Building a Better Book Reader

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"I would agree that the growing use of cell phones might increase student contact with a variety of texts," says Richard Thurlow, educational psychologist and author of Linking Literacy and Technology. "However, the success of such technology with reluctant or developing readers would entirely depend on the readability levels and the interest levels of the texts available."

A widespread adoption of reading long texts on cell phones would challenge the long-predicted rise of portable devices dedicated to reading electronic texts. That includes products like the Sony Reader, released last month.

"The Sony Reader, which our people have examined, is due to be a flop, just as with all the other dedicated hardware readers--totally the wrong business plan for the Internet age," comments Michael Hart, cofounder of Project Gutenberg, a site that makes free public-domain texts available as e-books. "The difference is that there are a billion new cell phones made every year--nothing like that for any other such devices."

Hart estimates that Project Gutenberg has about 20,000 free texts available for cell-phone download.