Nook. Kindle. Sony Reader. Today’s technology has changed your local library from brick and mortar to 7.8 ounces of silicone and plastic. With today’s youth among the primary consumers of new technology, eReaders are quickly making their way into homes and classrooms, and the debate rises: What, exactly, are the pros and cons of digital books?
Digital Delight
As an English teacher, I want my students to get their hands on books in any form that will encourage them to read. eReaders hold hundreds of books, are portable and, while they can initially be expensive, generally have loads of free books (especially classics) for download. Jonathan Enders, a college freshman entering William Jewell’s Oxbridge Honors Program this fall, uses an eReader primarily for convenience: “eBooks are cheaper, I can bring them anywhere while only carrying one thing and I can type whatever notes I need.”
Initial cost of an eReader notwithstanding, eBooks are less expensive than their paper counterparts—often significantly so—and provide a number of benefits for readers. eReaders are lightweight and easily readable. Adjustable backlighting eliminates the need to find suitable reading light and zooming and font resizing make any size text accessible. Many students’ favorite feature, however, is that note-taking in the newest eReaders is quite dynamic, with search, edit and delete capablities, sometimes providing just the right “sugar” to make the medicine go down – like when their advanced English teacher assigns a ton of active reading over the weekend.
Despite the benefits, however, I have had students struggle to use eReaders as academic texts: digital notes “crash,” bookmarks “disappear” and batteries die. Those are definitely problems students do not face with an old-fashioned book.
Digital Dilemma
eReaders, while convenient, have their drawbacks. Battery life is short (you won’t have a hard-copy ‘die’ on you after 4-6 hours). They can cause the same eye strain as any computer screen, are susceptible to nasty bugs that can crash books and notes and eReaders are not necessarily sturdy. If you spill your hot tea on them, step on them or crunch them in a 50-pound backpack, your entire library (and your expensive eReader) just went down.
Additionally, many stand somewhat transcendentally by old-fashioned books, happily hefting the weight of paper and binding in their hands. Jordan Went, Liberty North High School junior, is an avid reader but prefers hard copies to digital. “I like to dog-ear the pages… to physically turn them.” He holds up a hard-covered 1056-page copy of A Dance with Dragons. “There’s just no way I’d rather read this on an eReader. I want to feel it in my hands.” Many readers prefer the aesthetics of paper books, and hard copies are especially preferable in the case of textbooks and other large-format books where there are many different elements on a given page.
In the end, high-achieving students are always good readers, and to be good readers, students need ready access to good books. Many students enjoy the portability, accessibility and technological tools that come along with eReaders, which all encourages them to read more and more often. For many, though, the decision between digital or traditional comes down to a simple matter of preference.
The question of book or eBook is seemingly a personal one. The important thing for our young people is, digital or hard copy, to keep turning the page.
Kimberly Brownlee is the proud wife of a KCPD officer, mother of three boys and college level composition and gifted English instructor at Liberty North High School.