Quote:
Originally Posted by Krystl
You are, of course, correct, Tausin, and this has been possible for years on pcs. For some reason, however, despite the prevalence of laptops in classes, it has never overridden the use of paper texts either for lecturer nor students.
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The particular example was one in which some students had ebook readers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Krystl
In written works, structures/sentences/phrases are often very similar making a global search at times difficult and, at times, more time consuming, especially if required to type the sentence searched for in by hand (from memory without error) in order to find it--it is not always a simple word search and is dependent on the field.
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What "from memory"?
"OK, class, let's look at page 676." "My page numbers are different, can you get me some term to search for on that page?" "OK, search for 'binary explosives.'" "OK, got it."
What is so difficult about that?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Krystl
The author was referring to a course where students had ALL of the different mediums--hard back, paper back, photo copy and ereaders. That is real-world use. It is still utopic to believe that all students will have the same device.
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What does it matter what device they have? Are there
any ebook readers on the market today that do not have a full-text search function?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Krystl
The search function is exclusive to the minority in the class (a few readers)-therefore a professor uses the accepted technique for lecturing.
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The particular issue here was the claim that electronic textbooks are useless because they have different page numbers. That simply isn't true. They don't have the same page numbers, but they have superior search abilities that make them at least as fast to find what you're looking for when the professor, or another student, has the paper version
open to the page in question in front of them and can quote a passage unique enough to search for.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Krystl
Lecturing technique is not going to change any time soon. It is still most practical to teach with the most "general" or simple search function which remains page numbers (with the caveat that in a paper/syllabus with outline sections that is also used). That is a simple and basic fact and has nothing to do with intelligence or ability--but the media used.
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It has to do with professors not wanting to have to learn new ways to do old things. And yes, it will change, as more and more professors realize they can get a (much bigger) cut of the billions spent on textbooks every year, while making student nearly worship them for lowering prices substantially. Electronic textbooks are the future; nobody but textbook publishers thinkgs otherwise. Professors who don't keep up will find their classes less and less popular, and ultimately, the means they get paid less.