Freebies

1. According to this article, there are still ways to get a free Google Chrome notebook.
2. Amazon is offering a free two-month trial of the New York Times for the Kindle.  I'm trying it out.

Procrastination and Your Netflix Queue

This is an interesting article about procrastination.  One point it makes is about Netflix queues.  My queue, for example, is full of things that are "good" for me to watch: highly-regarded classic films, foreign films, documentaries, etc.  Do I actually watch these things?  Not very often.  If I am choosing a movie to watch right away, I, like the article talks about, will go for something a little more "fluffy".

Test Taking Cements Knowledge

I read an interesting article about a study which showed that taking a test did more to help students remember something than other popular methods.  Specifically, the test showed a benefit of 50% compared to other popular methods of studying. From the article:

These other methods [the methods the researchers compared testing to] not only are popular, the researchers reported; they also seem to give students the illusion that they know material better than they do.

By contrast, in talking about the struggle students go through using the testing method, the article stated:

“The struggle helps you learn, but it makes you feel like you’re not learning,” said Nate Kornell, a psychologist at Williams College. “You feel like: ‘I don’t know it that well. This is hard and I’m having trouble coming up with this information.’ ”

I think that most students who don't study smarter, not harder fall into the trap of doing things which produce the illusion of learning instead of doing things which actually produce learning.  I see this idea relating heavily to my idea that one ought to do all of one's homework problems alone; the struggle of doing that helps one learn much faster than asking for help.

Tip: Sending Webpages to the Kindle

I have been playing around with the Amazon Kindle I received for Christmas.  One of the main uses I have had for it is to read webpages, especially long articles.

My Preferred Options


Send to Kindle extension: I recently came across the "Send to Kindle" extension on Google Chrome.  When I come across a webpage, I can click to save it for later on my Kindle.  The extension then sends the file to my Kindle automatically and formats it nicely, and it takes literally a second or two to do.


Later on Kindle: I installed an app on my phone which sends webpages to my Kindle.  It works.


Other Options in Review

Using the web browser function: The Kindle has a web browser on it.  It displays the page in black and white.  It also doesn't have a touch screen or a track pad to easily navigate through a webpage, so that part is inconvenient.  I avoid using the browser on the Kindle.  What I am more interested is using the browser on my computer--or even on my smartphone--and then saving longer articles for later on my Kindle in a clean, readable format.

Saving text to a document file: I have experimented with copying an article I want to read onto a word processing application, putting in any formating that I desire, and then sending it to my Kindle.  This has gotten rid of the random nonsense that a html file has.  The downsides are (1) it's much slower than saving a webpage and sending it as-is and (2) I have had trouble formatting the document files so that they look good on the Kindle.  I typically have to use the program Calibre, which makes things take even more time.  This is a good option, however, in those cases where I care exactly how a document looks (for example, things I want to save).

Instapaper: I experimented with Instapaper.com for a while.  It works like this: whenever I wanted to save a webpage for later, I just clicked on a button on my web browser, and it was saved in my account.  Every day, it then automatically sends me all of the articles on my list in one file.  The articles are formatted nicely.  If I want my articles before the automatic scheduled download, I can go to the Instapaper website and click to have my file sent.  This is a pretty good option, but I prefer (1) having my articles sent instantly instead of having to wait for them and (2) having my articles in separate files and not clumping them into one.

What My Students Really Think of Me

Yesterday I got back a report about my students' evaluations of me for my teaching assistant job last quarter.  I thought four different sections of the same beginning calculus class.  What I did was hold a review once a week in which I focused on the students' suggested homework assignments.  The students all received e-mails near the end of the quarter asking them to evaluate me, and I received the anonymous results yesterday.

I taught more students than I am used to teaching.  As such, I received a lot more comments than I am used to receiving, including a lot more negative comments than I am used to receiving.  Allison mentioned to me that at least I know what I need to work on.  My gut reaction to her saying that was that no, the negative comments tell me little.  When I thought about it, here are some arguments I came up with of why I take negative comments with a grain of salt.

