Reading books vs electronic media- which is smarter?

[Gail]

Is reading an ebook different to your brain than reading a real paper book?

 

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reading-paper-screens/

[phkrause]

I can't say for sure. I have heard that the light of the electronic devises do take there toll on your eyes more than just reading from a book.

[rudywoofs (Pam)]

for mindless reading, I like my Kindle, but for other types of reading, where research necessitates going between two or more sources at a time, you can't beat a book.

 

(And for pages which are large and don't fit on the e-reader screen, to swipe in order to continue reading is annoying to me..)

[Gail]

for mindless reading, I like my Kindle, but for other types of reading, where research necessitates going between two or more sources at a time, you can't beat a book.

 

(And for pages which are large and don't fit on the e-reader screen, to swipe in order to continue reading is annoying to me..)

I don't know if I have had that problem yet on the Kindle but I think I have on the iPad.

But I agree... For Bible study and even Bible reading it's a real book for me. I like the feel of a book. I did read Josephus on the Kindle and my current read is Alison Weir's War of the Roses, also a Kindle book.

[CoAspen]

Books...books...books for all my pleasure reading. Research or anything else...on line.

[psalms37]

I need to be holding a book. Just me,but my mind wanders when reading from an electronic toy. Plus the toy might break,but books are forever.

[Gail]

Plus you can't share an e-book...

[Tom Wetmore]

Some apps do allow limited sharing of books, but you are right that since all your books are on a devise sharing is all or nothing since you would have to share the device. However, my kindle books are on 4 devices, phone, iPad, laptop, and kindle device. That means I can let someone read one of my books and I can still read another one on one of the other devices.

And as far as books being forever vs. digital, it actually the opposite. A book can be lost or destroyed and it is gone and can only be replaced by buying another copy, if you can find one. Depending on your digital version, you can always reload it on a new device, if the original device crashes, is lost or destroyed. Kindle and Apple keep a permanent record of all your purchases and will keep them in the cloud for you to download onto another device or just leave there, archived for later if you prefer. In fact it is kind of difficult to completley get rid of a digital book. With Kindle I can read on one device and pick up right where I left off on another. And there is also the opportunity of having audio and written if you want to listen while driving for example, and pick up reading right where you left off when you get home.

But I still like real books too.

[Gail]

I got rid of one that I really hated by editing my Kindle profile. Before I did that it kept trying to load itself onto my devices and drove me crazy.

[joeb]

I read a very interesting article the other day along these lines.   Studies have shown that people who take notes with a laptop/notebook learn less than someone who uses a pen/pencil and paper to take notes in the same amount of study time.  I don't remember where I read the article but it quoted somewhere around a half-dozen studies that have all shown the same thing.   So, I guess my own ideas on notetaking and reading have been proven true.  Give me a real book and a spiral notebook and pencil for studies I really want/need to remember, and for the pure enjoyment of reading I'll take a real book any day of the week. 

 

I guess that's why I have a library of around a thousand books.   That's not a real big library but it isn't really small either.   

[Gail]

Joe, if you ever find that article again please send me the URL. I would post that up somewhere in the store

The world needs to know!

[rudywoofs (Pam)]

Gail, it's probably the study published in Psychological Science, The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard:  Advantages of Longhand Over Laptop Note Taking

Psychological Science June 2014 25: 1159-1168, first published on April 23, 2014  (one needs to subscribe in order to read the original article)

 

Here's a news brief from the Assn for Psychological Science regarding the study:

 

 

 

Take Notes by Hand for Better Long-Term Comprehension

 

 

Dust off those Bic ballpoints and college-ruled notebooks — research shows that taking notes by hand is better than taking notes on a laptop for remembering conceptual information over the long term. The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Walk into any university lecture hall and you’re likely to see row upon row of students sitting behind glowing laptop screens. Laptops in class have been controversial, due mostly to the many opportunities for distraction that they provide (online shopping, browsing Reddit, or playing solitaire, just to name a few). But few studies have examined how effective laptops are for the students who diligently take notes.

“Our new findings suggest that even when laptops are used as intended — and not for buying things on Amazon during class — they may still be harming academic performance,” says psychological scientist Pam Mueller of Princeton University, lead author of the study.

Mueller was prompted to investigate the question after her own experience of switching from laptop to pen and paper as a graduate teaching assistant:

“I felt like I’d gotten so much more out of the lecture that day,” says Mueller, who was working with psychology researcher Daniel Oppenheimer at the time. “Danny said that he’d had a related experience in a faculty meeting: He was taking notes on his computer, and looked up and realized that he had no idea what the person was actually talking about.”

Mueller and Oppenheimer, who is now at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, conducted a series of studies to investigate whether their intuitions about laptop and longhand note-taking were true.

In the first study, 65 college students watched one of five TED Talks covering topics that were interesting but not common knowledge. The students, who watched the talks in small groups, were either given laptops (disconnected from Internet) or notebooks, and were told to use whatever strategy they normally used to take notes.

