Argumentation and Digital Textbook Software

Argumentation Community Group,

Greetings. The transition to digital textbooks is underway in the United States, and digital books, textbooks, and textbook hardware are expected to soon be ubiquitous. With microphone and speech recognition capabilities on digital textbook hardware, software can be envisioned to enhance note-taking, studying, and scholarship. Such software can have additional applicability to business, civics, and civil discourse scenarios.

With regard to scholarship, software can facilitate enhanced note-taking, use of instructor-provided materials including presentation materials and data, interoperation between notes and digital textbooks, and classroom participation.

Tablet computers can record audio, recognize multimedia objects including from other devices, utilize speech recognition to obtain transcripts, synchronize audio recordings and transcripts to presentation files or data, and provide users with desktop search for collections of their notes. Digital textbook hardware can extend previous uses of pen and paper.

Regarding argumentation and debate, in policy debate, the flow is the name given to a specialized form of note-taking, which debaters use to keep track of all of the arguments in the round (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(policy_debate), http://debate.uvm.edu/NFL/rostrumlib/CheshierNov00.pdf). Such diagramming could be enhanced by combinations of speech recognition and multitouch. In addition to note-taking, analysis, and argument reconstruction, contextual and real-time data availability can enhance existing or new forms of formal debate. Tablet computers equipped with audio features, speech recognition, and multitouch can enhance scholarship, business meetings, discussions, debates, and participation in multimedia blogging and forum scenarios.



Kind regards,

Adam Sobieski