Use of electronic books (e-books) in learning and teaching

Working in an education publishing company, we are committed to provide different types of educational resources, besides the conventional textbooks, for students and teachers to increase the interactivity, the effectiveness and the efficiency of learning and teaching. One of the most obvious examples is the electronic books (also known as e-books) for teachers.

In the e-books, besides the textual contents of the chapters, there are also some features for enhancing the effectiveness of both learning and teaching.

Now, I would like to discuss the features of the e-books. First of all, the “marker pen” with different colours enables teachers to highlight sentences on e-book pages, pointing out the important contents for their students. This can make students know what content is more important, increasing the efficiency of learning. Second, when the teacher is illustrating one part of a page to the students, he/she can use the “mask” to cover the rest of the page, making the students focus on the content talking about by the teacher more easily. Third, teachers can use the “notepad” to take notes about the important points or other related materials that are not mentioned in the content. This can let teachers to teach students extra knowledge about a particular aspect more deeply. Fourth, the answers of chapter-end questions can be shown or hidden by pressing a button. Therefore teachers can ask those questions verbally during lessons and check the students’ answers immediately. Last but not least, there is a button beside each keywords, this can let students listen to those pronunciations. This can make students learn the words more deeply, also, along with teacher’s explanation, students can learn the meaning and use the words effectively in the learning process.

All in all, e-books with the above-mentioned features can improve the effectiveness and efficiency of learning and teaching. However, there are still many aspects to improve this channel of teaching and learning, for example the degree of interactivity can be increased by having immediately accessible simulations of activities.