• For every negative comment there was a positive comment saying the opposite: For example, some people thought I didn't explain things clearly enough; however, there were plenty of people who commented that I explained things clearly.
• 
  
• You can't please everyone: I have about 30 students in each of my sections.  It is impossible to please them all and to make sure they are all understanding everything.  Among the comments, here were some examples of suggestions made of how I should organize the class:
  
  1. Didn't explain hard concepts, just gave answers to the homework.
  2. Didn't cover more than a few homework questions and didn't clear up lecture questions.
  3. Go through each topic and go in order
  4. Make sections longer
  What I do in my sections is I take student requests for problems they want to see worked out an explained, and then I do them slowly and try to explain everything well.  To point #1, I did receive comments that said that I did a good job of explaining the concepts behind each problem; if I was just giving homework answers, I would cover a lot more problems (which would take care of #2's concern).  If I framed the presentation in the way #3 said, then student #1 might have had a more positive attitude about what I do.  However, doing something different from their three hours a week lecture, where they do go through topics in order, is beneficial.  Finally, there are a lot of reasons why point #4 is wrong, but I don't see why I needed to have that on my evaluation.  In summary, I try to do what I believe most students want me to do based on past experience; that way just doesn't please everyone.
• Who's commenting: Unfortunately, because on anonymity, I have no idea who or what kind of people are giving me comments.  I wouldn't take a comment from someone who came to section once or twice with the same seriousness as I would from someone who came weekly and also visited my office hours.  What I do know is that the people commenting are overwhelmingly freshmen.  When I see that, the devil on my shoulder says that they don't really know what they are talking about because this is their first college math class.  I also noticed that when a comment used my name (Chris) instead of "TA", the comment was always positive; among other things, this tells me that negative comments probably came from people who didn't come to my section often.
• Negative response bias: The students were encouraged to evaluate me, but at its core this was optional.  According to the report, only 58% of the students enrolled actually filled it out.  As I learned in my high-school statistics class, people with a negative opinion are more likely to respond to a voluntary survey then people with a positive opinion.

I actually took a positive out of the evaluations however.  I only got one response saying that at times my writing was hard to read.  At the beginning of grad school, I got several such comments each quarter.  I take it as a good sign that my handwriting is improving.

Most Don't Learn that Much in College

Here is a report about a study which found that on average students learn little in college.  Here is a quote:

The findings also will likely spark a debate over what helps and hurts students learn. To sum up, it's good to lead a monk's existence: Students who study alone and have heavier reading and writing loads do well.

I thought it was interesting that studying alone led to more learning.  I have heard many advisors and others advocate study groups as a study strategy.  I never put this idea into practice because of convenience and because I never felt that I needed study groups.  Based on this study, I was right to study alone all these years of college.


Here is another post on the topic.

Learning Another Language with the Amazon Kindle

I previously posted my review of the Amazon Kindle 3.   I would like to expand on how I have been using it for learning languages.  This feature is not necessarily exclusive to the Kindle, but I'm also not familiar with how it would be done on another device.


Language Dictionaries

I like what the Kindle can do for other languages.  The main thing I think is really cool is the ability to use a translation dictionary to get instant definitions of words.

The Kindle has a dictionary look-up feature.  If you come across an unknown word, you can arrow over to it and a quick definition pops up.  To look into it further, you can click ENTER, read the full entry in the dictionary, and then click BACK to return to your reading.  The default for this is a standard English dictionary.  With the Kindle, I found out that if I wanted to read something in another language, I could change the primary dictionary to a translation dictionary.  Whenever I come across an unknown word (which is usually much more common in another language than in English), I can click over to it and see a definition.  This is a really nice feature.

