My Kindle and Me Revisited

I have been intending to write this post reflecting on my initial Kindle owning comments last August for some time now, as I felt that three weeks' ownership may have been too short a time in which to form solid conclusions about it.

I was initially annoyed that I had not found a book which I enjoyed reading on the device. At first this was down to my poor choices and succumbing to marketing blurb, but discovering that a reader has a week in which to apply for a full refund of their purchase, and finding a book I wanted to read helped matters as far as I was concerned.

At the time I objected to the default font. This is still true, but in the absence of anything more beautiful I have grudgingly come to accept it, and I just hope that future Kindles will have come equipped with an aesthetically pleasing alternative. I also did not like the fact that the reader's progress is measured by a percentage rather than the feel of a stack of pages betwixt left or right hand. I still do not like this, but knowing that most YA novels I read are around 400 pages, I have come to equate 5% remaining to some twenty pages.

As is usual in the twenty-first century, I have therefore adapted my habits to sate technology's restrictions, but it is what technology is able to offer over the codex book that now makes me look for the 'Kindle Edition' links on Amazon.

Not only do I own a Kindle, but I also own an Android tablet and smartphone. Both of these devices have the Kindle app installed. While I do not use it frequently, being able to pick up the book I am reading at home  (after a quick sync) while I am stuck waiting for something is impressive. I know some people carry their Kindle with them at all times, but I am not one of them. I do, however, always have my phone. The usefulness of this app seems massively underrated in the people to whom I have spoken, and it is one of the things that puts technology ahead of its paper counterpart.

Technology also sets itself apart from paper when it comes to reading for academic purposes. Many of my printed books have PostIt notes sticking out of them at all angles to mark passages which I either have, or need to, transcribe to the computer for possible use in my writing. With a Kindle (or the Android apps) it is possible simply to select the text to mark it, and then log into my Amazon account on a computer to access it when it is needed. It is also possible to add annotations, but as I rarely do this in printed books, I have not found the need for its electronic equivalent.

Although seemingly small, these two features afforded the Kindle reader by nature of its medium make it a very different tool for the 'professional' reader as technology is providing something that print cannot.

Six months ago I wrote that I was struggling to build a relationship with my Kindle. I will accept that I have now built a professional relationship with it, and if it was the case that Kindle books were always cheaper than their paper alternative, or that people could buy Kindle books as gifts, the relationship would probably be stronger. But we all know that relationships need to be worked at, and I guess that one challenging a reluctance to pay £4.99 for a text when a 'Like New' copy is available for a penny still needs a little more time.

As a brief postscript, I believe there are some features available to US Kindle users - such as sharing with other users and 'borrowing' texts - which still have to cross the Atlantic and these are likely to make a also likely to make a positive difference when (or if) they arrive on British shores.

To self-publish or not to self-publish?

In a discussion last week, the question of self-publishing academic essays and theses came about. Not in what could be called vanity journals which will publish anything for a fee, but uploading them to sites such as academic.edu.

Well before social media websites made people feel they should share every aspect of their lives I already had a personal website and decided to put all my undergraduate essays there. In doing so, I felt I was staking a claim to my tiny corner of the Internet but also contributing to the available collection of online knowledge. Therefore, when I joined academia.edu a couple of years ago, I uploaded one of my MEd essays and my thesis with little concern.

It was suggested that there are inherent risks and issues with sharing in this way: the primary concern being that once ideas are online they can easily be borrowed without attribution. From another perspective, problems also arise as there is no peer review and the shared work could therefore be of no more value than articles in vanity journals.

As an inveterate sharer these two points, among others, gave me pause for thought.

Having thought about it, I have decided that I will continue to share my work.

Firstly, I believe that sharing work is important within the academic community. I understand that sharing globally is not the same as within the confines of an institution, but the serendipitous connections we make within the walls of a seminar room have the potential to be multiplied with a potential international readership.

Secondly, by having published it, the work is dated and archived for eternity. Should it be borrowed it is easy to show the date of the original work in the upload. However, I would like to think (hope?) that any readers would choose to reference it if they found it useful.

Thirdly, I believe that I am only sharing work that is worth sharing. I am sure – just as with any self-publishing – that some of the work that is shared is of a questionable standard, but that is where the reader has to take responsibility. Only a foolish student will think that the Internet can provide the easy answers to their questions: a wiser student can use the Internet to their benefit as they can access paper and other research to help them support and develop their own ideas. They have to pick and choose and judge the work for themselves.

