textbooks. For the most part, the distributors produce the titles I need, but deals for those particular books have apparently yet to be negotiated.

Sad indeed. Can they can be downloaded into the Kno from Amazon's textbook department?

 

Because they don't have many of my textbooks, I have only spent a small amount of time specifically reading on the device. (It only arrived a few days ago.) I've looked at a few of the sample textbooks, a PDF copy of one of my textbooks, and a few other documents. I can tell you thatmy scans of the D&D 4.0 handbooks look absolutely gorgeous on the device. It seems to be fairly reasonable to read on, but I'll get back to you after I've tried doing some honest studying on the device for a few hours.

Looking forward to hearing your analysis.

 

That's fine. It was kind of uncool of them to give me a quota, but they want to ensure they get their money's worth from the people who don't contribute as much as I do.

So uncool.

 

You too! I'd like to make a return to the Storyist community (as well as my neglected novels-in-progress). It's looking like I might have the time this semester.

We'll be here waiting for you.

(Seriously, the robots have M and I trapped in here! Help! )

- Thoth

[orrenm]

Hi SP,

 

Congrats on the internship! (I didn't realize you were in California)

 

As far as competition, the price of this device is probably higher than most want to spend, but if there were steep academic discounts, that could help.

 

But I can come at this from the other side—I work for one of the largest college textbook companies in the world, Cengage Learning. And I can tell you some of the "chicken and egg" problems with digital textbooks.

 

For one thing, a high quality digital textbook requires a completely different layout to the physical book. Usually because the page sizes are different, but also the colors need to be redone, etc. New layouts are expensive, and only undertaken if you're convinced there's a market. Not only that, but textbook companies are usually even more worried about DRM and piracy than mainstream publishers, because the books are more expensive and sell fewer. There's a lot of textbooks available (from us and others) on the Kindle, but the sales have been disappointing. There are very few (are there any?) textbooks that are iBooks, for similar reasons. I'm not sure that basing hardware around the hope of future digital textbooks being available will work.

 

As far as the books coming down in price, I'm afraid it is going to be a very, very hard sell to the textbook publishers to make that happen. As I remember pointing out in another post, distribution/manufacture is only one of the costs involved. Textbooks are extremely expensive to produce, and the manufacture/distribution part of that is almost negligible. First of all, multiple authors are usually involved, each wanting royalties/advance. In textbook, the cost of acquiring the licenses to photographs can be a large expense, hiring outside agencies for specific data required, and so on all enters in. Sometimes travel expenses are covered, because authors live across the country/world and will need to be in the same location for at least a few events/meetings/etc. Finally, the technical reviewers of textbooks are WAY more expensive to hire than for other technical books, as they usually need to be just as expert in their field.

 

As you can imagine, it's very expensive to get all this done, which is one reason why the costs of textbooks have always been so high. The costs of putting the content into physical form and shipping it to the university library is only a small minority of that cost, so I'm afraid that these companies will be very hesitant to discount their digital versions very much.

 

But that said, competition is always a good thing and if Kno can offer something unique than even if it doesn't set the world on fire it can always build a name and reputation for itself if it does do Apps for other tablets, becomes a digital textbook distributor, etc. Lots of startups grow over the years, and this one looks like it has some innovative ideas!

 

Take care and good luck,

Orren

[Steakpirate]

Hey Orren! I had never thought of it that way, thanks for clearing up some of my misconceptions. I'll always find it astounding how much the value of something as simple as a book can vary due to the factors involved. Perhaps the adapting of technologies across the textbook industry for production (teleconferencing, Google Wave style collaboration, etc.) might reduce costs so that, as they say, the savings could be passed on to the consumer.

 

As for reformatting the textbooks, as I understand most of the textbooks on the Kno are supposed to be identical in format (for good or ill) to their hardcopy versions, such that you have the same textbook as your classmates, with the same page-layouts. That's probably the only reason there are already 80,000+ titles. I'm not certain whether any re-coloring has been done.

[marguerite]

The question is, Steak Pirate, how much effort it takes by the publisher to get those identical digital formats. To create a PDF from, say, an Adobe InDesign file (the current industry standard) is not difficult: indeed, printing houses often require PDFs that they can run through their proprietary software rather than the original InDesign files. But to make sure that a digital book looks as good as its print counterpart can take a lot of extra processing. And to produce an ePub file (which is easier for the user to customize and to annotate—you can even annotate them on the iPad, without a stylus, using the virtual keyboard) requires an entirely separate, and in my experience often glitch-ridden, work process on top of the preparation for print.

 

That's not to say that what Kno wants to do can't work. As Orren notes, a product that establishes its unique value can thrive in a particular niche, especially if it can control the costs through academic discounts (or selling universities on supplying all students or targeted groups of students). And if Kno can also branch out with apps for other devices, that will improve its chances. After all, everyone was muttering a year ago about how tablet computers had never gone anywhere, so what chance had the iPad?

Good luck!

