(The Examiner, March 2. 2010)

85% of students choose traditional textbooks over the Kindle.

The iPad is all the rage. This Examiner wants one. So do a lot of other people. But will the iPad, the Kindle, and other e-reader devices change learning as we know it?

Likely, they will. Just not yet.

In a series of recent experiments reported by USA Today, college students at Princeton University, Case Western Reserve University, and the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business used a Kindle DX instead of hard copy text books.

Surprisingly, 85% of students choose traditional textbooks over e-readers. Although the students liked the e-readers for casual, recreational reading, the vast majority found that the e-readers were too difficult to study from.

The common complaint was that highlighting and annotating on the page were major disadvantages of the e-readers. It also proved difficult to find specific pages professors would reference in class.

The e-reader, due to differences in its text layout features, do not display the same page numbers as the hard copy books. And, depending on the size of the reader, may not even list the same page numbers between devices.

Finally, the ability to shift from book to book is a critical function for writing papers and organizing references. Both of these functions were harder to control without hard copies of the books available.

Even with these difficulties, 80% of the students said they would recommend an e-reader to family and friends for casual reading.

So, although it’s tough waiting for the iPad to come out, it may not be immediately ready for college applications. Someday soon it will. Just not yet.

Lenn Millbower, the Learnertainment® Trainer and former Disney training leader, helps trainers, teachers, and speakers keep their learners awake so the learning can take through one-on-one coaching, keynotes and seminars, open enrollment workshops, instructional design consulting, and his published works.