The digital reading revolution

Books have come late to the digital party, but change is now happening at such a furious pace that even conservative members of the trade are starting to realise that their industry is being snatched away from them before their eyes. The undisputed leader in the race to sell digital books is Amazon. Its Kindle e-reader was a late entry into the race but it used its redoubtable marketing muscle to gain a 76% share of all digital books sold. It could have been much more but for the arrival of the iPad, which now has a 5% market share, though rising fast.

Guardian: The digital reading revolution

ecommerce example

One example of an ecommerce site is Amazon. This started off as an online book store but now sells much more, including an ebook reader called the Kindle which allows users to download books and browse the web in black and white.

Class 3 - Group blogs

• Commerce
• Entertainment
• Communication
• Download
• Real-time
• Education
• Mapping

Class 4 - group blogs

Research activity

In your groups, you're going to be researching an online service area, as given to your group in class. Search for useful links and blog them when you find them.

Online services:

• communication, eg email, instant messaging, newsgroups, online conferencing, blogs, social networking
• real time information, eg train timetables, news services, traffic reports, weather
• commerce, eg shopping, banking, auctions
• government, eg online tax returns, e-voting, applications for services/grants, revenue collection
• education, eg online learning/training, VLEs
• business, eg videoconferencing, collaborative working, business networks
• entertainment, eg multi-user games, radio players
• download services, eg music, film, upgrades, software web storage
• online mapping and route planning (not Sat Nav)

The links could be examples of the online service, people describing their experiences of using the services, reviews, news articles, etc.

There are lots of types of sources of information:

• extracts from websites
• screenshots
• journal articles
• sound clips
• discussion groups
• blog posts
• reference sites, like wikipedia
• online video
• Twitter

Set up a blog

Each group needs a blog. It's dead easy: one of you needs to go to blogger.com and follow the destructions! Then, invite everyone else in the group to join the blog. (Getting everyone to type in their own email address at this point is probably easiest.)

The getting started guide is useful, as is the help section on setting up a team blog.

Virtual Revolution - More

Because the BBC is ace, they've put a load of stuff related to the TV programme on their Virtual Revolution website. You can explore the programme in various ways, and the make your own documentary clips will be useful for your ebook.