This semester we lent Sony Readers to a senior seminar in German to see if students would find them useful. \u00a0It was a small class of only 7 students. \u00a0In addition to the size, we chose them because the professor had mentioned to me that they seemed to be having trouble understanding the readings despite the fact that they were in the senior seminar and had all studied abroad. \u00a0It sounded like a good use of the e-readers and the built-in dictionaries.<\/p>\n
Last week, I went to talk to the students and hand out very brief surveys. \u00a0The responses varied, but were generally apathetic. \u00a0Note taking was more difficult, so most preferred the physical texts. \u00a0I asked about the dictionaries, and while all said they saw and knew how to use them, they didn’t see any need. \u00a0Having been abroad so long, they explained, they gathered the meaning of the word from context. \u00a0This of course belies what their professor had told me about their reading, but I would have been skeptical regardless. \u00a0I’m pretty sure my reading level in German is well above the average student in the undergraduate course, and I appreciate having the dictionary immensely. \u00a0Even when the context allows me to either recall or understand an unfamiliar word, checking the official definition helps me refresh and hopefully cement the word in my consciousness.<\/p>\n
Otherwise, the only other point on which they were in general agreement was cost. \u00a0If the savings that came from downloading books for free from the public domain outweighed the cost of an eReader, they would consider purchasing it on their own.<\/p>\n
I plan on trying again in the fall, probably with a lower lever class. \u00a0An\u00a0introductory literature course may be better since students face a rather large jump in reading from the last language course. \u00a0Hopefully their need for additional vocabulary will be a nice fit with the dictionaries, and I’ll have to consider suggesting strategies for note taking as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This semester we lent Sony Readers to a senior seminar in German to see if students would find them useful. \u00a0It was a small class of only 7 students. \u00a0In addition to the size, we chose them because the professor … Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":776,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[8161],"class_list":["post-361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-ereader"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/edtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/edtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/edtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/edtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/776"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/edtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/edtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/edtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/edtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/edtech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}