I'm not sure what program is similar to this on other devices.  Clearly it's possible to implement on other devices, I've just never seen it.  One of the things that makes it work on the Kindle is buying a good dictionary.  A good dictionary is not free because it takes time to put together.  Further, on the Kindle, a good e-dictionary is one that can handle the grammatical complexities of a language and return the correct word more often than not.  For example, it would be hard to read the news in another language without a better-than-free dictionary.  I am therefore skeptical that there exists a good replacement for this on another device without costing a lot.

One gripe I have with Amazon on this is that there are no good dictionaries for sale on the Kindle store.  All of the dictionaries I have browsed through are low rated.  They are e-versions of basic printed versions, and they tend to fail to handle all of the grammatical complexities that a good e-dictionary can.  These dictionaries sell for cheap.  I had to go to another site and buy some good e-dictionaries (which were not cheap, by the way).  I am not sure why Amazon doesn't have good dictionaries for sale currently.

Availability of Materials


My other point is that it is easier to get things to read in other languages via e-books.  It is harder to get printed books in a lot of other languages because local bookstores and libraries have no or few books that I would want to read in other languages (except for maybe Spanish).  Further, ordering a printed book on the Internet is not much easier.  Amazon.com, for example, does not have a large selection of foreign language books.  On top of that, such books would be imported, so they come at a higher price.

With e-books, I have had a much easier time finding books.  There is a lot of stuff for free on various websites.  Further, I don't have to pay an extra import fee to download something that isn't free.  Finally, there is a lot more than books that one can read.  I mentioned before how I am reading a lot of websites on my Kindle.  For languages, my favorite thing is to read the news using the program Calibre.  As I mentioned in my previous post on the Kindle, I can read newspapers for free by using Calibre to download content off of its website.

Review of the Amazon Kindle 3

For Christmas I got an Amazon Kindle, despite previously not wanting one (see this post).  Here are my impressions of it so far.

What is the Amazon Kindle?  Why Would One Want One?

Here is Amazon.com's page all about it.

Stuff I Already Have to Read

After a week or so with the Kindle, it dawned on me how many PDF files I go through on a regular basis.  Any mathematical paper I have to read (or write for that matter) is available in PDF format.  I even have links to a lot of full math books for free in PDF.  The Kindle is great for reading PDFs.  Reading them on the Kindle is better for me than reading them on a laptop because of the Kindle's e-ink screen and it's light weight.  I also like being able to underline and annotate my papers electronically.  It's really a lot like having a piece of paper on the screen.  In the past, I have never been able to sit still in front of a computer screen and read page after page of a long paper.  My solution has therefore been to print it out papers, which is fine.  The Kindle is convenient because not only do I save paper, when I'm on the go, I don't have to carry a pen and a large stack of papers to do work.  Further, when I am done with a paper, I don't have to worry about filing it away in a large physical filing system. Given the length of most of these PDF files, this really is a convenient.

Stuff I Already Want to Read

In a previous post, I wrote about how the Internet has changed the way people read.  The point is, people (including myself) have developed an aversion to sitting down and reading anything long.  With myself, I saw that I was used to the rapid-fire bombardment of information I got from browsing the Internet.  The Kindle, I have seen, makes it easier to combat this tendency.

While on the Internet, I sometimes come upon articles that are much longer than I have the time or the attention span to read, but which look interesting.  What I figured out how to do with the Kindle is to save those articles for later.  I can simply save the html file, e-mail them to my Kindle and viola I have reading material for later.  This takes a webpage and stores it on the Kindle as if it were a document.  There are two reasons I have for doing this.  First, on the Kindle I find this more convenient than fiddling with its Internet browser.  I have the cheaper Wi-fi only version of the Kindle, so I wouldn't always be able to access these webpages via the Internet anyway.  Second, I like what the Kindle does to these html files to strip them down.  The Kindle gives me the page's text--that is, the only part of the page I want to pay attention to--in a crisp, clean, e-ink screen format.  I don't have to deal with all of the other flashing side-bar ads, links, and any other extra noise that come with reading something on the Internet.  It is much easier to read webpages like this.

