I have always been a voracious reader as it helps me satisfy my life long lust for learning. I’ve therefore been an avid consumer, collector and buyer of books, magazines, periodicals, journals, manuals, you name it. For most of my almost sixty years my primary source was paper or pBooks as they are sometimes referred these days but my reading addiction has only gotten worse with the introduction and rapid rise of digital, electronic or eBooks. When I say I am deeply indebted to Amazon, I really mean it! Perhaps more than most and thanks to my living and learning full time on my boat as I sail around the world, I am reading more than ever and doing so on whatever media is available, digital or paper. However, I wanted to use some of my recent reading experiences to bring you the top three reasons why I now prefer to do all reading possible on eBooks using either my Kindle, iPad or even my laptop or phone. I recently had the mind expanding experience of reading, in its entirety, the paper or pBook version of Martin Gardner’s amazing collection of his essays in “The Night is Large”. Part of the appeal to me I think is that Gardner was such an exemplar of a lifelong learner and a great teacher through his erudite observations and questions. The Night is Large is a collection of forty seven of his challenging and inquisitive essays that cover an extraordinary range of eclectic topics from mathematics and science to philosophy, religion and literature. It has been a long time since I’ve had such a thoroughly engrossing and thought provoking reading experience from one book, one filled with so much learning and the degree to which one person has influenced my thinking and perspectives. Sincere thanks to my dear friend Erik for gifting me with this book several years ago and to serendipity helping me stumble over it one of the many book shelves onboard a few weeks ago. If you are not familiar with Martin Gardner or have not had a chance to read this amazing collection yourself, it is my highest recommendation that you give yourself the gift of doing so soon and consider it as a great gift for someone you know who appreciates great thinkers and great learning. Three Little Things Make a BIG Difference
In addition to wanting to recommend this book to you, I also wanted to tell you about how much the experience of reading this pBook highlighted just how much more I prefer reading eBooks and eReaders. There is literally no difference for me in the literal reading part of the experience because the screen on my Kindle is at least as good if not better than most paper printed text. Indeed they also share identical drawbacks such as the requirement of good lighting to read them in as the Kindle has no backlighting which is part of why it is so similar to reading paper based text and just as easy on the eyes. Please note that I also now do a lot of reading on tablets such as the iPad, and for things like magazines and other types of reading where color pictures, animations, video and so on are a major part of what you are reading, they are my first choice. However for true “book” reading or other long articles where the content is almost all pure text and B&W charts and illustrations, the Kindle is still my hands down first choice. Regardless of which eReader I use, the key difference for me lies in what I can do with eBooks on my Kindle or iPad that I cannot do with pBooks and which this recent experience has taught me just how big a difference this is. If you have not yet had much experience with eReaders, these may all sound like trivial “nice to have” little things, they did to me at first too, but now that I’ve logged a couple hundred reading hours on them they have proven to be invaluable to my overall reading and learning experience. Below (in no particular order) are my top three big little reasons why I now do all reading possible on my eReaders: I. Instant & Integrated OED = Instant Integrated Learning
Next to experiential learning, reading is the primary way I learn. In addition to the stories, information and knowledge I receive from reading so many books, articles and magazines, I also read them to improve my vocabulary and my writing skills. (Evidence here not withstanding!) Therefore one of the features which I’ve come to absolutely adore and addicted to is the built in Oxford English dictionary. It is not just that a dictionary is available, I’ve usually had a dictionary at hand when I’m reading, it is the way the Kindle software (not just the device) in particular has implemented and integrated the OED. It is as simple as it is superb; put the cursor in front of any word and a short two line definition from OED instantly and unobtrusively pops up at the bottom of the screen. Want more? One more click or tap and it brings up the full page of that definition in the OED. For me this is just brilliant and something I often do multiple times on one page I’m reading to check a word that is new to me, dig into some of its nuances, or find synonyms, pronunciation, and all the other things that a dictionary enables. With eBooks this has become transparent to me when I’m reading and so when I suddenly went back to reading a traditional pBook and no longer had this instant dictionary I realized just how much I depend upon and love this feature. Of course I could and did just keep my Kindle or my iPad beside me as I was reading The Night is Large and was able to look up any words I wanted in their OED, but it was so much more disruptive and time consuming to have to put down the paper book, pick up the Kindle or iPad, start up the dictionary, type in the word and then go back to reading. I should note that this OED feature used to only be available on the Kindle reader itself (the hardware) and so I had the same problem when I was reading my eBooks in the Kindle reader software on my iPad or laptop or phone. So you can imagine my delight, and I suspect yours too, when Amazon has recently updated the Kindle reader software to include the OED. In fact with the touch screen interface on the iPad the implementation is even better in that you just touch the word in question and up pops the two line definition at the bottom. One more tap on the definition brings up the whole OED page for that word. So while I still prefer extended book reading on my Kindle device I do like the implementation of the dictionary on the iPad version of the Kindle software even better. Either way though, this built in instant look up is just brilliant and something I don’t want to be without whenever I’m reading. II. Finding vs. Searching
