Should You Buy a Kindle?

Last May, Ironman at Political Calculations asked this question and, after going through numerous calculations, concluded

Going with our hypothetical example, it very much pays for our college student to buy the Kindle DX, assuming that they're able to also get the textbooks they will need for their classes in the Kindle format, since we obtain a positive value for the Cumulative Net Present Value Adjusted for Early Salvage. If that value had come out to be negative, then either our college student would need to really crank up their reading of non-textbooks while in school or would really have to place a much higher "warm fuzzy" on owning their own Kindle DX.

I saved a link to that posting for several reasons.

1. I don't know how Kindles work, never having seen one in person (see below), but I never learned as much from my textbooks if I didn't write in them... argue with the author, write questions, try out ideas, etc. I'm not keen on electronic texts of any sort if this feature is lacking. What I am trying to say is that students should consider more than just the comparative net present value of the options when deciding whether to buy a Kindle, and the value of the learning experience is one of those additional things deserving consideration.
2. Despite Amazon's launch of the international version of Kindles, we still are unable to buy them in Canada. Apparently, this situation has arisen because Amazon is still negotiating with cellular phone services about who will provide the download services to the Kindle. We might have considered buying Kindles at one point, but we can't in Canada (and buying one in the US makes no sense unless we load it up with things to read while we're are visiting there).
3. I read novels on my iPhone using Stanza. So does Ms. Eclectic. There are tonnes of novels available, many at very low prices, and an iPhone is much easier to carry around than either hard copies or maybe even a Kindle. I have about 20 novels on my phone now plus some scripts for plays, in addition to all the other apps that are so much fun. And it is all in one neat package, along with tonnes of music.

We are both thrilled with the convenience and the readability of novels on our iPhones. So now that we have become accustomed to reading on our iPhones, I doubt if we will even consider Kindles when they finally do work out their cellphone agreements.

Comments

[Jason L]

Hello Mr. E.,

Apart from Kindles being unavailable in Canada, they will really be of limited value for textbooks until they have colour and full tablet-style writing capability (I think write now you can make annotations but they end appended to the file like a footnote).

I use e-texts in my grade 7/8 class all the time on my SMARTBoard and it's fantastic. My kids have the pdfs on their USB sticks and on their PCs (no one has a Mac in Belgrave) but they can't write on the texts without a tablet. Now that would be useful.

[EclectEcon]

Hi Jason,

Jason,

I'm really impressed by (actually, in awe of) the positive uses that can be made of modern technology in education. And I can readily imagine that e-texts are great for many uses. I wrote this posting from the perspective of university students, since that was the market for whom Political Calculations aimed his piece.

In my own case, I don't recall ever writing in the hard copy textbooks until I was in maybe 3rd year of university (helps explain why I nearly failed out until then, maybe?). And even then, much of the writing was not of the form of "dialoguing with the author", a study technique which dramatically improved my interest in and comprehension of the material.I can readily imagine that e-texts work well for most primary and secondary level courses, and I love the idea of carrying around e-texts on USB sticks.

Interestingly, I am using e-texts in two of the courses I am currently teaching. In one instance, students on the cheap can use the e-text, but buying a hard copy is not much more expensive than buying the entire e-package, and I think most of them have done so. In the other case, acquiring hard copy (only $15!) was taking so long that most students were able to find the pdfs via the university library subscription and download them. I expect that most of the A and B students in that class will have printed them off for "active" learning (i.e. writing notes and dialoguing with the authors). The students who download the articles this week or next and try to read them on their computers will likely not do nearly so well --- but I doubt if I would be allowed to collect the data to test this hypothesis.

[Rebekah K]

Until they get full color graphics capability, I'm still stuck with paper. Most books on art history don't translate very well without that. Still, I like the look of the Nook, the Barnes & Noble e-book. I could live with somebody getting me one for Christmas...