Matija Lokar, Fakulteta za matematiko in fiziko, Univerza v Ljubljani

Electronic versions of textbooks (e-textbooks) are a hot topic in educational community. A good e-textbook should be quite different from the printed textbook. It should provide much more besides the obvious additions and improvements like interactivity, usage of multimedia, and easy navigation.

As the need for individual approach towards each student is becoming more and more emphasized, one of the crucial changes requires that e-textbook should allow customization and personalization which should be achieved on different levels: on a technical level (adaptation to different output devices, tools used in examples etc.) or (more important) on teh level of adaptation of the content. This customization will be one of the most important parts of the teacher’s work in the future. It is the teacher who is making the e-textbook suitable for the particular pedagogical situation. Therefore e-textbooks should be designed to be adaptable to the pedagogical situation and to the user, be it a learner and a teacher.

Hence e-textbooks should be quite different from the printed editions. In the talk we will show some concrete examples where some of the proposed ideas are already implemented and also a description of more concrete ways how should the others look like.