The University of Washington was one of several universities participating in Amazon’s pilot study of the Kindle DX to see whether the Kindle DX served as a suitable replacement for students’ textbooks. About 40 CSE students enrolled in a dozen Computer Science courses participated in the study. A number of articles published last summer (e.g., Forbes ) touted the advantages of the device for students, citing lower weight and cost compared to the paper editions of the same textbooks.

The results, unsurprisingly, were disappointing.

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A couple of weeks ago I wrote about iAnnotate, a document annotation app for the iPad. On Friday, the folks who develop the app left a comment on the blog enumerating some of the changes made to program. In addition to redesigning the document view, the most significant change made it easier to import documents. Now not only can you download documents through a dedicated server that you run on the network (I run it on my laptop) but also from an integrated web browser. This makes it easy to collect PDF files and then to switch back to the reading mode of iAnnotate to read the newly-downloaded documents.

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As a follow-up to my review of iAnnotate, I did a quick exploration of drawing apps available for the iPad to understand the limitations of ink handling on the device. I tried five free annotation apps that were identified by the query “draw free for ipad.” These included Draw Free for iPad, PaperDesk LITE for iPad, Adobe Ideas 1.0 for iPad, Draw for iPad, and Doodle Buddy for iPad.

These apps were structured either around the canvas or the notepad metaphor, and supported a range of colors, inks, and effects. My only test was to select the thinnest ink the tool allowed, and to try to write a short phrase on each one. The test was purely visual, but then it’s the visual impact that I am interested in.

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Recently I tried an experiment with one of our iPads to read and review a journal submission using the iAnnotate application. For the purposes of review, I had to read and comment on the draft, and then write up the review. I approached the problem much like I would had I been reading on paper, which included highlighting important, controversial or confusing passages, writing comments and reactions in the margins, and flipping around the document. These were all activities we had supported in XLibris, and I was curious how the iPad would stack up.

The short of it is: loading documents: OK; readability: Great; inking: poor; highlighting: poor; text annotations: OK; within-document navigation: so-so; between-document navigation: OK. Overall: good for reading, not good for active reading.

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Microsoft appears to have killed the Courier concept before that two-screen device ever became a reality. It’s not clear what factors led to the decision, but on some level it’s a shame. Endgadget called it the “one of the finest unicorns that ever unicorned across our screens.” The two-screen nature of the device, while attractive in principle, may not have been as useful in real life. What was undoubtedly useful was the application suite demonstrated in their vision videos that seamlessly integrated a range of activities.

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A lot of people (like me) will use the iPad as an e-reader, among other things. It’s a good opportunity to play around with what a e-book actually can be, since the iPad offers things that Kindle can’t (color, animation…). I vote for more like this, please:

It’s in the iTunes store here.

In many ways, the iPad represents very different point in the design space of hand-held devices for reading. Whereas the Kindle is geared toward a low-power, book-like experience, the iPad is positioned closer to high end (but currently too heavy) slate computers. It is designed for richer interaction, for color, for animation and video, all the things that were discarded in the Kindle design for the sake of a longer battery life and less weight.

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Starting in the fall of 2010, Seton Hill University (not to be confused with Seton Hall University) is going to be equipping its students with iPads. It’s not clear from the description on the web site what the students are expected to do with these devices, or what educational advantage the iPads are likely to impart beyond the laptops the students will also receive.

But is the iPad the right tool?

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The Apple marketing machine has shifted gears, releasing several videos of iPads running different applications before the upcoming product launch. The larger screen is undoubtedly an improvement over the iPhone-sized display, but the interactivity has not improved with this device. Sure you can resize photos, move slides around and read more text without paging, but in its essence, this is just an iPhone on steroids.

I was struck by this picture, published by TechCrunch, and its contrast to a shot of XLibris that we took about ten years ago.

iPad with Evernote app, circa 2010

XLibris on a slate, circa 1999

There is a big difference in hardware, and in software. The 2010 hardware is much more capable; the software has focused touch rather than then pen. Is touch better, because we’re more used to fingers than pens, and because pens are easy to lose? I don’t think so, for the reason illustrated below.

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Some time ago I wrote about reports of books being replaced by electronic devices for academic reading. My take was that this kind of techno-utopianism will not improve the quality of education because the current crop of devices is not designed for active reading. This hypothesis was put the test recently at Princeton and four other universities. At Princeton, 53 students in three courses participated in an experiment where they were asked to use a Kindle device for course-work related reading. Results reported by the Daily Princetonian indicate that while the amount of in-course printing dropped by about 50%, students complained about a variety of limitations of using these devices for course work. Not surprisingly,

…users said they often found its design ill-suited for class readings. Students and faculty participating in the program said it was difficult to highlight and annotate PDF files and to use the folder structure intended to organize documents, according to University surveys. The inability to quickly navigate between documents and view two or more documents at the same time also frustrated users.

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