Do Kindles (and other e-readers) need better ways to annotate?
(Credit:
williamcronon.net)
An interesting report from Princeton University regarding its pilot program to test Kindle DX units in an academic environment has revealed something notable: namely, that Kindles still feel awkward to students currently in college. Feedback from some students complained about the Kindle's annotation system being "too slow" to keep up with the thinking of a reader who wants to effortlessly mark up text. Others called the entire Kindle device "a poor excuse for an academic tool."
This matches a fear I've had since using my iPhone as a makeshift mini-Kindle, replacing my own reading of paper books for recreation and research: while I enjoy the portability and capacity that e-readers provide, their lack of tangible material creates a helpless feeling for those who enjoy note-taking, highlighting, or otherwise interacting with their books. Unlike my iPhone, however, the Kindle DX was intended to be a savior for universities, an educational aid to rival the old textbook industry. According to this first wave of Princeton feedback, however, it still has a long way to go.
Rather than focus on size or screens, maybe the real holy grail for e-readers of the future lies in finding ways to make digital text as easy to interact with as possible. Apple, we hope you're listening, because if the doorway's open for you to take over the e-reader industry with your magazine-redefining tablet, this might be the best path to true success. One good place to start would be adopting a universal pagination system across all e-books, since, as one Princeton student points out, citing references from a digital document is nearly impossible--using page references from Kindle's numbering system is useless for anyone else. Maybe the problem is that e-readers are trying to simulate the book experience too much.
Another area for improvement could be in developing ways to inventively share and discuss references and pieces of content. For one, e-readers could effortlessly interact with e-mail, wireless communication, and other technology to enable sharing and even commenting to be more easily aggregated. E-readers could adopt the sorts of innovations that online document-collaboration software already provides. Imagine if professors and classes could discuss documents and have note-based discussions completely within the margins of a digital document, for instance, with live updating. Instead, Kindles and other e-readers are on islands, basically capable of being dumb terminals for data and little else.
The lacking "organic feeling" that some of the quoted students' sentiments echo is an area that a company with great experience in user interfaces--such as Apple--could address. Or, hopefully, Microsoft's Courier project will explore these ideas as well. For the iPhone, some programs such as Classics have experimented with adding book-like page-turning animations and other effects to make the digital experience seem less sterile, but we still need to find new ways to define what e-reading can be. Perhaps future e-readers could borrow annotation ideas from the success of social media, such as Twitter and Facebook, both of which have found unique solutions to how users discuss, annotate, and "clip" material. If devices like Kindles are really opening themselves up to developers, perhaps this is the direction they should pursue instead of crossword puzzle anthologies.
And, needless to say, there's still the lingering fear of Big Brother Amazon wiping all your carefully-made notes out, along with your entire book, too, all while you sleep.
Going back to my iPhone Kindle, I still love how portable it is on subways. But months after my summer elation, I've found myself sneaking paper books back into my bag--especially for volumes I use for research as opposed to recreation.
Should e-readers be more cloud-based and set up to share information between users? That's something I'd love to see. How about you? What would make you less apprehensive about adopting an e-reader into your life?
Scott Stein, a New York Jets fan and CNET senior associate editor, has written about tech, entertainment, video games, and viral culture for outlets including Laptop, Wired, Maxim, Esquire Online, Asylum, and Men's Journal. He also appears on the Digital City podcast. In his spare time, you might see him performing improv in New York City (when he's not being a dad). 
%20need%20better%20ways%20to%20annotate?%20%7C%20Crave%20-%20CNET&srcUrl=http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10363642-1.html){kind=small}
Dell, we hope you're listening, because if the doorway's open for you to take over the e-reader industry, this might be the best path to true success.
Or something along those lines. I'm just keepin' it real.
Of course the cheapest way to go is buy used books or use the school library.
Also, the reference to Apple in the article is mostly because of the numerous rumors floating around about the media tablet that may or may not be coming at the beginning of next year that Apple is developing.
That makes sense.. in theory.. but do you really think digital textbooks will actually be any cheaper? I highly doubt it, unless there's some sort of uprising or major shift to open source textbooks or something.. which I also highly doubt will happen anytime soon.
I like your discussion here, and I could see this as a great opportunity for some company or group of companies. Just some ideas on how this might work nicely for me:
1) The ability to easily highlight a section of text.
2) Have that text copied to same portable format where I can easily get it into other documents.
3) Have automatic citation include with the copied text.
4) Have the ability to comment|annotate|tag|add addition information about the copied text.