The students then completed three distractor tasks, including a taxing working memory task. A full 30 minutes later, they had to answer factual-recall questions (e.g., “Approximately how many years ago did the Indus civilization exist?”) and conceptual-application questions (e.g., “How do Japan and Sweden differ in their approaches to equality within their societies?”) based on the lecture they had watched.

The results revealed that while the two types of note-takers performed equally well on questions that involved recalling facts, laptop note-takers performed significantly worse on the conceptual questions.

The notes from laptop users contained more words and more verbatim overlap with the lecture, compared to the notes that were written by hand. Overall, students who took more notes performed better, but so did those who had less verbatim overlap, suggesting that the benefit of having more content is canceled out by “mindless transcription.”

“It may be that longhand note takers engage in more processing than laptop note takers, thus selecting more important information to include in their notes, which enables them to study this content more efficiently,” the researchers write.

Surprisingly, the researchers saw similar results even when they explicitly instructed the students to avoid taking verbatim notes, suggesting that the urge to do so when typing is hard to overcome.

The researchers also found that longhand note takers still beat laptop note takers on recall one week later when participants were given a chance to review their notes before taking the recall test. Once again, the amount of verbatim overlap was associated with worse performance on conceptual items.

“I don’t anticipate that we’ll get a mass of people switching back to notebooks,” says Mueller, “but there are several new stylus technologies out there, and those may be the way to go to have an electronic record of one’s notes, while also having the benefit of being forced to process information as it comes in, rather than mindlessly transcribing it.”

“Ultimately, the take-home message is that people should be more aware of how they are choosing to take notes, both in terms of the medium and the strategy,” Mueller concludes.

 

[TruthSeeker123]

I prefer holding a book in my hand and annotating the text as I read. But, ebooks and ereaders have advantages as there is always a back up available and you don't have to worry about people not returning your book because you can't share it. (It's bad of me, I know, but so is stealing. ) An ereader is lightweight and compact while a book is more personal and interactive. A book is tangible. One can easily associate its contents with its cover and thus remember its thesis.

[Aliensanctuary]

The collection of Bibles on my computer has revolutionized my study of the scriptures. With the searches I can zip through thousands of pages without having to turn them one by one and read every page. When the computer is not with me when traveling, the book-in-hand must do, prehistorically speaking.

[joeb]

The collection of Bibles on my computer has revolutionized my study of the scriptures. With the searches I can zip through thousands of pages without having to turn them one by one and read every page. When the computer is not with me when traveling, the book-in-hand must do, prehistorically speaking.

Same here.  I one place I have many translations of the Bible, the entire works of Ellen White, and the ability to write--my handwriting is so bad anymore that even I can't read it--out my studies in a form in which they are easy to share....  It's a trade-off in that I remember less, but have easier access to, that which I have written and studied.

[Gail]

As do I... But those tend not to be my main reading and study Bible. That one become my close friend :)

[Gail]

Thanks, Pam. That looks similar to one I did see.I have been sending links round via e-mail and FB and have been printing out copies for our store and truck.

[Gail]

I am hoping that this information will prove useful for our sales. Christian bookstores have been going bankrupt like crazy over the last few years. ABCs are still hanging in there but for how long I don't know. I feel strongly that more than ever we are needed.

[Aliensanctuary]

...my handwriting is so bad anymore that even I can't read it...

 

 

My problem, too, exactly, unless I print by hand very slooooooowly. 

 

I usually listen to an audio Bible to help clear my mind to enable me to go to sleep, usually around 6 am. If I awaken later and my mind starts rehashing events, I put the headphones back on and listen to the Bible again. I rarely hear the end of the cd. But the time period while falling asleep, before I turn on the cd, and the time period waking up are the times when I think mainly about spiritual themes and ideas pop into my head. I have to turn on a flashlight so I can see to write the thoughts down, otherwise, they are gone, sometimes forever. The scribbles, though, are sometimes nearly impossible to decipher...

 

My favorite way to study, though, is to make my own "audio bible" using text to speech to create unique compilations of scripture. This is another good source for ideas that may or may not be mainstream religion.

[rudywoofs (Pam)]

 

I usually listen to an audio Bible to help clear my mind to enable me to go to sleep, usually around 6 am. If I awaken later and my mind starts rehashing events, I put the headphones back on and listen to the Bible again. I rarely hear the end of the cd. But the time period while falling asleep, before I turn on the cd, and the time period waking up are the times when I think mainly about spiritual themes and ideas pop into my head. 

 

sounds sorta like some relationships between the congregation and sermons...

[Gail]

Super idea!

[Aliensanctuary]

...sounds sorta like some relationships between the congregation and sermons.

too funny, but too true. Some sermons, especially the ones on dvd, could put the worst insomniacs into the snore zone.