Kindle and the college student?

[Guinan]

I'm considering getting a Kindle for my daughter who's started college this year.  She's getting her degree in early childhood education, and has expressed a desire for a eReader, which lead me to wonder if text books in ebook form might be more cost effective.  So I'm looking for any info on using a Kindle for text ebooks.  The only thing I've found is in the FAQ, dated 2008, saying there aren't many text books in ebook form, but I was under the impression that has changed.

I myself use a Nook, simply because I want to be able to use the library system for ebooks, even though I do buy most of my books, there have been more than a few that are just too costly in ebook form.  The Nook, I am told is not good for text books, although I'm not sure that's so, the argument being lack of color pictures, which isn't really an issue for my daughter.

So anyone have first, second, third hand knowledge about using a Kindle for textbooks?  Any college students out there who use, or used a Kindle, that can give me any insight?

[BTackitt]

I am currently using my Kindle for one of my English textbooks, "Writing Analytically 5th ed" and it works for me.
Where it really comes in handy for me, is after I take my notes for any of my classes, I type them up, and send them to my Kindle, and then during my 45 minute drive to/from class, I have TTS read my notes back to me. Sometimes (in my microbiology class notes) the pronunciation is not only off, but WAY off which always makes me chuckle, but I remember those parts the best because I can "hear" the mistakes from the TTS later in my head. (NaCl-- Sodium chloride <table salt>-- get's pronounced as NahSee-el)

[Tuttle]

I graduated from college last May

I never used my kindle for /textbooks/ but it was incredibly useful for
-books for English classes
-PDFs that were emailed to me for classes
-My writing when I was editing it.

[ScottB]

I'm a college student but in the UK so it's slightly different.
I don't use my Kindle for notes or anything, I may do it for revision before my exams.
As for text books, there aren't many for the courses I am doing but I can easily get them from college so I'm not too bothered.

[CoffeeCat]

I was just thinking this morning about how I would have loved a Kindle in college (it came out the year I graduated) as I was an English major. While my focus was on writing, I took plenty of lit courses. I would have been able to save some money on the free classics I could have downloaded.

The idea of typing up notes, putting them on the Kindle and using TTS also sounds really nice.

I don't think I personally would find it useful for texts, but I'm sure she could look into what's available for the semester reading lists/texts (assuming she can get it early from her professors) to see what's already available for Kindle.

[izzy]

It really depends on her major, but overall for some of the basic classes it would be helpful because those books would most likely be available in ebook format. I think for my basic english classes and that the kindle or any ereader would have made reading the books a million times easier.

For me now as business student that majority of my books are not available on kindle.

[SamuraiXSendai]

Offered my freshman son a spare kindle but he likes "real" books and said no thank you.

[flutterby]

I just started my first school year with a kindle (English major).  So far, I really like it.  While some professors are still demanding that the entire class use the same hard copy edition of the book, others don't care.  I've had mine TTS reading to me off and on all day. 

Some professors email or post online various documents (course syllabus, articles, assignments, etc) which I've saved as a PDF and used calibre to put on my kindle.  A lot easier than printing 20+ pages a week. 

[Prazzie]

If you know which textbooks she's going to need, search for it on Amazon to check for availability.

I've used my Kindle for English Lit, Psychology and Statistics. Text is obviously great, symbols are usually fine, but sometimes the OCR process corrupts characters. For example, in my Statistics textbook, the + and ÷ symbols were mixed up on occasion. Images are okay, but where things can start to go wrong is with tables. With large tables, half the table might be on the next page, so it becomes difficult to follow.

The best thing for me is using the text to speech for the PDF journal articles we have to read. Your daughter will probably spend a lot of time trying to find research papers on databases. These are in PDF format and they're the most tiring part of research. Scrolling through page after page of text on a bright monitor when your eyes are tired and you want to go sleep can make a person very grumpy. On the Kindle, it's easier to read. It's as easy to search the document as on a computer. When you're tired, you can activate text-to-speech and make the Kindle read the paper to you. You can make searchable, annotated notes.

I was on my way to write a test the other morning and hadn't had time to read something the lecturer had emailed us. The Kindle read it to me while I drove to campus. The test question was about that document, so if not for the Kindle, I wouldn't have had a clue what it was about.

