By These are the things I wish I had when I was still a young student. enTourage Systems is announcing that they’ve teamed up with The Douglas Stewart Company – a leading distributor for computers – to help bring the enTourage eDGe DualBook to classrooms. It’s a pretty cool device that I’m sure got you a bit more than excited when you first heard about it.
It houses two screens – one with an eInk display, and the other an LCD – for maximum functionality and flexibility. You can use one side exclusively to read, the other side exclusively as a tablet, or both sides to create a netbook-like experience. It would be perfect for students and teachers alike to use in a class-room (especially considering the cost of books and the probability that they’ll be beat up over a short period of time).
enTourage states there’d be some unique learning experiences that can be had from a device of this nature. One scenario they provided was the ability to highlight a work or several words in a book and instantly search the web for it on the tablet portion of the eDGe. That’s just one of many scenarios that makes this unique device all the more tempting (student or otherwise). Read ahead for the full press details.
MCLEAN, Va.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–enTourage Systems, Inc., creator of the world’s first dualbook™ – the enTourage eDGe™ – announced today that it has partnered with The Douglas Stewart Company, a leading distributor and marketer of computer products, consumer electronics and school supplies, to exclusively serve the education market and boost interactive learning for school systems’ students, faculty and staff.
“We strongly feel that students can excel in their learning by using a device like this that puts an endless amount of information at their fingertips.”
The enTourage eDGe is the first device to merge an e-paper and LCD screen to create a dual-screen device that combines the functionality of an e-reader, tablet netbook, notepad and audio/video recorder and player in one inclusive device. These two displays work together to allow students to access and enrich information in a way that they previously couldn’t. Students can access their textbooks and make notes in the margins or highlight text while they simultaneously look up further information on the subject via the Web on the LCD side. Last year, The Douglas Stewart Company began including hardware in its distribution, and this is the first time the company has partnered with a manufacturer of an e-reading device to offer retailers the most current technology that students need.“Our partnership with The Douglas Stewart Company strengthens our mission to bring the enTourage eDGe directly to students and educational institutions and allows us to reach the right resellers and end users,” said Asghar Mostafa, CEO of enTourage Systems, Inc. “The enTourage eDGe was built with the student in mind, to give them a multi-purpose platform that lets them access e-textbooks, surf the Web, annotate and take notes, correspond with classmates and customize content digitally and easily.”
“We are continually on the lookout for the best technology to aid the education sector, such as the enTourage eDGe,” Jack Bahlman, vice president of sales and marketing at The Douglas Stewart Company. “We strongly feel that students can excel in their learning by using a device like this that puts an endless amount of information at their fingertips.”
The two screens of the enTourage eDGe interact so that users can open hyperlinks that are included in an e-book text and view the content on the LCD screen, or ‘attach’ Web pages to passages in an e-book to be referenced at a later point. Additionally, as the enTourage eDGe uses E-Ink technology for easy digital reading, images will appear in gray-scale on the e-paper side of the device; however, users can load these in color on the LCD side, ideal for viewing colored charts and graphs from course materials. A built-in camera and microphone captures audio and video content that users can store and play back later. Included Documents To Go software makes Microsoft Office documents available for creating, viewing and editing for notes or school papers. The enTourage eDGe runs on the Google Android operating system and backs up all content on enTourage Systems’ servers for safe keeping. The device folds a full 360 degrees and orients its displays horizontally or vertically, to view as a book, single screen, or prop up laptop style.
enTourage Systems’ e-book store includes over 200,000 trade titles, e-textbooks, major magazines, newspapers and periodicals, as well as over one million free public domain books digitized by Google. The e-book store is a key component to the enTourage Systems eco-system, providing a controlled user experience that also includes document back-up and sharing between devices.
The enTourage eDGe will be on display at booth #2327 at Book Expo America May 26-27 at the Jacob K. Javits Center in New York.
I can honestly say this device would be revolutionary…. I say the future is here… This would get children excited about learning and save on paper for printing. I pray this is in every school everywhere. Make it affordable enough and schools can adopt this! I would gladly pay my portion and I have 3 kids!
I had this idea about five years ago, no kidding. I’ve been waiting for someone to make it. Following one of the requests in the linked older article, if the top screen would rotate as some laptops do, and then allow the device to close, you would then have a single page reader. Also, without reading all of this, I expect that the right or bottom screen turns into a keyboard.
Besides the better learning associated with this proliferation of information, this partnership could decrease the physical strain on a child and make school safer AND cheaper, all for a one-time cost per student.
With schools encouraging/requiring laptops for assignments and less time to get to lockers between periods, I have heard stories over the last 10 years about back injuries in children from carrying around too much in their bookbags. Seriously, a 10-year old should not be carrying around three textbooks in a shoulder bag. OSHA comes down hard on employers that don’t specifically prohibit employees from carrying an equivalent amount of weight.
Consider that Electronic books don’t wear out, then add electronic homework into the mix, and the physical supply budget, warehouse space, etc. of a school goes down dramatically.
Does anyone else think that this is great form factor? Two screens so it read like a traditional book, allows for better multitasking (website open and taking notes simultaneously), and can be closed to protect the screen from for debris floating in your bag (like my pocket knife). I hope we see more tablets taking this route instead of the ipad/kindle slate route.
Microsoft Courier. That is all.
I certainly like the idea of digitizing books and empowering students with the latest technologies. If anyone deserves it, it’s students and their teachers.
The device’s audio & video recording capability set this baby over the top — very useful to older students (assuming those recordings will last through an entire 3 hour lecture).
Now, let’s get going on 100% digital textbooks. Hardcopy sucks!!!
Now, instead of teachers asking why students didn’t bring their textbooks, they can ask why students didn’t charge their textbooks! Lol. (Who wouldn’t want to keep this beast charged, though?)