Next up on the reasons why I now so much prefer to read eBooks is that they let me instantly find, rather than spend time searching for, a word or reference within the content I’m reading. How did I ever live without this? As my recent experience going “back” to reading a pBook reminded me, the lack of a find feature (aka search) when reading paper text is a huge hindrance to my reading and learning experience. For example in addition to his own astute observations and writing, Gardner makes a lot of references to other works and does an excellent job IMHO of finding just the right great quote to illustrate a point he is making. There were so many examples of this within the almost 600 pages and forty seven essays of The Night is Large that I found myself being very frustrated by the amount of time it took me to find that quote or passage I’d read earlier. Even with copious note taking, underlining and highlighting, it would usually take me several frustrating minutes to find what I was looking for. With any of my eBooks I just type in the phrase or word and instantly find where it is in the book. Often times I also serendipitously find another reference to the same word or idea which turns out to be even more revealing and valuable. Recently many of the eReaders are also building in direct subsequent links to sites like Wikipedia or Google for extend your references world almost endlessly. Either way, this fast finding and integrated deep searching is easily one of my top three big little differences I don’t want to be without whenever I’m reading. III. Notes & Highlights
Last, but certainly not least of the top three reasons why eReaders and eBooks are providing me with such a superior reading and learning experience is the improvement they enable for my notes and highlights. I’ve always been a big note taker and underliner and while I must admit that I don’t reread or refer back to all of them, or probably even very many of them, the act of highlighting and note taking is an integral part of how I learn. This worked well enough when both my notes and highlights were on paper but it was never very efficient or effective for me. I never seemed to have my notes, pen and paper with me when I needed them. They were so easy to lose or misplace and I would need to transcribe or retype them whenever I wanted to use them elsewhere. With the advent of computers I was able to take my notes digitally and I did so both directly on the computer and then more recently I found it to be far superior to use digital pens and paper such as my LiveScribe Pulse pen and Anoto based digital notepads. (See previous articles here on OCOT for detailed reviews of these). However, this was still very distracting and removed from my reading. Now that I can take notes and do my highlighting directly and of course digitally on my eBooks, my learning and reading experiences are so much more efficient and effective. Highlighting or underlining on paper with pen, pencil or highlighter felt pens works very well and still does for doing the actual underlining or highlighting. It isn’t very obtrusive and is quick and easy. However it is after the fact that the problem arises, specifically finding your past highlights and also transcribing them to use as a reference or to share with others. On my eBooks highlighting is still very quick and easy to do, just drag across the word or passage with the cursor or by touching with your finger and it is underlined. The highlighted text shows a telltale graphical underline in your eBook so you can see it later, but the big little difference is that all your underlined passages are stored in a separate file for later use and extraction. Both for your own personal use and also when you might want to share these highlights with others, having them in a separate file is a great advantage. We are also beginning to see an interesting phenomena as these highlights are starting to be shared on social networks so that you can start to see what someone else is highlighting and what they found to be of note in a book or article. As you might imagine, taking notes with eBooks work similarly in that you can now take notes directly using the same eReader you are reading on, either on a built in keyboard or on-screen virtual keyboard. As with underlines, all your notes are both referenced directly with marks directly in the text of the eBook as well as being stored as a separate file. This makes them not only very easy to access and find but they are already digitally transcribed and every so easy to copy & paste to share with others or use in reports or subsequent writing you might do. Having your notes and underlines all collected together also makes them much easier to manage and reference at a later date when in many cases the notes become more valuable than the book itself. And you can quickly imagine the additional capabilities this provides for situations where you want to provide someone with a summary of what you got out of a book or article, or in reverse where you want to have this from someone else. I can see this being an extremely handy and powerful tool for teachers, trainers, educators, managers and for the dramatic expansion of the collective wisdom as more and more of us start to take and share notes and highlights this way. There are other features of eReaders such as text to speech conversion and changeable font size which I use on occasion but nothing compared to my uses of these other three features which I use multiple times every time I’m reading an eBook, sometimes multiple times every page! While I still enjoy reading good old paper books and there are still many books which are not yet available digitally, there is no going back for me and I am reading more and learning more and having a better overall reading experience than ever before thanks to these three big little differences that eBooks have delivered. From my perspective, the writing is clearly on the wall that paper books are on the wane and in a few years, while they will still be around and we will still have great quantities of them, we will regard them to be as quaint and curious as quill pens and scrolls. Wayne Hodgins
