Textbooks and Teaching Materials

Textbooks, workbooks, text supplements, activity books and similar academic materials are all good candidates for multimedia e-book format.  Media incorporated into a text offers obvious educational advantages to students.  Most disciplines are appropriate for e-books, especially those in which viewing video clips (demonstrations,  procedures, cultural points, to name a few) or listening to audio clips would enhance the student's learning experience.  Foreign languages are principal among the disciplines to benefit from the advantages of multimedia since learning a second language involves both skill and knowledge acquisition.  Most current language programs offer multimedia supplements but they are separate from the text and generally used only in class.  When included in the e-text students are able to listen to the language and view cultural and other video clips at any time and as often as needed.  The interactive features of an e-text also add to the educational process for any discipline.  An e-text can include tests and quizzes that are automatically graded within the e-book and the results can be emailed to the instructor.  Further, active links to pertinent web sites can be included allowing the student to pursue the wealth of information on the internet.

An unfortunate caveat:  E-books are not likely to be accepted in public schools and universities at this time.  Isn't it ironic?  The ivory tower of academia, the hallowed halls of learning, the ivy-clad institutions of research and innovation are the least likely to be receptive to an innovative alternative to traditional print textbooks!  However, instructors in public institutions that allow faculty to use supplementary materials that students purchase may be in a position to create educational e-texts.  Most teachers customarily create such material frequently and present it with MS PowerPoint or as "handouts."  Teachers in private schools may have more freedom to use e-books and should consider writing or using e-texts.

Wilhite Publishing is interested in receiving e-text proposals in the area of Spanish at all levels.  See the Contact-Proposal page for more information and a form to complete and submit online.

Wilhite Publishing multimedia e-books for academic/educational use currently in production include:

Episodios--elementary Spanish multimedia text.  Expected release:  Winter 06

Cambios 2010:  La cultura hispánica--intermediate Spanish text.  Expected release:  Fall 05

Español activo--Listening and speaking activities for Spanish at all levels.  Expected release:  Summer 05

Verb Activities--writing practice for common verb tenses including regular and irregular verbs, with self-correcting quizzes and other interactive features in addition to multimedia.                        Expected release:  Summer 05

Object Pronoun Activities--writing practice for direct and indirect object pronouns, with self-correcting quizzes and other interactive features in addition to multimedia.                                         Expected release:  Summer 05

Bilingual English/Spanish pre-reading and early reading children's literature (fiction and non-fiction).

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