eBooks might not be the answer
Posted: May 2nd, 2011 | Author: Ginger Mayerson | Filed under: Various | No Comments »They might not even be the question.
“Other findings on student textbook reading habits discussed in the report were:
” – Students did most of the reading in fixed locations: 47 percent of reading was at home, 25 percent at school, 17 percent on a bus and 11 percent in a coffee shop or office.
” – The Kindle DX was more likely to replace students’ paper-based reading than their computer-based reading.
” – Of the students who continued to use the device, some read near a computer so they could look up references or do other tasks that were easier to do on a computer. Others tucked a sheet of paper into the case so they could write notes.
” – With paper, three quarters of students marked up texts as they read. This included highlighting key passages, underlining, drawing pictures and writing notes in margins.
” – A drawback of the Kindle DX was the difficulty of switching between reading techniques, such as skimming an article’s illustrations or references just before reading the complete text. Students frequently made such switches as they read course material.
” – The digital text also disrupted a technique called cognitive mapping, in which readers used physical cues, such as the location on the page and the position in the book to find a section of text or even to help retain and recall the information they had read.”
Kindle so-so for students, UW study concludes, by Brier Dudley, Seattle Times, May 2, 2011
The digital text also disrupted a technique called cognitive mapping, in which readers used physical cues, such as the location on the page and the position in the book to find a section of text or even to help retain and recall the information they had read.
I thought that merited repeating. Cognitive mapping. We’ll be back in the trees without cognitive mapping.
Did we originally learn aurally and then, with the advent of writing, visually? If so, I’m not sure ebooks are going to change much very fast. At least not in my lifetime. If I’m lucky.
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