American Lit and e-books
September 9th, 2007 | 
Author: 
I have survived the second week of American Literature. I think at this point I could start using my e-book reader. Practically everything is available online at Project Gutenberg. Also the companion CD that came with the book has some of the text and a quick Google search finds the rest. So now it is a matter of convenience and time. The print in the textbook is too small for me and downloading and converting stuff from the Internet takes up a lot of my time. This would have gone better as an experiment if the syllabus was available prior to the beginning of class. What I have found myself doing is simply reading the stuff online using Internet Explorer’s zoom feature. I take my notes by copying and pasting stuff into Word. It’s more convenient that way. I get writer’s cramps easily and these notes will make it easier to study for exams. However, in class I have found that it is essential to have the text book with me. The instructor constantly refers to page and line numbers. It takes a while for everyone to search and find the passage. E-books would make this so much easier. I have noticed that the students do not make any marks in their textbook. I ask some of them why and it’s because they all plan to sell the book back to the bookstore. In light of that, I believe it would be hard to convince them to use e-books, unless they were offered at substantially discounted prices. The companion CD also has note taking capabilities. When text is highlighted and copied a notepad application pops up. If only they had their entire book on this CD. I thought that taking this class would be fun, but it has ended up being more work than I had anticipated.
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So, Ellen–what are you reading in this course?
I suppose that what you wanted to explore was how well e-texts work in a traditional course in the second millennium and that the answer is: not well at all. Having taught graduate and post-graduate computer science courses at university (until 2003), I am surprised. I provided pretty full notes in the form of PowerPoint slides, making it optional for the students which books to read. I would have expected this to be common today.
Sorry, third millennium!
Hi Ellen,
Reselling textbooks is one of the reason the textbook world is so broken. Publishers know they’ll only be able to sell a few copies–which will then be re-used multiple times. So they have to set a high price to cover their fixed costs. The higher the price, the more they’re re-sold. A vicious circle.
Yes, eTextbooks should be cheaper. As you note, though, a lot of your Lit class is available in public domain books. An instructor could simply suggest Gutenberg/Manybooks.
Rob Preece
Publisher, http://www.BooksForABuck.com
Jorgen,
A literature class can’t proceed on the basis of Power Point slides and optional readings. That would kind of defeat the purpose of the class.
Additionally, students are often required to read from a specific editions of printed books so that page and line number references are uniform—so that everybody is on the same page.
I seriously doubt that Ellen’s textbook is just a collection of public-domain text streams. Any decent academic textbook contains background material, illustrations, analyses, further reading references, and study guidance material. E-books don’t even come close to matching this kind of package, and won’t for some time to come.
E-books have their purposes, but the cases in which they supplant printed books are far fewer and further between than some realize.
We started off with early explorers like De Vaca, then John Smith, and John Winthrop. This week some Puritan narratives. Soon we’ll start on the the South.
Ellen
To Jorge and Rob,
Yes, this is all public domain books. The catch is that it is excerpts for the most part. That’s where I got my first glitch. I didn’t know what parts I needed. There is very little on the part of the authors on historical background. In fact I get more on the Internet. The introduction to each section is on the CD so I could put it all on a reading device. In fact the CD is better than the book. The CD also has pictures, sound bites, suggestions for future research and supplemental reading. The book site online has more information, quizzes, etc. The instructor has yet to refer to the CD. This course is simply a second year community college course. There are no slides, the instructor writes on the chalkboard. He also likes to separate us into little discussion groups. I don’t know if the text is all that necessary other than it is directed by school policy. Students must buy the book to be in class. He does make references to passages, but not that much. Maybe twice in a class period. This may change as the course progresses. As far as exams go, I doubt if they are open book so I could still get along with using let’s say my REB1200. I find the lack of multimedia shocking and it makes for a boring class. I am just taking it for the fun of it and to experiment. That’s why I am now complaining about the workload since I am disappointed about my failing experiment. I think I will try a pop literature ot Black literature course next. One that students must read the entire book.
Rupescissa, you undoubtedly know what you are talking about. The reading were not optional, but the students could choose between a number of books on the topic.
My point is that extended writing on the board should be avoided and replaced with slides, preferably PowerPoint – animated / multimedia (but not too multimedia as that takes the attention away from the course) where applicable. It keeps the students awake, they make the course more interesting and if the slides are printed out (or on the web the day before), the students don’t need to write very much and can concentrate on listening. I have in the past attended lectures where I was so busy copying notes from the board that I hardly knew what the topic was.
I got interested and looked around:
1) Some lecturers are looking into this. The link is too long, but search for this article in google: “Student Perspectives: Expectations of Multimedia Technology in a College Literature Class.”
2) Simple and neat, saving writing on the board:
http://www.angelfire.com/sc3/cmorris/
http://people.sinclair.edu/maryclifford/literature/literature.pdf