Ambassador at Large for The Masie Center Coming to you today (Aug.20, 2010)
Aboard s/v Learnativity
17 06.775 S, 179 05.487 W
Namena Island, Fiji Email: wayne.hodgins@gmail.com
Email @ sea: whodgins@ocens.net
FaceBook page @ www.facebook.com/wayne.hodgins
Learnativity blog @ www.learnativity.typepad.com
OCOT blog @ http://waynehodgins.typepad.com
Skype: whodgins
Twitter: WWWayne
Sat phone text messages: send short 140 character Text msgs via Email to: 881632510270@msg.iridium.com
In addition to wanting to recommend this book to you, I also wanted to tell you about how much the experience of reading this pBook highlighted just how much more I prefer reading eBooks and eReaders. There is literally no difference for me in the literal reading part of the experience because the screen on my Kindle is at least as good if not better than most paper printed text. Indeed they also share identical drawbacks such as the requirement of good lighting to read them in as the Kindle has no backlighting which is part of why it is so similar to reading paper based text and just as easy on the eyes. Please note that I also now do a lot of reading on tablets such as the iPad, and for things like magazines and other types of reading where color pictures, animations, video and so on are a major part of what you are reading, they are my first choice. However for true “book” reading or other long articles where the content is almost all pure text and B&W charts and illustrations, the Kindle is still my hands down first choice. Regardless of which eReader I use, the key difference for me lies in what I can do with eBooks on my Kindle or iPad that I cannot do with pBooks and which this recent experience has taught me just how big a difference this is. If you have not yet had much experience with eReaders, these may all sound like trivial “nice to have” little things, they did to me at first too, but now that I’ve logged a couple hundred reading hours on them they have proven to be invaluable to my overall reading and learning experience. Below (in no particular order) are my top three big little reasons why I now do all reading possible on my eReaders: I. Instant & Integrated OED = Instant Integrated Learning
Next to experiential learning, reading is the primary way I learn. In addition to the stories, information and knowledge I receive from reading so many books, articles and magazines, I also read them to improve my vocabulary and my writing skills. (Evidence here not withstanding!) Therefore one of the features which I’ve come to absolutely adore and addicted to is the built in Oxford English dictionary. It is not just that a dictionary is available, I’ve usually had a dictionary at hand when I’m reading, it is the way the Kindle software (not just the device) in particular has implemented and integrated the OED. It is as simple as it is superb; put the cursor in front of any word and a short two line definition from OED instantly and unobtrusively pops up at the bottom of the screen. Want more? One more click or tap and it brings up the full page of that definition in the OED. For me this is just brilliant and something I often do multiple times on one page I’m reading to check a word that is new to me, dig into some of its nuances, or find synonyms, pronunciation, and all the other things that a dictionary enables. With eBooks this has become transparent to me when I’m reading and so when I suddenly went back to reading a traditional pBook and no longer had this instant dictionary I realized just how much I depend upon and love this feature. Of course I could and did just keep my Kindle or my iPad beside me as I was reading The Night is Large and was able to look up any words I wanted in their OED, but it was so much more disruptive and time consuming to have to put down the paper book, pick up the Kindle or iPad, start up the dictionary, type in the word and then go back to reading. I should note that this OED feature used to only be available on the Kindle reader itself (the hardware) and so I had the same problem when I was reading my eBooks in the Kindle reader software on my iPad or laptop or phone. So you can imagine my delight, and I suspect yours too, when Amazon has recently updated the Kindle reader software to include the OED. In fact with the touch screen interface on the iPad the implementation is even better in that you just touch the word in question and up pops the two line definition at the bottom. One more tap on the definition brings up the whole OED page for that word. So while I still prefer extended book reading on my Kindle device I do like the implementation of the dictionary on the iPad version of the Kindle software even better. Either way though, this built in instant look up is just brilliant and something I don’t want to be without whenever I’m reading. II. Finding vs. Searching
