The Squadron Officers College (SOC) at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., hosts between 6,000 and 8,000 students per year in 13 classes, for each of whom it printed, collated, and distributed reams of educational and training documentation. Printing in color was cost-prohibitive, resulting in mountains of paper printed in black and white.
Similarly, the Air Education and Training Command (AETC) based at Randolph Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, in its search for a timely and cost-effective way of supplying documentation to officers in training, came across eBook Technologies Inc. (ETI) of La Jolla, Calif., and its all-digital electronic book system. This meeting led to the SOC’s implementation of the eBook system and its subsequent simplification of content creation, revision, management, and distribution.
The SOC converted printed material to digital content and furnished to each student in the Squadron Officers School and the Air & Space Basic Command all training materials on an eBook called the ETI-1. The ETI-1 is roughly the size of a hardcover book, and sports a full-color, backlit screen.
“Before we had a six- to eight-week lead time for adding new material,” says Capt. Danny Flores, chief of SOC Wargames and New Technology. “Now we have a lead time of 48 to 72 hours, and we’re saving up to $400,000 per year just in printing costs.”
“The ability to update material with lessons learned from our operations in the Global War on Terrorism is a good example,” continues Flores. “We can incorporate new material within two to three days. The SOC implementation has become a model application. It has shown us all that there’s a lot more value to be found in this technology than any of us knew.”
Security is ensured through encryption. When content is transmitted to the device, it is encrypted in such a way that only the desired device can decrypt and display the content. For more information, visit www.ebooktechnologies.com.
