For those who are advocates of our work here in the IMS Global Learning Consortium I will be "singing to the choir" on this one.

As the various e-Book reader alternatives for education emerge: Kindle, Sony, Nook, Plastic Logic, Apple Tablet, NetBooks, Mobile Phones, etc - it is becoming more and more obvious that a lack of cooperation on standards among the companies involved is going to slow progress in terms of what we need for effective educational scenarios.

Educational scenarios require interactivity, collaboration, and online assessment to take us to the next level. Yes, I know that some of the current pilots with e-Books are primarily looking at e-Books as a way to "save paper" and printing costs. However, the devices are not good enough yet to be as good as books - and we are a ways off from that. Yes, i can read the text on the train or the bus or wherever with my e-reader. However, it's a poor excuse for a real textbook in education right now.

The big problem is that even to just get to this "low bar" the users and business models are tripped up by a lack of interoperability. Click here for a great article that explains the dilemmas facing users.. Every book provider (publisher - large or small), will need to provide their content and different formats for every reader device. The big problem with this is that it expends unnecessary resources on stuff that should be easy. Now, fast forward to what we really need - e-Books that interact with a whole variety of online learning applications, learning management systems, collaboration tools, etc. and, well, how is that going to work when all the e-Readers use different formats?

It's not. It's going to be a problem that is going to slow down the progress we need to make in education. This is what I call the Google-Apple-Google-Amazon (GAGA) syndrome. The GAGA syndrome (Google is counted twice because they are by far the worst offender) is really a business strategy which says: If we create our own format/approach and use our marketing muscle/market share to force the content suppliers to our defacto standard the consumer doesn't care and we will solidify our market position (because in a competitive world there are limits to how many company specific formats any one entity can work with). It's called the GAGA syndrome because it is a self-absorbed kind of "leadership".

So, in IMS my hope is that we can work with enough of the providers to replace the GAGA syndrome with standards that will enable our market to move forward instead of running in place.

-Rob Abel

It is ironic that Google is the worst offender when they claim to "do no evil" within the context of business decisions especially. But I wonder, as I learn more about the different formats and options, if the real solution will be like the transition that is currently underway from Flash to HTML5 - non-proprietary universal technology, rather than industry specific formats and technologies. For example, I think e-books is sort of what the HDV video format was: a transition to HD. Google recently launched a site that I think is a sign of what will eventually replace the eBook: 20thingsilearned.com

The site provides an almost equivalent user experience compared to an eBook and even offers some novel surprises.