Fourthly, the Internet is another way of networking and (as I have discovered) a useful way of letting people find and know about your work on top of conferences and more traditional networking.

Fifthly, it provides a means by which an individual can see how they have developed as an academic. In the same way as Facebook is my diary and photo album for the past five years (and counting), academia lets me see how my ideas have matured since the start of my postgraduate study. While I could simply look back through my Word documents on the computer, academia allows me to see them alongside people’s comments and search terms and thereby provides a helpful tool for personal reflection.

I will stop at five reasons for going public with my work as I know there are counterarguments to all of them. Ultimately, it has to be up to the individual whether they feel happy to share their work with the largest audience in the history of the human race and whether they feel there is any value to them in sharing it.

Originally written for the Children's Literature at Cambridge blog and first posted there earlier today.

A Week in the Life: Friday

After having turned my light off at 12.05am, it was somewhat annoying to wake at 6.06am and not be able to enjoy returning to any form of sleep before Jim Naughtie started discussing snow and football. The alarm duly went off and the morning routine fell into its usual pattern. Strange snow/ice combination on the car needed scraping, but relatively light traffic meant an 8.15am arrival at school.

8.50am - Registration: Year 12 Tutor Group. No notices today, but lovely to be able to congratulate a handful of students whose teachers felt that they had made an improvement since their report at the end of last term; thanks go to colleagues who did not just delete my e-mails asking for an update on my tutees' progress.

9.15am - Period 1: Year 11 English. The second of two lessons re-attempting another controlled assessment. During the hour I managed to mark three from last week and then collect in a further 27 to mark. I made it very clear that there was no way in which the essays would be marked by next week as my posthuman essay hangs in a Damoclean manner.

10.35am - Period 2: Year 8 English. In a moment of weakness, I had booked the hall for this lesson and the students have the opportunity to recreate an updated version of the Mechanicals' first appearance in A Midsummer Night's Dream. There were some fantastic performances (and my opinion was seconded by the Drama teacher who came in towards the end of the lesson to prepare for his next lesson).

11.35am - Period 3: Free. Marking another small sample of last week's controlled assessments. Also check with friends whether they will be arriving tonight (as was the original plan) or whether the weather has changed anything; they will now be with us for coffee tomorrow.

I manage to have lunch at 12.40pm and at 1.00pm I return to my room in an unsuccessful bid to tidy my desk. I do not refuse when offered a slice of birthday cake by one of the friends of a form member lunching there.

1.35pm - Period 4: Year 10 English Literature. We discuss a Vernon Scannell's Nettles which the group had been reviewing for homework and then spend time making connections between it and Simon Armitage's Nettles.

2.35pm - Period 5: NQT Meeting. We usually bring cakes to help us through our meeting, but my mentee is not in school this afternoon, so I take advantage of the staff (and sixth form) privilege of being able to leave at the end of period 4 and head home.

I arrive home at 3.10pm having had the second of the bi-weekly hands-free parental conversations and sit down with a cup of tea, Facebook, e-mails and little blog writing until 4.30pm when I feel compelled to open my posthuman essay and consider the next section.

I quickly realise that a Friday afternoon after work is not the best time to be trying to write. I therefore read through what I have written so far, making corrections and developing a couple of ideas which now seem to be presented in a somewhat brusque manner. My wife arrives home at 5.15pm; we have a cup of tea and then I return to the proofreading at 5.30pm.

At 5.45pm it is time to get ready to head to the Cathedral for tonight's recording instalment and I am charged with picking up fish and chips on the way home at 9.00pm.

The recording session is hard work and by 8.20pm everyone is flagging. Nevertheless, we somehow manage to get through to 9.00pm by which time we have apparently recorded enough to make a CD.

I eventually escape from the Cathedral and stop on the way home to pick up food, encountering an eight minute delay while the fish is cooked for us, and arrive home shortly before 9.30pm.

We enjoy supper and a bottle of wine to the accompaniment of some more television from weeks ago.

Washing up completed, bed calls at 11.30pm, with the tacet reminder that friends will be arriving in eleven hours' time.

A Week in the Life: Thursday

Radio. Alarm. Routine. At school at 8.05am.

In a manner not dissimilar to Tuesday, this morning's timings are all slightly altered to allow for this term's extended lunch during which a range of charity events will be held.

