I am not a person who is against technology. I myself own a Kindle. E-readers are great for many things. They are great for pleasure-reading, and they are great for when you travel, especially in these times when airlines charge for overweight bags. They are great for reading in bed, as they are lightweight and it makes page-turning more comfortable when you’re lying on your side.
But e-readers are not great for the work of reading literature. Annotation is not to where I’d need for it to be to make e-reading reasonable for my scholarship or for my teaching, and they’re not great for the classroom because there is no universal way to point to specific passages with them. And yet, students really want to get the books on e-readers, and not to purchase physical, paper books.
I am not unsympathetic to their reasons for this. E-readers are convenient, and they stop you from having to carry around 50 lbs. of books.
And I’ve stopped bothering with banning students from using e-readers in my courses. In spite of the fact that I don’t think it’s possible for them to read as deeply as they should with the technology, and in spite of the fact that they often have difficulty in annotating, and in spite of the fact that they often have trouble figuring out where specific passages are that I’m pointing to in class…. And also in spite of the fact that for most of my courses, they could most of the books for like 3 bucks used, so getting actual books would save them money. Look, I don’t like that they decide to use an e-reader instead of doing what I tell them would be best for their success, but they are adults. I can warn them, but if they don’t listen to me? It’s up to them to keep up and to figure out a way to meet my expectations in spite of the obstacle that they make for themselves.
So while there are “problems” with e-readers in the pedagogical sense, this post isn’t a screed against e-readers that is based on those problems.
No, the biggest problem with e-readers, I’ve just discovered, is something else. It is that students, even good students, seem to believe that without the technology they can’t read.
This problem is akin to the problem with which all of us are familiar with how students respond to technological difficulties that get in the way of them submitting their papers: “ZOMG!, Professor, my printer broke! My printer ran out of ink! My computer crashed! I cannot do my work!”
In olden times, like the 1990s, if something went wrong with your “word processor,” it wasn’t actually a deal-breaker on submitting your assignment. Because you’d have the bulk of the paper written out in long-hand and you could “recreate” the paper on some other machine if you had to. The reason that you’d have this long-hand copy was because your word processor couldn’t save more than 1,000 characters or something, so you’d write the paper, and then you’d type it up. Or even if you used a computer lab, there were no such things as flash drives, so you’d write your paper up, schedule a block of time at the lab (remember when you had to sign up to use a computer?) and type it up. Whatever the case, the technology wasn’t intrinsic to the writing.
Similarly, in olden times, when students had paper books, they understood that if they lost their book, or if their book was stolen, or if their dog ate their book, that they could a) go to the bookstore and purchase another copy or b) they could go to that exotic place called the library and check a copy out. Nowadays, however, apparently that sort of resourcefulness is a thing of the past. Nowadays, apparently if a student’s e-reader fails her, she can’t do the reading assignment.
Let’s note: just as with what I like to think of as “The Printer Effect,” the “Kindle effect” is not about “bad” students trying to get out of doing work, most of the time. It’s not about weaving a web of lies. Rather, it’s that they just can’t conceive of a solution to the problem when their technology fails them. They can’t even realize that they usually can read the book on their computer or phone if the e-reader breaks. They apparently need me to explain the tech options to them, as well as to direct them to the library.
This is something that I haven’t seen come up in the conversation about e-books – whether people are pro-e-book or against. Should students be excused from the reading if their Kindle/Nook/iPad fails them? Should they be given an extension on the assignment if they need to send the machine back to the manufacturer, or if they need to wait for a replacement? I personally say no to that. I think that just like if your paper book were lost, stolen, or eaten, it’s up to you to figure out how to do your work. And to figure that out without some sad missive to the instructor (me) about how all the things are hurting your feelings and getting in the way of your success.
Technology’s great, but only if it works. You know what is a great technology for reading? The codex book. You know why? It doesn’t just stop working.
[...] “… But e-readers are not great for the work of reading literature. Annotation is not to where I’d need for it to be to make e-reading reasonable for my scholarship or for my teaching, and they’re not great for the classroom because there is no universal way to point to specific passages with them. And yet, students really want to get the books on e-readers …” (more) [...]
I agree with you. Students now have more options available to read than ever before. If they can’t access their e-reader, then they ought to go to the library.
