Fields of Study

Ok, I'm curious. For those who have bought (or are interested in buying) the Edge for academic purposes, what are your fields of study and are you a student or instructor/professor?

And do you have any suggestions on how it could be improved for use in your field of study (beyond the obvious landscape mode, which everyone is asking for)? I don't know why, but it would interest me to know. It would certainly interest me to know if anyone out there shares my field of study.

I'm an instructor in Philosophy. I haven't bought my Edge yet, but will do so as soon as my credit card is back under control.

A couple of things that would improve it for me, that I know of already, would be the ability to have multiple texts open at once and easily switch between them.

I don't like Android, since I cannot switch to my language (physical keyboard), so I have to do all the editing/typing on my Windows desktop, but it's not such a big deal.

E-ink is too slow for skimming through a book/an article (or switching between a few files), for that purpose I use a netbook or the LCD side on my Edge.

Besides, I just cannot access some services like JSTOR (an Android related issue).

I would need a good citation and/or cataloguing manager/software (e.g. Mendeley for Android), and a real office suite (like OpenOffice). The landscape mode is a must, so is the full Flash support.

Almost all of the issues mentioned above are due to e-ink (native) limitations (or rather speed), or are Android related. The last two issues will be addressed in a future update.

The Edge however can do pretty much everything I need, but I still have to do some editing/adjustment on my desktop. The Edge is perfect for taking notes, annotating articles, none of the rest of the readers available on the market currently will let you do that much with your research material. I like its dual screen interface, it has greatly improved my overall performance. Table of contents which lets you see all of the annotations/notes/highlights/changes you have made is one of the most useful features for a researcher.

Since you haven't got your Edge yet, I just hope you'll get the original Edge, not (only) the PocketEdge, since reading articles on smaller screens is almost impossible.

I'm a PHD candidate, my research areas include sociology, cultural anthropology and philosophy of history.

Interesting. Thanks emen.

A couple of things that would improve it for me, that I know of already, would be the ability to have multiple texts open at once and easily switch between them.

While this feature isn't available, (I would like this capabililty also), you can have a pdf open in 'pdf to go' on the lcd side while reading something else on the ereader side. However, 'pdf to go' is a read only app (no editing features outside of copying text, afaik). Perhaps a developer will create an android pdf editing app in the future?

As I work with a lot of public domain material (and sometimes my own material), another feature I would like is the ability to move or export pdf's that I have annotated on the edge with all of that intact so that I can read and edit outside of the ereader as well. Presently, you can export but it is converted to an image pdf and if you move your original pdf file out of the library or the Adobe Reader environment, you lose all of your previous editing. This is an Adobe related issue having to do with drms and publishing rights, so I don't think I'll be holding my breath waiting for it anytime soon. Also, I make sure I keep duplicate copies on my desktop pc.

I work around this issue by exporting my annotations (pdf image files) and journal notes and using those to edit the original pdf in an editor on my pc. Quite a lot of work but I've found it to be a fairly effective 'study tool', as well.

I'm a biology professor, and I find the EE very useful. My only complaint is that annotations don't scale with zoom and aren't anchored to the text. So, when trying to read my 2 column academic PDFs, I can't zoom in at all if I plan to annotate. Landscape reading and/or a direct fix of the annotation (both of which are coming) will alleviate these problems, though.

Elementary music teacher.

1. I would like to have a 'save' icon on my screen when I am taking attendance. Some docs on the eink side have the save button, however, the annotated PDFs I use for attendance does not. I have to 'show icons' or whatever it says... then click the left icon and save PDF.
2. Perhaps make a visual page option for switching pages in multi-page PDFs. Currently I click the left or right hardware button and cycle through until I get to the class I need.

Canezila- could you make a table of contents for your PDFs that show up on the LCD side and use that to navigate between pages?

Dr. T, I never though of that. If I can do that, it would make things much easier .. and faster. I will get on that today. Thanks.

One more idea. And I do not know how this would be done in Android. But an easier way to organize my schedules, class rosters, meeting notes etc... other than just tags. I am using tags now and it does help. But I was thinking of something like a file explorer page that fits many types of smaller icons. Similar to ADW Launcher and its option to space objects closer than default android. Just that idea in a file explorer.

Originally Posted by canezila

I would like to have a 'save' icon on my screen when I am taking attendance. Some docs on the eink side have the save button, however, the annotated PDFs I use for attendance does not. I have to 'show icons' or whatever it says... then click the left icon and save PDF.

You only have to explicitly save Journals. PDF/EPUB documents/ebooks save the annotations as soon as you create them.

Originally Posted by canezila

But I was thinking of something like a file explorer page that fits many types of smaller icons

The Library does have a toggle for icons vs list view, although the icon view does use largish icons.

I'm a history professor; I teach mostly undergrad courses. Some of my motivation in purchaing the EE was the ability go 'paperless.' I wanted students to submit pdfs instead of physical copies. My plan was to read and grade them on the e-reader side.

Technically, it's possible. It works. But it is far from elegant. Landscape mode would help immensely. Writing comments on the 'regular sized' format of a pdf means that commetns end up HUGE relative to the typed text. The obvious solution is to zoom in before writing comments. Thus, my chicken scratch is smaller relative to the text. But once I save that file, all of the margins are gone; the paper that the student gets back looks as of they typed right to the edge of the page.

Also if I FAIL to zoom in before writing my first comments, I'm stuck.. Once the first comment has been entered, you can't resize. (Well, you can, but if you switch back into commenting mode, the e-reader automatically goes back to whatever size you began in...)

As I said, it all technically works, it's just not smooth.

For the time being, I'm back with the laptop, typing comments into Acrobat Pro. I still WANT to be able to use my EE, but I'm not optimistic that it will ever live up to my expectations.

I use my edge as a student right now. I agree that the ability to have multiple texts open would be great. The ability to integrate the journal into evernote would be nice too, or as another member suggested save to JPG, for Evernote's OCR capabilities would be great too. Right now I send to my PC then print to OneNote, copy the pictures to word, save and upload. A bit time consuming, but it works for now. My biggest need is landscape mode, my PDF books are really hard to read in portrait mode, that or textbooks in EPUB.

Cheyennedonna,

What's your field of study? Are you grad or undergrad? Do you use the journal mostly to take notes?

EGC7,

Are you actually able to get your students to create PDF files to turn in? I have trouble getting mine to just log onto Blackboard.

I teach in Control/Computer and Communication Engineering. I have started collecting students homework on PDF and return them with my handwriting's score (Save paper). Using e-books and powerpoint to show it on screen, Now i use oly e-ink site as a book until i found the good USB-to-VGA.
I am also several public sectors' consultant, EE help me keep note for each site and each meeting.

Originally Posted by jsfiller

Cheyennedonna,

What's your field of study? Are you grad or undergrad? Do you use the journal mostly to take notes?
.

I am majoring in education, this is my last semester in a community collage - I get my AA next month. I use the journal for notes and also do class assignments and math homework on it; then I email the saved PDF to the teacher. This semester I am taking a 2D design class so I also use it for my initial design sketches as I work out the project design.