[LINK] Princeton University e-reader pilot

[Tom Worthington]

An e-reader pilot at Princeton University, using Amazon Kindle DX ebook
readers, found them as readable as printed material, but a major problem
was the difficulty of annotating ebooks:
<http://www.princeton.edu/ereaderpilot/>.

There is a 7 page (127 Kbytes PDF) executive summary as well as a full
report available. Ironically, these reports are provided in PDF, the
format the report found the students had most difficulty annotating.

In my view a low cost netbook computer would overcome most of the
limitations reported with the Kindle for educational purposes at a lower
overall  cost. This would have a superior keyboard, allowing notes
to be taken and add-on software could be used to add notes to PDF
documents. Netbooks provide a colour screen, more useful for
annotations. Most students could use the netbook as their primary
computer, with a low cost external screen, keyboard and mouse at home.
The ebook has advantages of light weight, long battery life and daylight
readable screen, but require students to have a second computer for
their studies, adding cost and complexity.

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Abstract

In the Fall of 2009, the Office of Information Technology (OIT) at
Princeton conducted a pilot program using electronic readers (e-readers)
in a classroom setting. The pilot was conducted with three broad goals.
One was to reduce the amount of printing and photocopying done in the
three pilot courses. The second was to determine if using this
technology in the classroom could equal (or better) the typical
classroom experience where more traditional readings were used. The
third sought to explore the strengths and weaknesses of current e-reader
technology to provide suggestions for future devices.

From: The E-reader pilot at Princeton, Fall semester, 2009, Final
report, (executive summary), Janet Temos, Princeton University, February
2010
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More in my blog at:
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2010/03/princeton-university-e-reader-pilot.html>.


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Adjunct Lecturer, The Australian National University t: 02 61255694
Computer Science http://cs.anu.edu.au/user/3890