Next up on the reasons why I now so much prefer to read eBooks is that they let me instantly find, rather than spend time searching for, a word or reference within the content I’m reading. How did I ever live without this? As my recent experience going “back” to reading a pBook reminded me, the lack of a find feature (aka search) when reading paper text is a huge hindrance to my reading and learning experience. For example in addition to his own astute observations and writing, Gardner makes a lot of references to other works and does an excellent job IMHO of finding just the right great quote to illustrate a point he is making. There were so many examples of this within the almost 600 pages and forty seven essays of The Night is Large that I found myself being very frustrated by the amount of time it took me to find that quote or passage I’d read earlier. Even with copious note taking, underlining and highlighting, it would usually take me several frustrating minutes to find what I was looking for. With any of my eBooks I just type in the phrase or word and instantly find where it is in the book. Often times I also serendipitously find another reference to the same word or idea which turns out to be even more revealing and valuable. Recently many of the eReaders are also building in direct subsequent links to sites like Wikipedia or Google for extend your references world almost endlessly. Either way, this fast finding and integrated deep searching is easily one of my top three big little differences I don’t want to be without whenever I’m reading. III. Notes & Highlights
Last, but certainly not least of the top three reasons why eReaders and eBooks are providing me with such a superior reading and learning experience is the improvement they enable for my notes and highlights. I’ve always been a big note taker and underliner and while I must admit that I don’t reread or refer back to all of them, or probably even very many of them, the act of highlighting and note taking is an integral part of how I learn. This worked well enough when both my notes and highlights were on paper but it was never very efficient or effective for me. I never seemed to have my notes, pen and paper with me when I needed them. They were so easy to lose or misplace and I would need to transcribe or retype them whenever I wanted to use them elsewhere. With the advent of computers I was able to take my notes digitally and I did so both directly on the computer and then more recently I found it to be far superior to use digital pens and paper such as my LiveScribe Pulse pen and Anoto based digital notepads. (See previous articles here on OCOT for detailed reviews of these). However, this was still very distracting and removed from my reading. Now that I can take notes and do my highlighting directly and of course digitally on my eBooks, my learning and reading experiences are so much more efficient and effective. Highlighting or underlining on paper with pen, pencil or highlighter felt pens works very well and still does for doing the actual underlining or highlighting. It isn’t very obtrusive and is quick and easy. However it is after the fact that the problem arises, specifically finding your past highlights and also transcribing them to use as a reference or to share with others. On my eBooks highlighting is still very quick and easy to do, just drag across the word or passage with the cursor or by touching with your finger and it is underlined. The highlighted text shows a telltale graphical underline in your eBook so you can see it later, but the big little difference is that all your underlined passages are stored in a separate file for later use and extraction. Both for your own personal use and also when you might want to share these highlights with others, having them in a separate file is a great advantage. We are also beginning to see an interesting phenomena as these highlights are starting to be shared on social networks so that you can start to see what someone else is highlighting and what they found to be of note in a book or article. As you might imagine, taking notes with eBooks work similarly in that you can now take notes directly using the same eReader you are reading on, either on a built in keyboard or on-screen virtual keyboard. As with underlines, all your notes are both referenced directly with marks directly in the text of the eBook as well as being stored as a separate file. This makes them not only very easy to access and find but they are already digitally transcribed and every so easy to copy & paste to share with others or use in reports or subsequent writing you might do. Having your notes and underlines all collected together also makes them much easier to manage and reference at a later date when in many cases the notes become more valuable than the book itself. And you can quickly imagine the additional capabilities this provides for situations where you want to provide someone with a summary of what you got out of a book or article, or in reverse where you want to have this from someone else. I can see this being an extremely handy and powerful tool for teachers, trainers, educators, managers and for the dramatic expansion of the collective wisdom as more and more of us start to take and share notes and highlights this way. There are other features of eReaders such as text to speech conversion and changeable font size which I use on occasion but nothing compared to my uses of these other three features which I use multiple times every time I’m reading an eBook, sometimes multiple times every page! While I still enjoy reading good old paper books and there are still many books which are not yet available digitally, there is no going back for me and I am reading more and learning more and having a better overall reading experience than ever before thanks to these three big little differences that eBooks have delivered. From my perspective, the writing is clearly on the wall that paper books are on the wane and in a few years, while they will still be around and we will still have great quantities of them, we will regard them to be as quaint and curious as quill pens and scrolls. Wayne Hodgins
Ambassador at Large for The Masie Center Coming to you today (Aug.20, 2010)
Aboard s/v Learnativity
17 06.775 S, 179 05.487 W
Namena Island, Fiji Email: wayne.hodgins@gmail.com
Email @ sea: whodgins@ocens.net
FaceBook page @ www.facebook.com/wayne.hodgins
Learnativity blog @ www.learnativity.typepad.com
OCOT blog @ http://waynehodgins.typepad.com
Skype: whodgins
Twitter: WWWayne
Sat phone text messages: send short 140 character Text msgs via Email to: 881632510270@msg.iridium.com
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