Best,

M

 

P.S. I did take your survey, since it had a "faculty" category. I see they were asking about iPad and desktop apps. Good!

[Steve E]

P.S. I did take your survey, since it had a "faculty" category. I see they were asking about iPad and desktop apps. Good!

M, I didn't know you were currently faculty.

Where do you teach? If I may ask.

-T

[marguerite]

See my PM, Thoth. Yes, I am currently faculty, although I am not currently teaching. I may, however, teach again someday.

Best,

M

[Steve E]

See my PM, Thoth. Yes, I am currently faculty, although I am not currently teaching. I may, however, teach again someday.

Best,

M

Saw your PM.

Thanks.

-T

[Steakpirate]

So, you didn't hear this from me, but the iPad app may be closer than you think.

 

Having had possession of one for some time, it pains me not to be able to adequately express how great it is to have a specialized device like the Kno tablet. The word on the street is "why not an iPad App?"—mostly because people don't understand the product—so that's what they'll get. The app will be great, and will do what people want it to. But even if you buy a stylus for your iPad, it won't be the same experience as the tablet computer.

 

Our marketing pitch has been "Digital Textbooks and Notes" (which prompts the immediate response, "wut, $900!?"), when the tablet device is so much more than that. That's alright. The iPad app will be great for anyone who already has an iPad. Hopefully its success will cause people to take a look at the tablet device, and appreciate what it actually does by comparison before they scoff at the price.

 

On another note, I was tired of the surveys they were having us send out, so I put together a much more comprehensive one of my own. Essentially, I'm most interested in what people need to get in exchange for giving up their hardcopy books—as well as all of the bells and whistles people would like to see tossed on.

 

If you'd take a few moments to fill it out, I'd greatly appreciate it. There is a small chance of winning an iPad, but hopefully you'll take the survey out of a desire to bring the timeless art of book-learnin' up to speed.

[marguerite]

But I have nothing to add to what I've said already. As a professor, I cannot require my students to buy an electronic reading device in preference to a paper book. My university labors under a state mandate to control textbook prices. So the impetus has to come from the students (unless the university were to decide to give a Kno tablet or iPad to every undergraduate, which is highly unlikely under the current financial circumstances but could happen someday).

 

As a reader of textbooks, I'm already sold. I read everything on the iPad that I can (i.e., I only buy paper books now if I desperately need something that is too obscure for my local library and unavailable as an e-book through iBooks, Kindle Books, or Google eBooks—usually in that order). Or if the paper book is ridiculously cheaper, although that rarely happens. I comparison-shop for prices/availability, but I try to consolidate as much as possible in iBooks so I don't lose track of what I have. As a result, I will spend $2-$3 more for an iBook (but not $10 more).

 

I know you like the stylus, but frankly, I'm perfectly happy typing notes on an ePub file in iBooks. I also love highlighting passages in e-books. (My paper books are pristine—some kind of ingrained book reverence on my part.) I even do that for my novels and the chapters submitted by my critique group. And for the kinds of books I read or assign, the size of the iPad is fine. I can imagine it might be a bit small for a chemistry text, though.

 

For students, I would think that the main factors are (1) cost, part of which is the ability to rent or sell back a book when the course is done; (2) availability; and (3) ease of use. Also a good help system and, above all, reliability: you don't want to sit down to study for that test or to write that paper only to discover that your gadget won't start, your book won't load, or your notes have vanished into the stratosphere!

Best of luck,

M

[Joolissa]

Everybody else has done a good job of giving actual concerns and reviews, so I'm just going to say that I am absolutely drooling over the thing. I wish I could play with it.

 

 

I'd also be over the moon If it had the capability to go beyond education (I'm not in school anymore). I can imagine really great journaling capabilities and reading "regular" books, drawing and other art world applications etc. etc. It wouldn't have to be just for text books. I would really love a more powerful and double screened iPad (if only), so if your device could be anything like that I'd think it was pretty wicked. It would be even cooler if you could detatch the screens and use one at a time for when you don't have the room for the bulk. I really think it looks like a cool device and I really hope it takes off.

 

OH and one thing they should consider is the Charter and Cyber School market. Cyber schools are generally more technology savvy from my experience and if that device could also deal with their online classroom needs, then it may have a huge market with them, since Cyber Charters are required to provide computers to their students.

 

- Jules

[thealtruismsociety]

Just FYI, far as I know, the hardware is cancelled.

[Steakpirate]

Just FYI, far as I know, the hardware is cancelled.

 

They're not sure what to do with it. All of the sudden there was a big push towards the iPad app and apps for other systems. I wonder from time to time whether a member of the board of directors read a Gizmodo article titled "Too Many Tablets at CES" and screamed "ABANDON SHIP!"

 

Last I heard (sometime last week), they were in talks about the possibility of selling off their hardware division—which is slightly different than cancelled. I'm silently hoping they'll wise up and decide to relaunch the hardware a few months after they've made the initial app launch.