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Barnes and Noble to Launch NOOKstudy, We Wax Optimistic About Students' Futures

by Matthew Zuras on July 12, 2010 at 06:25 PM

NOOKstudy concept
Say what you will about the iPad ("Ugh, I can't video Skype on it!"), or about e-books in general ("Overpriced hooey!"), but, readers, please calm your vitriol for a moment. The real advantage of this hand-held tech is not the fact that you can download your latest Patricia Cornwall novel wirelessly, nor that you can smite some sows with bitchin' birds in full HD. Portable devices like these are, truly, best suited for students.

We know this sentiment has been bandied about since the launch of the first Kindle, and especially so since the iPad debuted. But Barnes and Noble, that Starbucks of the bookseller trade, is now experimenting with a learning tool called NOOKstudy, a piece of software for both Mac and PC (not e-readers or iPad, just yet) that will organize all of your class texts into a single location. According to the company's website, "NOOKstudy keeps your eTextbooks, class handouts, course syllabi, lecture notes, even your leisure reading, instantly accessible right on your computer." For software owners, Barnes and Noble is making available 500,000 free e-books, as well as the rest of its paid Nook content.

We're a little dismayed that, so far at least, NOOKstudy -- which will be released in August -- is aimed at the personal computer rather than e-reading devices. (Though we have to imagine e-reader compatibility is coming -- considering the "Nook" part of the project's name.) The design of e-books lends itself to easier reading than, say, a laptop monitor -- and having all of your zillion handouts in a single device designed for reading would have made this writer's college experience, for one, much less frantic and back-achy. At least the software will enable zooming into, highlighting, searching and annotating texts, much like the e-reading offerings available on the iPad.

Our normal reaction to sweeping proclamations from large companies about some revolutionary new product is total, unabashed snark. But this time, we're really excited, less about NOOKstudy itself than for the future that it portends. NOOKstudy looks to be a cross between Blackboard (an Internet portal, used by many colleges to share course information and connect with students) and the Nook interface. Yet, think ten steps past that: when publishers are obliged by convention to release full-color digital copies of their textbooks (possibly embedded with video); when all of a student's materials, including annotations and bookmarks, are centralized and synchronized across various platforms and devices; when students will no longer waste a chunk of rainforest when shelling out for a text they'll read but once. This is not the distant future; this is starting now. [From: TechCrunch]

Tags: BarnesAndNoble, blackboard, college, e-reader, ebook, ipad, kindle, learning, nook, nookstudy, software, students, Textbook, textbooks, top

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