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Monday, October 03, 2011

Book Apps -- Susanna Carr

I was reading an article in the USA Today about "The 10 Coolest Book Apps for Fall." I couldn't imagine there was much competition, but oh, I was so wrong. Book apps now include:

Archival film footage, audio recordings, color animation, instructional videos, interactive maps, interactive quizzes, read-aloud options in children's books, social network integration, study tools and virtual tours

Wow! Those are cool book apps, and I'm sure the article was just a small sampling of what is available. But I have to wonder if that many bells and whistles are a good thing. I don't know if I want these many distractions when I simply want to read a book.

And I can't help but notice that the emphasis is on multimedia. That's great, but is the written word no longer enough? Even the journalist who wrote the article wonders if the definition of a book is changing!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The "written word" is all I'm interested. This Apps thing does not interest me at all!

Kaelee said...

Since I don't have apps for anything, I guess the written word is enough for me as well.

Mary Preston said...

I'm not really up on apps, a bit like a foreign language really.

TashNz said...

I think the key to Apps for our friends who are a bit hesitant about Apps is to have an App-friendly device, easiest example is "Iphone" or "Ipad"... if you dont have something that can easily use them then dont worry about them at all. When I discovered them tho I likened the excited feeling to how I felt when I got my very first laptop :)))