Any students using electronic readers for classes?

[BenBanned]

That's actually the reason I bought my reader. I used my student refund check to pay for it and within two semesters it already payed for itself. E-textbooks seemed to be almost non existent so I just used it for my English classes.

[v1k1ng1001]

I create edited etexts for my class which normally account for about 60% of the required texts. Usually I post them in .pdf so that they have page numbers that I can refer to.

On the other hand, i still rely on paper books for a lot of research because it is so much easier to mark them up and flip through the parts you need while writing an article.

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by andrewRlong

If you want someone to lay blame at the feet of, try the massive textbook industry that continually scams poor (literally) students. Change two paragraphs and you've got a "new edition" which is of course required for your class. The professors can't help but collude because of copyright laws.

That's the mythology, all right. A shame it isn't true. Or certainly isn't universally true. My brother is the coauthor of a college psychology text. Every four or five years he works his butt off rewriting, reshaping, revamping his textbook according to what the publisher wants, what the teaching needs seem to be, and what the latest research shows. He would not take your characterization kindly at all.

On the e-side of the question, he reports his publisher (a major textbook publisher) to have no visible plan whatsoever for embracing e-publishing. He's not an ebook guy himself, so he doesn't worry about that very much. I keep suggesting that he, and they, ought to give it some thought.

[Richey79]

Originally Posted by starrigger

My brother is the coauthor of a college psychology text. Every four or five years he works his butt off rewriting, reshaping, revamping his textbook according to what the publisher wants, what the teaching needs seem to be, and what the latest research shows.

It's the four 'revised' editions the publisher spewed out with merely cosmetic changes in the intervening five years that people regard as exploiting impecunious students.

Nobody was calling the text-book authors lazy or greedy - the dig was at the publishers and their seemingly universal tactics to gouge a captive market.

[jessicalynn]

If I could read textbooks on my ipad, I would be so, so happy. But nookstudy doesn't work on ipad and I haven't seen any other options for extextbooks on ipad.

[andrewRlong]

Originally Posted by Richey79

It's the four 'revised' editions the publisher spewed out with merely cosmetic changes in the intervening five years that people regard as exploiting impecunious students.

Thanks Richey. That is exactly right.

Starrigger, I was not intending to dig at for your brother's situation -- it sounds like a grueling job, and of course he deserves better.

With an increasing amount of free or low-cost courseware out there, I wonder how long the megalithic textbook publishing industry can last. . . I think e-readers, however imperfect they may currently be to the task of educational random-access reading, are just the opening salvo across the bow of that particular entrenched interest.

[Latinandgreek]

A lot of the books that I have to read for classes are in the public domain (Greek and Latin texts), so I get a lot of mileage from my reader when it comes to schoolwork.

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by Richey79

It's the four 'revised' editions the publisher spewed out with merely cosmetic changes in the intervening five years that people regard as exploiting impecunious students.

Nobody was calling the text-book authors lazy or greedy - the dig was at the publishers and their seemingly universal tactics to gouge a captive market.

I can't speak to all cases, of course, but with my brother's textbook there are no "revised" editions between the scheduled rewrites--just a new edition cycle every four or five years. I don't think his case is unusual.

I have a daughter in college right now, so believe me, I am sympathetic to the student side, as well. The prices on these books are shockingly high, and if she can get a used textbook I tell her to go for it. I don't think she's ever been told she couldn't do that, unless maybe once or twice because there were substantive differences.

Sadly, I don't think she'd be interested in e-versions, even if they were available. (Unless they were way cheaper.)

[Belle2Be]

I don't. But I usually don't even need my books for class, I go to class with a notebook (the paper kind!) and take notes while the professor lectures, then I go home and do the work. I've yet to be in a class that req. me to carry in a heavy book.
That said, I really like textbooks, and wouldn't get them in ebook format anyway

[emonti8384]

I found the book for my sociology class as an ebook-it was $30 more than the used book I bought for $30 (new book was $90, ebook was $60), it was in PDF format, and it expired in 6 months. I was looking forward to getting those and my psychology books on my reader but it doesn't seem to be happening.

[Nexutix]

IMO, B&W ebook readers can never fit in my classes. I have many colored diagrams. So I bought an android tablet currently on Froyo (will soon get honeycomb upgrade! ).

The main advantage of using tablet instead of e-reader is, I can read virtually any format of book. Secondly, I couldn't wait for wikipedia to load even for 1-2 seconds and when I am out of range. The wikidroid does all work. Offline wikipedia FTW. Thirdly I can underline and highlight text in different colours, that's crucial for me. ThinkingSpace app is boon for college students. I can make mindmaps in the same easy format as I do with Freemind on my laptop; and both have same format, so I can sync.

Conclusively, I bought the tablet which replaced my e-reader just because of huge number of apps and possibilities of doing everything on my tablet.

[Rich_D]

I use my netbook for e-textbooks. Most of them have been leased through Coursesmart.com. Last Semester I tried nookstudy but liked the Coursesmart format better.

[Hellmark]

What I simply don't understand is the expiration dates on the etextbooks. Yeah, pay nearly as much, be unable to sell it to others, be unable to print pages for copies (or at least severely restricted), and be unable to use it after 6 months. I SOOOO want to do that. Seriously, they want the DRM to kill the secondary market, but at the same time they make the DRM so restrictive that people won't want to do it.

With my Chinese etextbook, it was the first one I saw that allowed printing, but I was only allowed to print 20 pages every 30 days. It kinda sucked for the character practice sections.

[ficbot]

I took a course that had an e-text and it too had the expiry thing, plus it would not let you copy or paste at all. So, if you wanted to cite from it in your message board posts (it was an on-line class) you had to manually type in every word. Ridiculous. Also, the search box only worked on the plain text pages. If anything you wanted to search for was part of a call-out box or other graphic, the PCR would not recognize it. It was useless.

That said, my undergraduate degree was in English literature, and if ebooks had been big then I would have saved a ton of money. The single most expensive book I bought for my degree was the Norton Shakespeare. The cost of that book alone would have paid for half a Kindle and you could have gotten all the content on-line for free. Probably half of my course reading would be available now at Project Gutenberg!

[guyanonymous]

Sorry - did I read that right? They put an expiration date on the etextbook? Face palm. Who publishes these things? GM? It sounds like planned failure of a product.

EDIT: I'm think of GM and their EV1 electric car.