This semester, I belatedly discovered that a book I thought I owned was not the book I actually owned--which, since I needed to teach from it the next day, was a trifle disconcerting. Ergo, in a burst of inspiration and/or desperation, I fired up my trusty iPad and downloaded the book on Kindle. Hooray, problem solved. Right?
Well, no. So far, although I enjoy the convenience of etexts for doing things like keyword searching and the like, I can't say that my enthusiasm extends to trying to teach with one. Page references may or may not square with the student's hardcopies, depending on the reader's orientation (landscape? portrait?). It's difficult to "skim" the text quickly without a material book; the percentage bar doesn't have the same effectiveness as actually looking at the text block to estimate where the desired quotation might be. And then there are the times when the e-reader decides to behave badly (touch screen doesn't respond, accidentally hitting buttons that lead to undesired results, etc.). I feel a bit like a Luddite, but in the rough-and-tumble of a classroom setting, I don't find Kindle editions to be all that user-friendly.
I just finished teaching with an ebook for the second time and preparation is helpful.
My teaching Kindle books have pagination which I can track to editions so that helps enormously. I wouldn't teach from an ebook without that!
I bookmark and highlight extensively so I spend most of the class navigating those snippets or searching. I don't mark up printed books (I use post-it notes or paper bookmarks to mark passages of interest) so an ebook is actually better for me in this regard.
Still, it's really not for everyone or every book. I'm noticing that a lot of students hate ebooks because they're a literal pain to read on their conventional computer screens (and very few own ereaders which might be easier on their eyes).
Posted by: Janice | April 04, 2013 at 11:02 PM