Other useful things include the ability to look up unfamiliar topics in class. If the lecturer mentions "Book X by so and so", I find Book X in the Kindle store, download either the book or sample, right there in class, then look up the author on Wikipedia to find out more. Oh, and the dictionary is another thing. A lecturer used a word I was unsure of, so I looked it up on my Kindle. Just as I was writing the definition down in my book, he asked the class what that word meant. No one replied, so I put up my hand and gave him the dictionary definition. Was that guy ever impressed!  

Kindles can be hit or miss for college students. If you're interested in incorporating it into your studies, it makes for an exceptionally useful tool. Your daughter can even download MP3 podcasts/lectures and listen to them on the Kindle, using earphones, while she walks to classes or waits for lectures to start. However, it's not a magical device that's going to make students smarter and textbooks cheaper. The student has to be motivated to find ways to use it and to shop around for reasonably priced textbooks.

[KathyY]

My daughter has my old K2. She said that she wanted to give it a try with textbooks. She said that she usually sells her books back as used and wouldn't be able to do that with the Kindle books. I asked her what she thought now that she was using it. She said that it was much easier to take the Kindle to her son's taekwondo class than the big textbook. Not all her books are available for Kindle. She is working on a master's in something IT.

[KindleGirl]

My daughter just went off to college this year and we sent her with a K2. So far I don't think she has done much school work with it, but she sure has enjoyed reading on it when she gets a chance to relax. In the future maybe she will figure out how to integrate it into her studies also.

[racheldeet]

As an English student, the Kindle has been a HUGE boon. I've had to read a lot of "classics" that I otherwise wouldn't have, and have been able to get them cheap/free from the Amazon store. However, not a single one of my other classes has had a kindle-availible textbook, and the K2 I have is not really fantastic for the HUGE number of PDFs I'm having to read. Your milage may vary.

[foreverjuly]

My daughter just went off to college this year and we sent her with a K2. So far I don't think she has done much school work with it, but she sure has enjoyed reading on it when she gets a chance to relax. In the future maybe she will figure out how to integrate it into her studies also.

I could imagine a lot of scenarios like this, in which students use it for recreational reading and the like. Considering some of the students I've come across, recreational reading would be much better than their usual activities!

[Gerund]

Kindles are great for English, Philosophy and Classics students. You won't find many Kindle-compatible textbooks, but speaking as a Philosophy student, 95% of my readings are available in the public domain, and having ereaders has saved me hundreds of dollars which would otherwise have been spent on buying materials which are freely available over the Internet. Classicists are in much the same boat, as are English students.

I would expect students in other disciplines to find Kindles less innately helpful because they depend less on public-domain and book-length materials than those 3 fields do.

[Guinan]

Thanks to everyone who responded!  You've given me some good info, first thing I guess will be to see how many of her books are available as ebooks, but it still might be useful even if they aren't, especially the idea about using it for class notes, and the dictionary.

Thanks again!

[Dayfrost]

I am a grad student in Communication leadership..last semester alone I saved $370 in textbook fees because the Kindle books were sooo much cheaper..I figured I could buy several Kindles with what I saved!  Most reference text or style manuals are available so it is one more savings..I love my K1 and hit the kindle books first for my textbooks--not all are available--but enough that I can save AND read them in comfort as my kindle goes everywhere with me where textbooks tend to be very heavy.

[history_lover]

No one seems to have mentioned this yet (or maybe I missed it) but I remember a lot of people mentioning that one of the issues can be if there is ever a reference to a page number, it can be difficult, if not impossible for a Kindle user to figure out where that is. If the page number is accompanied by a quote, you can just do a search for the quote and easily find it though. I guess it depends how the teacher references passages.

[vsch]

My daughter has my old K2. She said that she wanted to give it a try with textbooks. She said that she usually sells her books back as used and wouldn't be able to do that with the Kindle books. I asked her what she thought now that she was using it. She said that it was much easier to take the Kindle to her son's taekwondo class than the big textbook. Not all her books are available for Kindle. She is working on a master's in something IT.

