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Kindle found to be worse than paper textbooks

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Re: Kindle found to be worse than paper textbooks

#21

Post by nooneelse »

hugh3 wrote: post #7

I use a nook for reading novels, but can't imagine using it for a textbook. Apart from the fact the page is too small, it just takes too long to flip back and forth looking for something, and that's the primary mode in which people use textbooks. Besides, I still have my undergraduate textbooks from ten years ago on my shelf and occasionally look something up. If they'd been in an electronic format I'm sure it would…

About page size... I wondered when the iPad first came out about the screen size vs paper textbooks. I thought it would be too small given my memories of carrying all those big, painfully heavy books around.

But I wanted to check my intuitions against some facts. And I happily remembered that I have an old _An Introductory Course in College Physics_ from 1958 on the shelf. The pages from 1958 measure 5 1/4" by 8 1/4". Much much smaller feeling than the (typical from my college time) Tipler, _Physics_, with pages of 7 1/2" by about 11".

But the diagrams are not worse in any substantial way on the smaller pages. And the text is all quite clear and elaborates things quite well. Only very few of the larger tables, like the one showing the moments of inertia for various shapes, take up the entire, larger page in the younger book.

So I guess my point is, textbooks can work just fine with smaller pages if they are laid out with that in mind. The benefit of focusing the reader's full attention on a few diagrams and explanations at a time might easily outweigh being able to pack more information on a larger page.

Re: Kindle found to be worse than paper textbooks

#23

Post by WalterBright »

joey_bananas wrote: post #4
Loic wrote: post #2

Very short summary: - with the iPad you can do interactive books which are basically the new "interactive CDROM" you had some years ago. - with the Kindle you cannot easily flip through the pages and write notes on them, this is why it does not improve the traditional textbook. Nothing new, you know that after 15 minutes using the devices. But I must say, to read novels, news and stuff like that, you cannot really be…

> basically the new "interactive CDROM" you had some years ago. And I still kind of think that was a solution in search of a problem. Are there any evidence that stuff like that helps learning?

The idea behind them was to remove the work involved in learning and the effort required to teach.

In exercise you cannot get strong without effort, and there is no way to learn without effort.

The most effective way to teach someone and to learn is with a teacher, blackboard, and chalk. Everything else is second best (including the wonderful Kahn Academy).

Re: Kindle found to be worse than paper textbooks

#24

Post by gcheong »

devmonk wrote: post #14

"To make matters worse, he says the Kindle proved unable to keep up with the class discussion — it would take half a minute to load a page and by then, the discussion would have lost its momentum." 1/2 a minute? That isn't how long it takes me.

I wonder if this is referring to the "unique" way the Kindle has of referring to locations in a text. You can't just tell it to "go to page 10" but instead have to give it some rather odd looking location such as 1768-79.

Re: Kindle found to be worse than paper textbooks

#25

Post by ja27 »

hugh3 wrote: post #7

I use a nook for reading novels, but can't imagine using it for a textbook. Apart from the fact the page is too small, it just takes too long to flip back and forth looking for something, and that's the primary mode in which people use textbooks. Besides, I still have my undergraduate textbooks from ten years ago on my shelf and occasionally look something up. If they'd been in an electronic format I'm sure it would…

A Kindle (or other similar e-ink device) would be great for textbooks that you didn't jump around in, like literature or history. But even jumping between reading and exercises is a chore. Typing notes is horrible on the Kindle's keyboard.

But I could see a future where a student carried perhaps two 8"x10" e-ink displays in a package no bigger than a composition notebook. They could have two different page views of the same book (or multiple books), with wireless sync between them. Touch (at least resistive) could improve the interface for highlighting and some notes. It'd be easy to support slim wireless keyboards for longer notes. I don't know if they'll ever be able to improve the speed of the displays unless they change technologies.

Re: Kindle found to be worse than paper textbooks

#26

Post by kjuhyghjk »

devmonk wrote: post #14

"To make matters worse, he says the Kindle proved unable to keep up with the class discussion — it would take half a minute to load a page and by then, the discussion would have lost its momentum." 1/2 a minute? That isn't how long it takes me.

And who reads a textbook page at a time in a classroom discussion.

This is just an Apple ad-itorial, "with the iPad all the diagrams in your textbook can be interactive"

Re: Kindle found to be worse than paper textbooks

#27

Post by xtho »

"For a few years now, people have been expecting electronic textbooks to take off in a big way: They're cheaper than traditional textbooks"

Somebody never tried to get a site license for something that is worth its money. Electronic media are much too expensive for the education market (at least for universities etc.). A "traditional textbook" you can sell once you don't have a need for it any longer. The effective cost is less than the list price. I've also made the experience that electronic media usually lacks the depth of "traditional textbooks" unless it's the textbook put on the web.

Re: Kindle found to be worse than paper textbooks

#28

Post by novas0x2a »

kjuhyghjk wrote: post #26
devmonk wrote: post #14

"To make matters worse, he says the Kindle proved unable to keep up with the class discussion — it would take half a minute to load a page and by then, the discussion would have lost its momentum." 1/2 a minute? That isn't how long it takes me.

And who reads a textbook page at a time in a classroom discussion. This is just an Apple ad-itorial, "with the iPad all the diagrams in your textbook can be interactive"

So wrong. Page-at-a-time is the /only/ way you use textbooks during class in higher ed. You're expected to have already done the reading before class; you don't /read/ the textbook during a classroom discussion. You use it to shore up an argument (see the proof on page XX) or visualize a point (see the diagram on page YY).

If the Kindle doesn't handle random seek well, it's no better than a textbook in that regard (textbooks also fail at random seek).

Re: Kindle found to be worse than paper textbooks

#29

Post by gcheong »

gcheong wrote: post #20

It's interesting they chose to interview a professor from Reed given that the CEO of Apple dropped out of Reed and Reed has always been rather Apple centric when it comes to computing platforms for students ( http://www.reed.edu/cis/about/computing_faq.html#typesused ). It would have been interesting to see if the opinions given here were shared with other institutions that are participating in the iPad/Kindle trials…

Reed did publish a findings report from their Kindle trials: http://web.reed.edu/cis/about/kindle_pilot/Reed_Kindle_repor...

Re: Kindle found to be worse than paper textbooks

#30

Post by Qz »

ja27 wrote: post #25
hugh3 wrote: post #7

I use a nook for reading novels, but can't imagine using it for a textbook. Apart from the fact the page is too small, it just takes too long to flip back and forth looking for something, and that's the primary mode in which people use textbooks. Besides, I still have my undergraduate textbooks from ten years ago on my shelf and occasionally look something up. If they'd been in an electronic format I'm sure it would…

A Kindle (or other similar e-ink device) would be great for textbooks that you didn't jump around in, like literature or history. But even jumping between reading and exercises is a chore. Typing notes is horrible on the Kindle's keyboard. But I could see a future where a student carried perhaps two 8"x10" e-ink displays in a package no bigger than a composition notebook. They could have two different page views of t…

Literature and history books involve ungodly amounts of page flipping when it comes time to write your term papers (which for many students probably accounts for 95% of the time they actually spend reading the book...).
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