8.50am - Registration: Year 12 Tutor Group. Two notices this morning and then catching up with a couple of people before the bell.

9.00am - Period 1: Year 10 English. I model the planning process for their creative writing controlled assessment and speak to every student about their ideas for their piece. Official planning sheets all completed in preparation for the hour's writing straight after half-term..

10.15am - Period 2: Year 13 English Literature. Continuing work with the poetry collection and we hear mini-presentations on Browning, Dickinson and Rossetti.

Thursdays are the days on which I have all my frees timetabled in order to allow me to go to Cambridge for PhD seminars. However, because of tonight's recording I am obliged to save myself driving a two hundred mile round trip, and I have the opportunity to do some reading and add a few words to my posthumanism essay.

By 4.30pm my essay stands at some 2,740 words and my brain feels as if it has been clubbed with a hard club-shaped clubby thing (even helpful similes escape me), so it is clearly time for a break and a cup of tea. And the first bit of blog writing today.

Back to the computer at 4.55pm until my wife arrives home at 5.20pm. We get to catch up for a few minutes before I have to head out to the Cathedral for the recording session at 6.00pm.

From 6.00pm to 9.00pm we are in the Cathedral recording the first half of a CD that is intended to be a fund-raiser when it is released. It all seems to go well, but recording it a tiring process, both mentally and physically.

As the recording finishes, the Directors of Music kindly invite people to their house for food: having not eaten this evening, I gratefully receive a ladleful of beef stew and a glass of red wine.

I am back home at 9.55pm at which point I finish today's blog, check Facebook and e-mails and decide that I have finished for the day.

Bed and a book beckon at 10.10pm.

A Week in the Life: Sunday

For this week only, I thought I would try returning to the idea behind the blogs from the early 1990s. Blogs (or web logs) were initially used as a type of online diary - or journal, to use the seemingly favoured American term - in which details of people's personal lives were recorded. Coupling this with the fact I always find myself desperately searching for time to do things, I thought I would try to find out where my time went by cataloguing this week a little more carefully.

Up at 8.00am, despite not being needed at the morning service at the Cathedral today, and spend an hour drinking tea, tidying the kitchen, sorting the washing, and doing a couple of administrative tasks on the computer.

By 9.00am, my posthuman essay is on the screen as I once again try to find the details of the creation of Talos in Greek mythology. Dinello's book Technophobia! tells me it is in Homer's Iliad, but I can find no reference in any online translation. I message a couple of Classics teachers on Facebook asking for help.

At 9.45am, I give up (again) on Talos, shower, and then pop to the supermarket to get the weekly staples. Back by 10.30am and find a very helpful reply on Facebook which gives me a link to a website which unfortunately appears to be down today. Out of frustration, I also post a status update asking for help from anyone.

Receive a phone call at 10.45am from my wife asking me to pick her up as she stayed in the Cathedral Close last night to avoid having to carry her costume and bits and pieces up the road while trying to maintain her balance in the snow, after the charity performance of Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe.

Back to the essay by 11.15am and manage to piece together bits and pieces from the suggestions offered on Facebook and some original texts: none of which is anything to do with the Iliad.

A lunch break of coffee and croissants at 12.15pm and then return to the essay at about 1.00pm. Tidy up and finish the section about Talos and rue the fact that some three hundred words have taken all morning to put together as a result of the poorly referenced comments in the original book I was using.

Having finished the section, I turn to start writing today's blog as I think it will be easier to try and do it in small chunks rather than a mammoth task before bed. 1.30pm and the next short section of the essay on Frankenstein's monster beckons.

At 2.50pm it is time to head to the Cathedral for a short rehearsal followed by Evensong at 3.30pm.

Home at just after 4.30pm, cup of tea and try to sort out lessons for Tuesday as I had forgotten that tomorrow evening will be taken up with a Year 9 Options Evening until 9.00pm at school.

Lessons for Tuesday and some school administration bits and pieces completed by 5.30pm. Return to the posthuman essay to clarify how to reference ancient Greek texts, and revisit and extend earlier notes on Frankenstein.

Finish the first draft of the Frankenstein section and synced my USB drive for school tomorrow by 6.50pm, and hope that my wife has also finished preparing lessons for tomorrow so that we can spend the evening together over food and catching up on a couple of hours' of television that is still waiting from mid-January.

Bed finally calls at 10.20pm.