5) Share the copied text with all the above with others of my choice.
While writing this, I imagined some intriguing possibilities of social network like connections, cloud based services and tie ins to other software such as word processors.
I anticipate the e-readers will become much more useful in the college environment in the next 5 years, but I highly doubt digital books will replace paper, in colleges for at least another decade.
Dont get me wrong, I think the current offerings are light years beyond the e-readers of 10 years ago with regard to portability, capacity, and ease on the eyes (thanks to the digital ink screens), but academic textbooks especially demand a certain level of interactivity that I cant see a digital offering touch at this time. Yes, highlighting and note taking is very important, but so is being able to physically glance though and jump to specific sections at a moments notice (sure you can essentially use a book mark in both forms, but in the physical book I would think it is much easier to examine several chapters at once.
Its also important to remember that some students do more than simply highlight text, they may draw tables, write down formulas, or even go so far as to tear out entire pages to use when studying. Assuming the latter does not happen, its also nice to know that the book can be sold back at the end of the semester.
Academia aside, ebooks face additional hurdles in the form of a prohibitive cost. While there is a market for them, I would argue that for casual readers (and non-tech savvy ones) it dosent make sense to spend money on one of these readers, when the physical book can be easily had at or around the same price of its digital counterpart. And what happens to bargain bin titles? Can I ever expect to purchase a current bestseller for a mere 2 dollars within 18 months after it has fallen off of the NY times bestseller list and stores are looking to clear excess stock?
Last but not lest, are libraries. Sure Project Guttenberg exists and plenty of public domain titles are available in digital form, but I'd like to think there is something to being able to walk into a library, and browse amongst every available title in their entirety for research, or pleasure.
Basically I decided that I needed an OS that allowed for much more flexibility, and don't think that ereaders are up to this yet. (Except perhaps for the iRex but that was out of my budget.) I'm thinking the Courier will be the way to go for students in coming years.
netbook: see above
it has to be an eBook reader of some sort, optimized for sunlight/ daylight reading and long battery life. Just develop full Adobe Acrobat support, ditch trickle-down eBook distro, and now you have full annotations, sync with desktops, and even Adobe Forms support to enable simple application development.
In a real classroom, you don't much time. Pen and paper are your friends. Focus should be on the professor, not the tech you have with you. The act of jotting down notes reinforces memorization.
Studying for tests often involves multiple textbooks/study guides laying open and notes as well. You don't have time to troubleshoot your tech device or charge it up or waste time switching books since its one book open at a time.
I'm a pretty big fan of gadgets. I own multiple smartphones, a netbook, couple of laptops, etc. But i'd have no use for a kindle or "iPad" in college.
I could see an iPad becoming mainstream for casual reading, magazines, surfing, etc but it'd have to come down in price drastically.
A few years ago, I took a class at the local community college. I was completely prepared to do all my homework and studying on my notebook, but within a couple of weeks discovered that I was too distracted by the computer and was spending my study time working with the computer rather than studying, and went back to the old fashioned pencil and paper.
So even though I'm a computer nerd (I got my first computer, a TRS-80, for Christmas in 1982), studying with a full-featured computer did not work for me. I cannot imagine trying to study with a device as limited as the Kindle. Maybe I could read the book from it, but I think everything else would have to be paper.
- by AListener October 1, 2009 7:34 PM PDT
- Scott, you wrote one of the most balanced pieces on the The Daily Princetonian report but even you said:
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
(20 Comments)[ ----' Feedback from some students complained about the Kindle's annotation system being "too slow" to keep up with the thinking of a reader who wants to effortlessly mark up text. Others called the entire Kindle device "a poor excuse for an academic tool." ']
As with the other online reports that used mostly one student's feedback and called them "some" and "others"
(as above), they were/are all quoting primarily Aaron Horvath (who said all of the above).
The ONE other student quoted talked about the 'huge benefits' and the downsides as well, one of the downsides being that you have to charge the Kindle to use it.
The other two quoted were (1) an obviously resistant professor who was "permitting" his students (in a selected KINDLE STUDY classroom) to use Kindle location numbers, since not one of the students has dropped out of the study though they are allowed to, and (2) another professor who enjoys using the Kindle and had nothing negative to quote.
From that we've been getting tons of articles generalizing from that one student's words after two weeks of use, calling it a "consensus" in one article and "a failure" in others. As I say yours was the most balanced I've read of about a dozen so far.
- Andrys
kindleworld.blogspot.com