LearningForward

Kent Chesnut's technology in education blog.

Notetaking - then and now 

When I was in school (many years ago), I would read the textbook and make notes in a notebook.  My oldest son is in graduate school now; he reads the textbook and takes notes directly onto his laptop.  Can the process of notetaking move to a completely electronic format? 

Textbooks are large, heavy, and expensive.  Computer technology is small, light, and surprisingly cheap.  Imagine the heavy, bulging backpack (and associated sore back and neck) replaced by a small computer / ebook reader and electronic texts.

 Notetaking - with electronic texts 

I am interested in seeing electronic textbooks accepted and used in education.  Liberally licensed texts such as Creative Commons would ease a financial burden on many students (and possibly whole school systems).  Even if the etexts had a cost associated with them, they could still be much less expensive than traditional textbooks (I wonder how much authors of textbooks receive per copy… I bet it’s a small amount of the student’s cost when buying the text).  The cost of ebook reader hardware (either a specialized ebook reader or a small computer) would be easily covered by switching just a few college textbooks from traditional texts to ebooks. 

An impediment to this transition is the lack of an ebook reader that provides capabilities to help the student read / study / take notes.  I was thinking about such a reader this week and put together a list of requirements that could make studying an etext as efficient as (or more efficient than) a standard textbook.

 Requirements for an Educational eBook Reader

• Support typical ebook formats (pdf, txt, html, epub)
• Allow user to hilite text and search for hilites
• Allow user to attach notes to hilites and to search for those notes
  (Notes should be added and viewed without moving away for the page being read)
• Allow user to print (or export) hilites and attached notes with references to the book / page number
• Keep info (hilites, notes) for lots of books
• Allow >1 book open at a time
• Allow user to adjust font and text size to accommodate reading
• Allow hyperlinks in notes
• Allow audio notes
• Mark current location
• Auto open to current location
• Support > 1 user
• Allow user to see notes together
• Automatically show notes on the current page connected with the text they refer
• Allow user to jump to next note location
• Allow user to attach notes to graphics

Does such an educational ebook reader exist? 
What’s your favorite ebook reader? 
What other capabilities would need to be available in an ebook reader to make it an improvement over traditional textbook studying? (I’d love to add them to my list)

I’ll be looking around at ebook reader software… but I’d love to hear what any readers have to say about this.

Next week I’ll try to get back to the Scratch Balance board.  But as readers know (if any readers actually exist), I’m easily distracted.

Last year, my daughter’s sophomore english class was assigned to read Harriet Jacobs “Incidents in the life of a slave girl.”  Seems like a reasonable assignment… except that the students were not allowed to take the books home.  The teacher set a schedule that Brit couldn’t keep up with.  So, like any normal parent, I was irritated.  I ran to Amazon to find the book.  Then it hit me… the book was so old that it was probably out of Copyright.  I downloaded it from Project Gutenberg, converted it to PDF, and installed it on her Palm Handheld (actually a Sony clone).  This got her over the problem.  And, of course, I didn’t write down what I did.

I’ve been thinking about a book to read on Education - and John Dewey came to mind (I’ll explain why in a future post).  I realized that his books are probably out of copyright and ran up to Project Gutenberg and downloaded “Democracy and Education”.  (I’ll try the plucker reader later… for now I’m just repeating my original method for getting the book onto a Palm device.)

Steps to get the text version of a Project Gutenberg book onto a Palm as a PDF file.

1. Open the text file in a word processor that can export a PDF file.  I used Open Office 2.0.
2. Pare down the page size.  I selected a page size of 3″ x 3″.  You need to do this to offset the Palm’s limited performance.  When changing pages, the Palm renders the whole page.  A full size page takes quite a while to render.  A 3″ x 3″ page renders quickly.  For example, on the Palm Z22 I’m playing with, a standard size page takes about 10 seconds to render, while the small page only takes 2 or 3 seconds.  This doesn’t matter much if you change pages and start reading.  But if you are trying to scroll through pages to find something, the smaller pages save a lot of time.
3. Set the margins to 0″ all around.  (I’m not sure this makes a difference.)
4. Change the font to Arial size 10, but NOT Bold.  (This has good results for me, but there may be a better combination).
5. Export the file from the word processor as a PDF file.
6. Use the Adobe Reader for Palm OS application on your PC to convert the PDF for transfer to the Palm.
7. Sync your device.

So what’s it like to read a book on a Palm?  It depends on the Palm.  Traditionally, I’ve used Palm Vx.  It has a reflective green screen which is very good in bright sunlight but not very good in poor lighting.  Reading on the Palm Vx was not very pleasurable.  Brit has a Sony with an active matrix monochrome screen.  It is much brighter and pretty readable.  The Z22 I’m using now also has an active matrix (color, in this case) display, is very bright, and is also pretty readable.  When reading on the Palm, be prepared to see a phenomenal number of pages listed at the bottom of the screen (due to changing the page size).  For example, Democracy and Education shows 224 pages with a standard page size.  The palm with the smaller page size shows 1075 pages!  So don’t worry about the page count.  But be ready to change pages often.

The primary advantage to using the Palm as an eReader is availability.  The smaller Palms are small enough to keep with you at all times.  Battery life on the Palm Vx is very good… I estimate you could use it pretty heavily for a week if you needed to.  The better displays on the Sony and Z22 use up the battery more quickly.  I estimate the Z22 has a battery life of 10 - 12 hours.

Conversion to PDF may not be the best method for using the Palm as an eBook reader… but it is a workable method.  I’d certainly be happy to see any other suggestions.  Like I mentioned above, I’ll try Plucker in the future and let you know what I think… and I still owe you the explanation of why I want to read Dewey.