Book Smarts? E-Texts Receive Mixed Reviews From Students

[MickeyC]

Article in today's Wall Street Journal discussing the use of eBook readers in education. Article discusses the pluses and minuses of eBooks stating, for example,

"... the transition has sparked controversy among some educators. They say that digital reading comes with drawbacks, including an expensive starting price for e-book readers and surprisingly high prices for digital textbooks. Also, publishers make e-texts difficult to share and print, and it is unclear how well students will adapt to reading textbooks on a screen, some say. The earliest versions of these devices lack highlighting, note-taking and sharing capabilities, and one leading provider’s e-books expire after several months, meaning they can’t be kept for future reference.

Meantime, on Tuesday, a customer filed suit in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, seeking class-action status, against Amazon, claiming the Kindle, when kept in a cover, cracks too easily. An Amazon spokesman said “We do not comment on active litigation. Nevertheless, we encourage anyone who has an issue with the cover attachment mechanism to return the cover and device for a free replacement so we can investigate further.”

You can read the entire article here http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...750084938.html

[doreenjoy]

I can sympathize with these students. Much as I love having all of my text books on a Reader, it's not convenient for note-taking. The annotation features leave much to be desired. I bought my current text books in paper, and it's much easier to slap a post-it on a page, underline a phrase, and write directly on a page if need be.

[narbeauchamp]

.I am torn I would've LOVED this (ok my back would've LOVED this )...but also...the annotation features probably would not have been to my liking (I'm suddenly having flashes of my methods of note taking and highlighting and usage of post it...oh wait..that's not all that different from how I work today is it LOL .....

[Teyrnon]

We're talking about a very new technology and one which the existing devices haven't really been designed with the student in mind. Also it seems that publishers don't yet understand what they're dealing with and I fear they'll continue to apply outmoded models coupled with whatever wacky new idea sounds good to them without applying actual thought and investigation into the realities of the things.

I'm inclined to think a netbook with a 10"+ screen might be the better choice for the moment. At least until someone sits down designs and brings to market an eink device that addresses the various methodologies of note-taking and other related needs of modern students.

[mgrunk]

I don't know - on technical books - I could have a couple of pages held in place w/ my right hand and using my left hand to flip between a couple of more in order to compare information. I'm not sure how you do that w/ once screen. Unless there's something to easily flip from one spot in a book to another.

[Elfwreck]

California is reviewing 20 free math and science e-books that will be made available to teachers this fall. The state will leave it up to schools to figure out how to get the content to students, with solutions ranging from printing them out to handing them to students on CDs. This method, known as open source, could save the state millions.

I love the idea of free digital textbooks in my home state. Hey, it's possible my daughter could be reading one of these on her Jetbook.

But that doesn't make the distribution "open source."

[ficbot]

I wrote about my first e-text experience recently for Teleread:

http://www.teleread.org/2009/07/14/m...-from-pearson/

The short version: it was a complete disaster, could not do anything with it but read it off the computer screen, or print the whole thing. No way to save it electronically for future reference, no way to even cut one sentence to cite in a paper. I had to retype individual words and phrases by juggling back and forth from two browser windows. Fail!

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by ficbot

I wrote about my first e-text experience recently for Teleread:

http://www.teleread.org/2009/07/14/m...-from-pearson/

The short version: it was a complete disaster, could not do anything with it but read it off the computer screen, or print the whole thing. No way to save it electronically for future reference, no way to even cut one sentence to cite in a paper. I had to retype individual words and phrases by juggling back and forth from two browser windows. Fail!

Your article said "You could print the book to paper." Could you print to PDF? (Then you've got the hassles of running OCR and so on, but at least you've got something you can read when offline.)

[ficbot]

No you cannot print to PDF. Only to paper

[LDBoblo]

I have to agree with what some others are saying...ebooks are too fragmented a medium with inferior hardware backing and no real trust behind them on the part of the publishers.

ebook reading technology is not THAT new, and e-ink display technology is also not that new. I really think that there's a reluctance about developing electronic readers, and book publishers can benefit extensively from making ebooks encumbering and unwieldy.

You need a really good annotation/writing pad system (more advanced and readable than most chicken-scratches touch screens do), highlighting, a means of quick cross-referencing, rapid page flipping, and decent viewing quality, most likely in color for many texts with diagrams. The sluggish, mediocre-quality ebooks of today just aren't geared for that kind of use. Computer screen reading is generally painful enough without having to transfer all my textbooks to it.

Further, there's a bit of a cognitive division between being in a book and being on a computer. The multitasking nature of computing means that when reading a book on the screen, significant effort is needed to retain attention on the book, and a slip of concentration leads to email checking, chatting on IM, dinking around on Wikipedia, and a quick jump to failblog or some other entertainment. Woops, spent 2 hours on youtube chasing links! A physical textbook is a dedicated environment all its own, and once you're in it, it's much harder to wander away. Ebook devices can almost accomplish the same thing, though they're just not good enough to do so effectively with dense texts.

Really, I can see the potential for academic use, but today in practical terms, a Kindle DX or iRex Reader or a Sony reader are pretty lame devices, and the publishing companies are all too happy to castrate their digital offerings in a feigned attempt to "embrace technology" while utterly discouraging its use.

Beyond reading novels that I can't afford to waste apartment space storing (anything I find to be a really good read, I will have a paper copy of simply for typography, which e-readers are again wholly inferior at), I can't imagine my Sony reader being used for anything remotely productive in the way of research or study.