Wednesday 6 October 2010

Is an ebook reader a viable technology to support electronic marking?

If you were to image a replacement for lugging around essays and marking/annotating student scripts, would it be an ebook.
Answer is probably no, as most roads seems to point to the ipad.
However
Eye strain: this could be a reason for purchase, but why can't i find any research to back this up. Is it because research by the industry has been undertaken and proved there is little difference? This is what this old article speculates.
http://www.talkingscience.org/2009/02/let%E2%80%99s-get-bookish-about-e-reade...
A more research article points out that there is little difference between paper/lcd/eink. The question is about where you are reading eg poor light/daylight and taking breaks to rest the eyes. http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/12/do-e-readers-cause-eye-strain/

Cost: if a faculty were to make an investment ebooks have the edge on cost, but don't have the range of an ipad to support different processes. So you end up with a cheap single use tool.
Annotation: this seems to have improved, but the process of merging annotation files and pdfs seems to have caused some issues in the past. But is it worth trying out? Can they pay apart in the range of tools on offer, or is the perfect tool not designed yet, and never will be as the market is too small?

Posted via email from abstractrabbit's posterous

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