Here's the Kindle displaying a webpage I sent to it.  I really like being able to focus on the words. 

On top of this, I found out about a way to have content from the Internet, like the news, automatically delivered to my device for free.  Among a few options I discovered, I like the program Calibre the best.  Calibre does a lot of other things too, like convert e-books among several different file formats.  (This, by the way, makes it so that, except for DRM books, I can convert anything I want to read to formats that the Kindle reads.)  What Calibre does with automatic delivery is the following: it goes to websites (this can be blogs or newspapers or anything), takes the articles there and places them in a convenient e-book format (which, by the way, is a lot nicer than going to the websites and reading them on a browser); it then e-mails them to my free kindle account; when the Kindle is using the wireless, the content is delivered automatically to my device; I can have Calibre do this manually, or I can schedule it to do this automatically at a time where I know that my computer will be on.  (I would prefer a website to do this automatically and for free and at the same quality as Calibre, but I haven't found one that is good enough.)  Of course, if I didn't care about money, I could pay Amazon to deliver the news to me at a steep premium.  Here is an example of the newspapers they deliver, from which I get free content via the newspaper's webpage.

Learning Another Language

I have found some pretty cool features of the Kindle which help me read in other languages.  I'll post more on this later.

The Kindle Is Not What I Thought It Was (I Don't Mean That in a Bad Way)

Before I got the Kindle, I read up on it quite a bit.  I was more or less informed about what the technical capabilities of it were.  I had seen a demo model of it on display at Target.  I thought what I would mostly be using it for is to read books for fun and to perhaps bring it to church.  I thought I would have to buy books from the Amazon store on a regular basis.  However, I see that the Kindle is not quite what I thought it would be; I don't mean that in a bad way; what I mean is that I am using the Kindle more for things that I didn't think I would be using it for than for things I did think I would be using it for.  I am mostly using it for the things I have described above.

As far as reading books goes, however, I do like the Kindle experience.  I like being able to order books instantly.  I like the vast selection of free, out-of-copyright books available on various sites.  I like putting a lot of books on a light, compact, portable device.  I just don't sit down and read books as much as I do the other things I mentioned above.

Also, I still have physical books, i.e. non e-books, on my shelf that I still plan to read.  Before getting the Kindle, for some reason it seemed that getting a Kindle meant that, in large part, I would be committing to reading books exclusively on the Kindle; that, of course, is a silly notion.

Kindle vs. Other E-Book Readers

What about other e-book readers?  In choosing an e-book reader, I preferred the Kindle because it was the highest rated of all the e-book readers.  The Kindle, from what I have read, has the best e-ink display and the fastest page refresh of all the e-ink readers.  The other e-book readers have some good qualities, but for me the Kindle wins out.  The Sony reader has a touchscreen, which is nice, but because of that, it doesn't have as nice of a display; further, in actually using the Kindle, I have found that being able to navigate quickly not a big deal because by its nature an e-book reader is for reading longer documents. The Barnes and Noble Nook, which is the second most popular dedicated e-book reader, has a small LCD touchscreen below its e-ink screen; in theory this is convenient, however reviews said that the touchscreen was slow.

There are also some more expensive options for portable reading.  Barnes and Noble came out with a Nook Color.  It's an "e-book reader" with an LCD screen.  As such, it can do color, it has a touchscreen, and it's fast.  It is also capable of doing other multimedia (music and video).  Apparently, it can unlocked and turned into a Android-based tablet computer.  It runs for about $250.  More expensive than that, there are tablet computers like the iPad and the Galaxy Tab.  Tablet computers can do books in addition to all of the other things that they can do.  They are a few times more expensive than a simple Kindle.  My opinion on these devices versus the Kindle is that the Kindle does reading better; I would rather read off of an e-ink screen on a lighter device if I am reading something longer (as I explained above).

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