I believe the "scholarly" term they're looking for is captology, the study of persuasive technology.

This is all just recruiting the lower parts of the brain that B.F. Skinner studied. Pull-lever-get-food-pellet type of stuff. No play involved, really.

Well, that's not entirely true. Copyright does cover derivative works. For example there's the issue of The Wind Done Gone that was based on Gone with the Wind, but was written from the slaves' point of view. Much legal trouble ensued, and it had to be rebranded as a parody and the characters renamed (and some money spent) before the case could be settled.

If it weren't legal, Rupert Murdoch would surely be in jail by now.

If they can make Sintel, how long before a video game is made that way and of that quality?

I don't have numbers to offer, but they could be banking on the iPad being cheaper in the long run than having to update dead-tree textbooks year after year. Also many of the open courseware digital textbooks are as good as, if not better than ye olde paper texts. And almost any school could easily replace their literature textbooks with e versions, so maybe they're looking to extend this beyond math. If so, they will almost certainly be saving money.

Besides, textbooks are sooo 20th century.

Insightful? Seriously?

Finally something I can use to easily sort my porn.

Very, very., very well said. Not only do I wish I had mod points, but I wish you could go higher than five for exceptional comments.

Complaining about how dumb American kids are, or how bad American schools are, is just one of those things people default to without ever giving it a shred of thought. I'm so glad to see that someone actually manages to think the situation through before whining.

That might actually work on the moon.

LOL!! Ah, for some mod points....