While I looked at the material on the NYT webpage I have always thought that future textbooks, for stable and reliable courses that are in demand, would follow the model that McGraw-Hill developed for it's popular textbook "Harrison's Internal Medicine" which is currently in its 18th edition. Here is a description of the textbook and some history on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison%27s_Principles_of_Internal_Medicine
Amazon has the "book" version of Harrison's (NOTE: it comes in two volumes plus a DVD and its price rivals that of many psychology textbooks): http://www.amazon.com/Harrisons-Principles-Internal-Medicine-Volumes/dp/007174889X/ref=pd_sim_b_2 But here is the real treasure: several years back the textbook was converted into a website which (a) allowed existing book sections to be updated/corrected in real-time, and (b) additional sections could be added the web edition that might not appear in the printed text. Here is the link to the web version of the textbook: http://accessmedicine.com/resourceTOC.aspx?resourceID=4 Unfortunately, you or your institution will have to have a subscription to the website in order to view the contents. Because they have been working on this for several years, I think that the website makes good use of what is essentially a "hypertext" document. Again, major benefits include being able to rapidly correct errors, update sections with new results, and creating new sections on specific medical conditions (e.g., how the new H7N9 virus differs from other members of this virus family which are known to pose serious public health problems). I imagine that there are certain textbooks in psychology that could benefit from such a treatment but I don't think that publishers would commit the resources to a textbook that would be considered the de facto standard text for a course like intro psych. But we'll see. -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] ---------- Original Message ----------- On Tue, 02 Jul 2013 04:15:00 -0700, Michael Britt wrote: I don't know if you've heard about this recent "multimedia feature" from the New York Times called Snow Fall: the Avalanche at Tunnel Creek, but it's worth checking out: http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/#/?part=tunnel-creek It's an interesting mixture of what the online experience is like today: short paragraphs punctuated with images, stories, video, semi-3D experiences, and slideshows. You have to admit it's pretty well done. Putting aside the cost and time needed to create a textbook that contained all these elements for every chapter I was just wondering if a psych book created in this fashion would result in more reading time/engagement/satisfaction from students. I suppose it would. Thoughts? --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=26311 or send a blank email to leave-26311-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
