
princeton students have been using the kindle...
after two weeks of use in three classes, the Daily Princetonian reports many are "dissatisfied and uncomfortable" with their e-readers, with one student calling it "a poor excuse of an academic tool." Most of the criticisms center around the Kindle's weak annotation features, which make things like highlighting and margin notes almost impossible to use, but even a simple thing like the lack of true page numbers has caused problems, since allowing students to cite the Kindle's location numbers in their papers is "meaningless for anyone working from analog books."
oops... -bowerbird

I tried out the new Sonys yesterday, can't say I liked them at all. mh

Hi All, As a acedemic I can understand the problem with cite free form texts without any true text pages. But there are wayws to get around this. One can use chapters. Also, one might add information on how one formated the text to make things easier. Another method could also, be to use lines numbers. Similar problems arise when citing texst on the web. Texts on the web give rise to another problem: sometimes texts are for one reason or another no longer on the web!! All this makes it difficult for acedemics to cite correctly. For students it can even degrade thier papers as the can not truely cite in a correct manner thereby get a poorer rating. It also, makes it harder for someone to research a hypothesis. Also, a research may not have a Kindle (e.g) to check the cite and its ramifications. One can always use other sources but that carries other problems with it. I personally would not consider the Kindle a acedemic toll, but a reading aide and research tool. Just as I would do the same for a computer. Yes, a computer can be an acedemic research tool if use properly. The Kindle was not developed as a research tool. Just because students are allowed to use them does not make them a acedemic tool. The idea was to reduce cost for the students. For truely acedemic work one would use other sources than e-book readers. The only real reason to use them in the acedemic field for research is if they are the only source to get the information. This goes just the same for texts produced by PG. These texts can only be a starting point not the end. regards Keith. Am 28.09.2009 um 21:06 schrieb Bowerbird@aol.com:
princeton students have been using the kindle...
after two weeks of use in three classes, the Daily Princetonian reports many are "dissatisfied and uncomfortable" with their e-readers, with one student calling it "a poor excuse of an academic tool." Most of the criticisms center around the Kindle's weak annotation features, which make things like highlighting and margin notes almost impossible to use, but even a simple thing like the lack of true page numbers has caused problems, since allowing students to cite the Kindle's location numbers in their papers is "meaningless for anyone working from analog books."
oops...
-bowerbird _______________________________________________ gutvol-d mailing list gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d

Per APA citation guidelines: if you can't cite the page number, you cite the paragraph number. They are right that a format specific reference point is useless outside the format. -- Mjit RaindancerStahl answerwitch@gmail.com
participants (4)
-
Bowerbird@aol.com
-
Keith J. Schultz
-
Michael S. Hart
-
Mjit RaindancerStahl