Cause and Effect Essay Some public school districts (and colleges)now purchase textbooks in electron

In this essay, you will write a cause and effect analysis essay about your chosen topic. Each topic has several supporting texts to use as support; read some or all essays listed with the topic to help develop your ideas. The listed supporting documents are the only ones you may use for this essay unless your instructor approves another.

Cause and effect is an in-depth examination of the relationship between causes and effects. It is not simply a list of causes or effects. In this essay, you will use at least two paraphrases or quotes from at least one of the listed texts to support your ideas. The emphasis in your essay should be on your ideas.

Essay Three Topic Reminders:

Option A: Some public school districts (and colleges) now purchase textbooks in electronic form. Amazon now sells more ebooks than paper ones. Predict and explain the effects of paper texts (textbooks, books, magazines and more) becoming electronic. You might find the following sources useful.
“A Next-generation Digital Book” by Mike Matas (Ted Talk)

“E-books Will Widen the Digital Divide” by Christopher Mims (MC Library database)

“Books vs. Ebooks: The Science Behind the Best Way to Read” by Amy Kraft

Essay Guidelines:
• Your essay should be 3-5 pages long.
• It should be typed using a standard 12 point font. MLA standard pagination is required. See The Little Seagull Handbook p. 161 for a sample essay in MLA format.
• Follow directions carefully.
• It should be double spaced with margins no bigger than 1 inch.
• You should carefully review the strategies for writing a Cause and Effect Essay. This means, you do not list cause and effects; rather, you develop a larger purpose, some lesson or insight that makes the cause and effect discussion important. Consider how the causes result in the effects or how the effects result from the causes and the importance of that cause/effect relationship.
• Use at least one outside source (from the list of articles/sources provided) of information to develop your essay.
• Use a minimum of two quotes or paraphrases from an outside source.
• Be sure to include your name on your essay.
• Create a Works Cited page and cite all outside sources used in the essay including images and videos.

ANSWER

The Cause and Effects of the Proliferation of eBooks

Overtime, the widespread use of technology has digitized learning processes. Students world over are more likely to access information from virtual texts in the internet than they do from the physical pages of a book. For the authors and their prospective readers, this rapid advent in technology has introduced a new and convenient way to present and access literature, known as electronic books, the eBooks. It is also noteworthy that while the eBooks may be considered as novel alternatives to tactile books, their widespread use would cause significant drawbacks to the readers, a possibility that subjects the value of eBooks to considerable uncertainty.

To understand the far-reaching implications of eBooks to contemporary readers, it is appropriate understand the underlying causes of their growing use. The fact that eBooks are reliant on technology creates confusion over whether or not technology is the primary cause of the growth of eBooks. On the surface, people consider technology as the key driver for the massive switch to eBooks. On a critical perspective, however, technology must not be considered the primary cause of the current shift from tactile to virtual books. The reality is that many factors contribute to the widespread use of eBooks, and technology is but a bridge through which people can meet the needs of these factors. Take, for instance, the case of convenience. People are always in pursuit of convenient ways of accomplishing tasks- in part due to the need to balance the use of time and space, and largely because people love the easy way out of a situation. This notion applies as much to education as it does to other spheres of life such as transportation and industrial productivity. In this way, technology should be viewed as the bridge through which people create and access the eBooks and not the key motivation behind the use of the eBooks. Thus, the rise of eBooks is the product of humanity’s exploitation of technology in pursuit of the convenient learning.

Evidently, the rise of eBooks is directly associated with their perceived convenience.  Compared to the tactile books, the online copies of books are web-based and can be accessed easily across a host of internet-enabled devices including smart phones, tablets, laptops, and desktop computers. Most of these devices are portable and can be conveniently used in different places regardless of the surrounding population and the geographic location. For example, it is easier for an individual to read a book chapter from their smartphones, seated at a waiting lounge at an airport than it would be to read the same chapter from a voluminous book at the same lounge. Consequently, based on the books’ availability, a reader would opt for an eBook version instead of the conventional hard copies due to the convenience of portability and storage. In fact, studies show that a majority of contemporary readers would most likely not have read the book if not for its easily accessible online presence (Reid 19-22). These findings imply that the more virtual an author goes with their texts, the larger the potential audience. In the long run, the promise of convenience would cause a rise in demand for online publications, which, in turn, would have the effect on increased production and the subsequent rise in eBooks.

The factor of motivation is not limited to portability and storage alone, but also the nature of online texts.  Unlike other forms of literature, most of the eBooks are created with additional virtual functionalities that make reading enjoyable and understandable.  They provide advanced features that printed texts may not offer, including the ability to resize texts, text-to-speech options, the ability to jump to a page of choice at an instant click, and instant dictionary look-up. This, by far, makes reading easy, interesting, and preferable. Also, some of the eBooks are free and their readers do not incur any financial costs in accessing, reading, or downloading them. The reduced financial needs are certainly an advantage.

The above-mentioned reasons behind the recent growth of electronic publishing may be sensible, but the effects of the continued use of these eBooks undermine their importance nonetheless. One of the effects of dependency on eBooks is their tendency to hinder literacy development.  Evidence suggests that while  more than half of readers prefer digital copies of reading material, the  digital material impacts them negatively by reducing their concentration and comprehension skills (Reid 2-3). The researcher notes that despite being motivated by the interactive nature of the information available in eBooks, the students are more than likely to skip pages by skimming through the digital text- with the effect of missing out on vital information (Reid 21).  Additionally, there are more distracting features in the digital texts that divert the focus of the readers from the main information (Reid 22). Together, these factors constitute to the drops in compression of digital texts as compared to the texts from traditional books.  To this end, the use of eBooks may be attractive to students due to their interactive interphase, but they are generally degenerative when it comes to the degree of knowledge acquisition and retention. This situation does not overrule the need for eBooks; rather, it is serves as a pointer to the publishers of e-books to look beyond psychological appeals and devise measures that will reinforce the quality of electronic learning.

The effects of eBooks on the readers stretch beyond literacy development to involve both physical and economic drawbacks. There are claims by health experts that the backlight from the devices from which the reading takes place could potentially harm the eye of the reader depending on the length of the exposure (Reid 29). Extended use of eBooks could also cause eye strain and the associated defects. These health issues continue to add weight to the negative side of the ledger, where students are seen to be highly motivated to choose leaning alternatives that contributes to the deterioration of their health statuses in the long run. Worse, even if the effects of the eBooks were exceedingly positive, they would only contribute to the academic development of the students from a certain socio-economic position. Take, for instance, a classroom where half the students hail from economically stable backgrounds while the other half are socio-economically destitute.  A total reliance on eBooks in this classroom would create a digital divide between the rich and the poor students due to their unequal socio-economic capabilities (Reid 5). Unlike traditional books that can be borrowed or shared amongst peers, the eBooks are more personal. What follows is a gap in literacy development between two student groups with inequitable access to learning material.

In sum, the need for fast, easy, and convenient access to learning material has inspired a massive growth in the use of eBooks. However, the effects of the overreliance on the eBooks for learning could negatively impact the students’ literacy developments. In the long run, the students may also develop significant eye challenges and experience gaps in educational attainments due to their different socio-economic backgrounds.  While there is no conclusive evidence on the overall efficacy of the eBooks, an appraisal of the causes and effects of the rise in eBooks could be a perfect starting point for think tanks.

Work Cited

Reid, Cayley. “Ebooks and Print Books Can Have Different Affects on Literacy Comprehension.” (2016).