Quote:
Originally Posted by recordsmith
Thanks guys for the answers. I think I will invest in one. It seems expensive but when the closest tablet costs almost three times as much it really is a good deal.
Las thought, will it work with a Mac? I guess I can go over to the forum and find out. i have got to be able to get the annotated docs out to get them to my students! Where is the best place to find them?
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If you want large format (and you should for your purposes), I would wait awhile. I don't usually recommend waiting. There will always be something new around the corner. However, IMHO the field for large format devices is a bit defficient right now.
First, you must understand that I don't own the Digital Reader 1000S -- I'm going by third hand reports. If you look around via google you'll see reports of a sluggish and somewhat clunky interface. There are also lots of reports of bugs. These reviews are dated September '08 through January '09, and there was a new firmware released in February. I don't know how that improved things.
Secondly, I would be quite nervous about buying a large format device until this fall. e-ink screens are somewhat fragile. I have broken one myself
. At least one manufacturer has decided to pass on large format devices until flexible screens are available. The purpose of these flexible screens, is not to actually bend, its to provide the necessary robustness so that shocks do not break the screen. In the second half of this year, you should expect to see large format devices with flexible screens.
However, one of the biggest concerns I would have with the Irex is the work that it would take to get documents to it. As I understand it, you would have two choices for transferring documents. If your documents are in pdf you can send them across from the PC. Other documents (e.g. Word) can be opened on your PC and "printed" to a file on the Irex.
This process sounds great for one-at-a-time file handling. However, I am also a professor, and I have some experience editing files electronically. Frankly its a bit of a pain opening up attachments and entering markup mode in Word -- multiply that times about 50 for all of the students in both of my classes. It doesn't appear to me that the Irex has the ability to browse the web or run email directly. This means that you would need to download files first to the PC. Unless you can require your students to turn in PDF files, then you would need to open each on the PC and tell the PC to print the files to a printer which is actually the IRex device.
Of course, when you are done you would need to get the documents back off the device. I assume you want the annotation so that you can share the files back with the students? Anyway, I don't have all the information here, but the first hurdle would be making sure that your annotations and the original text are all saved in one pdf file. If not, you'll need to convert them to pdf. Then you would send them back to your PC.
Hopefully along the way you've renamed the files. Student's will have sent them all using something like: CaseAnalysis1.doc. You hopefully did a rename to Smith, Roger Case1.doc . Of course, this renaming takes more time. Anyway, after you transfer them back to the PC you either need to attach each one to an email (ie, to Roger Smith) or you need to upload them through a digital drop box to Roger Smith.
The problem that I see is that the workflow is just too onerous. It is really no big deal for a single document, but it adds hours to grading a class or two of documents.
Also, e-ink tends to be a bit slow on page refreshes. Not a problem for reading, but I'm not sure its great for skipping back and forth while grading. I've heard that the Irex may be slow on pen input. Also, not a problem for an occaisonal note, but I'm not sure about continuous grading. Frankly, I'm not sure its not a general problem with e-ink and pen input.
The bottom line is that my opinion is that electronic grading is a bit more of a pain than I want it to be - I do it today on a normal laptop. What I picture for any e-ink reader and specifically for the Digital Reader 1000S would make it just too clunky and slow. If you really want to go to electronic grading, I'd really think tablet computer. I know they are a bit large -- but that's my opinion.
If this doesn't do it for you, wait this fall and see what happens with the new screens from pixel qi. These are supposed to be e-ink like for readibility, but they are LCD-based for faster refresh. Hopefully they will lead to more readable and higher battery life tablets that can both annotate and reach the web without requiring the use of a separate PC.
Good luck