Using the Kindle Outside of the Classroom
Friday, September 23rd, 2011
Flickr image by brewbooks
Teacher: Niall Moran
As part of a Summer Innovation Project, Niall Moran adopted a Kindle to determine first-hand if the digital format would serve his Sociology students. Battery life and text availability were two areas he was particularly interested in. Below are Niall’s comments on the project (read about Niall’s second summer innovation project on the use of Diigo).
This past summer I started using a Kindle and the following are my general impressions. The usefulness of the Kindle, at least for how I came to learn to use it, can be split into two categories. Firstly, the Kindle as an e-reader is wonderful for reading non-educational texts. The availability of texts is every bit as good as you would find in the traditional bound text. The Kindle itself has excellent battery life, is super portable and aesthetically pleasing in its own way. The battery has never suddenly died on me, which is a nice change from my laptop and mobile phone.
However, when it comes to actual textbooks, the Kindle has some major drawbacks. The majority of the texts that I assign are currently unavailable for the Kindle or any other e-reader for that matter. This is the Kindle’s major drawback. I could choose my texts based upon their Kindle availability, but this would severely restrict me.
On the upside, the Kindle reads .pdf files. I read far more in .pdf format than I do in book format. Online journals are typically my first port of call for information. Now, instead of having to read them online or print them out, I can use the Kindle. This is by far, in my opinion, the aspect to the Kindle. I used to hate having to read journal articles on my computer. The Kindle is far easier on the eyes than a computer monitor and its’ portability means that you can break away from the desk. It also allows you to highlight text and sync this to your word processor meaning that you can still take notes. Using the Kindle means that I print far, far less journal articles than I did previously, so there’s a tree/money saving aspect too.
Now that I have begun to collect books and articles on the Kindle I use a free piece of software called Calibre. It’s like an iTunes for ebooks but also has a very useful format converter. It can be downloaded here and I highly recommend it.