I love e-readers, but the technology has yet to make scholarship possible using the e-reader. Eventually it will get there, but in the present it isn’t.
I haven’t experienced this in regard to an e-reader specificallly, but definitely in connection with other technology like printing and flashdrives and what have you. The big problem is that many students don’t seem to have the ability to figure sh!t out, especially when the technology fails — and the tecchnology will always fail because that is the nature of the beast.
A few months ago, I was on a weekend holiday and my e-reader broke. I had to go find an actual book in a town that closed down all day on a Sunday, and I thought the same thing that you say in your last line: Actual books don’t lose their charge, dang it!
We don’t have a lot of e-readers in our school yet, but currently we’re working off of an electronic text, which brings many of the same errors. I must say I was a little surprised when I had to explain to the class that I am not tech support, and they really did have to call the little number at the bottom if they couldn’t open up the link. In that case, since it was half the class, I felt the need for a mulligan. However, if it’s only 1 or 2 students, I just nod and smile, tell them “no” they can not make the assignment up, and then go through the process to ensure they know how to open it up from home.
I think the biggest thing is having a consistent response from teachers. If some allow a broken printer to turn into a paper extension, well, then students are going to expect to get that kind of response in all their classes. I imagine it will be the same with the readings…
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I’ve had the excuse that a student didn’t know a specific passage (say from Shakespeare for a short journaling assignment) and expected me to tell them not only what the passage is in the text (and edition) I’ve assigned, but what the words are so they can find it.
But that did sometimes happen with print texts as well.
I think some of our students just haven’t had much experience solving problems for themselves. We’re not aware of the ones that solve the things themselves because they aren’t writing to tell us about the problem and ask for help; we only hear from the ones who haven’t figured out how to solve problems yet.
I’m feeling sort of sympathetic right now because I have a messed up light fixture at home, and I could either read up and figure out how to fix it or get a new one, or I could hire someone. And right now, I’m being lazy about those options.
I love my e-reader, and yet… I need hard copies for annotation. I do find that for some scholarly reading, Expert PDF is a good app (I have an iPad & love it). But for real work reading, it’s still a book. The good news is that with e-books on my iPad, it frees up space on bookshelves for real books. And there’s just something lovely about paper, print and binding.
Nobody’s tried to pull on me an electronic version of “the dog ate my textbook”. At least not yet!
However, in general I do emphasize that it’s up to them to do the readings BEFORE class, to come to class with the book on days we’re having text-based discussion, ready to draw on the material. Sometimes students with hard copy books leave theirs at home or lose them. Sometimes, I’m sure, the students with ebooks do the same although most who use ebooks for my course read them on their laptops so, when discussion starts, screens flip up so they can sort through the appropriate texts.
I love annotating on my ereader, actually. Especially because the Kindle software saves my annotations to my Amazon account so I can go up there and see passages I’ve highlighted and comments I’ve made. That made for a wonderful experience teaching a new monograph with the grad students, last term since I could examine all of the highlights and comments on their own.
Ironically, if they are using a Kindle as their e-reader, they can read their book on any screen where they download the Kindle App, including a P.C., smartphone, you name.
Ah, yes. I keep having to teach students how to use online dictionaries… And last week, I assigned 16th C edition of a book. In, like, 16th C English. First, I wanted it because I wanted them to think about books, book production, and the introductory passages, dedications, etc. (which they mostly skipped, even though I always tell them that I want them to read those parts). And secondly, because I wanted them to think about the way language has changed. And thirdly, because it was online and free, and downloadable as a pdf.
None of them finished it. Most of them struggled mightily. A couple were resentful. Somewhere near the end of class, I asked if anyone had thought to look for a modern translation, to help them with the harder passages. To their credit, they pretty much all did some sort of facepalm/headdesk.
The common theme I track in your post and the comments, and in my experience with my staff who are all college educated, is: younguns don’t know how to THINK. If confronted with a problem, they simply act like they’ve hit a brick wall. “What do we DO??”
“Well…” you say, “THINK. What else could you do if Option A doesn’t work out?”
And so frequently, even that question has never occurred to them. I don’t know if it’s an utter lack of urgency in needing to complete their educational obligation or if they truly don’t know how to problem solve.