In my Opinion it would be beneficial to the text book publishers to make ebooks available simply because they cant be resold.

[Esmeowl12]

I would think that a Kindle would be a great tool for a college student. My favorite thing about it is how portable it is.

[racheldeet]

I graduated from college last May

I never used my kindle for /textbooks/ but it was incredibly useful for
-books for English classes
-PDFs that were emailed to me for classes
-My writing when I was editing it.

English/Philosophy double major here, and this about covers it.

English and Philosophy have the wonderful advantage of covering a lot of non-textbook reading in class, which makes the Kindle really useful. I also not only am required to read a lot of PDFs, but also scan every hand-out I get into PDF form and recycle the hard copy for the sake of organization. For other majors, I'm not sure if an e-reader would be as useful as a tablet, which would allow for better reading of PDFs (all the Kindles except for the DX and Fire have been abysmal at PDFs in my experience, which is not really their fault) and a whole host of other nifty organizational things.

[QuantumIguana]

I would have saved a lot of money in my political philosophy class if I had a Kindle. Let me see if I can remember the books I had to buy: The Republic, Leviathan, The Prince, Vindication of the Rights of Woman, and the Social Contract. Sure, they were used paperback copies, but it adds up. The advantage of the paper copies over the public domain version is the footnotes.

[jbcohen]

I was just thinking this morning about how I would have loved a Kindle in college (it came out the year I graduated) as I was an English major. While my focus was on writing, I took plenty of lit courses. I would have been able to save some money on the free classics I could have downloaded.

The idea of typing up notes, putting them on the Kindle and using TTS also sounds really nice.

I don't think I personally would find it useful for texts, but I'm sure she could look into what's available for the semester reading lists/texts (assuming she can get it early from her professors) to see what's already available for Kindle.

I'm with you on this matter.  I can quite clearly remember me lugging three one hundred pound text books to and from class.  Sometimes I was tempted to leave the text in the dorm because of the weight of the books. My instructors wanted students to bring the text to each class however the shear weight of the text made that impossible.  Wow carrying all those text on one two ounce device instead of three hundred pounds of text, that a no brain-er. 

[mooshie78]

It just depends on the type of textbooks on:

1.  Whether they're available.
2.  Whether they display well on a Kindle. 

To the second, a lot of text books have big pages and don't display well even on a Kindle DX, much less a smaller Kindle.  Especially if they have lots of tables, figures, equations etc. that can't be reflowed.

As a professor, I've yet to see any students using Kindles or other re-readers.  However, every semester there's more and more students using iPads.  Not sure how many have the books on there, but they're using them to take notes in class etc.

Myself, I also have an iPad and use it for a lot of my academic work--reading PDFs of scholarly journal articles etc.  I've never found an academic use for my Kindle.  The iPad's big screen, instant refresh for flipping through pages when studying, ease of highlighting and jotting notes etc. makes it pretty handy for that kind of thing, where as the Kindle just doesn't do well for that kind of work IMO.

Now if one's majoring in English or literature etc. and reading a lot of novels for school, then it's a different story and a Kindle would be very useful.  But if they're mainly using larger page text books with lots of tables and a figures etc., then a Kindle is probably not so useful.  I'd look into a tablet, or maybe just a Macbook Air or other ultrabook that they can easily take to class.

[mooshie78]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/apple-expected-to-delve-into-textbooks/2012/01/18/gIQA52iH9P_story.html

Figured this was relevant to the topic.  Apple is expected to announce some venture into textbooks today.

[TraceyC/FL]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/apple-expected-to-delve-into-textbooks/2012/01/18/gIQA52iH9P_story.html

Figured this was relevant to the topic.  Apple is expected to announce some venture into textbooks today.

Really excited about the possibilities these announcements have!! I'd give anything right now to be able to buy my special needs dd's reading book to use on the iPad. I'm supposed to have access to some horrid web version - it stunk so bad to use for my 1st grader I haven't been back to the site, but my 5th grader doesn't have hers on there yet.....

But this ensured that I will be doing something in the iPad arena for them over a Fire. Although I will want a 7-8" iPad for them.

Anyway, things are starting to go where they should be!