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LITR 5431 American
Romanticism 2010 Student Midterm Samples #5 online texts comments |
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Christina Crawford, 5. Yay, No Text Book!
The way that
I have chosen to access the online texts is by e-mailing them to my kindle.
I received my kindle as a gift from my husband last year.
He hoped it would be useful to me for school, and it has been, but not
nearly so much as one would hope.
Anthologies, like the one suggested for this course, are the problem.
Whenever the text is an actual novel or work I can usually find it for
kindle. But the actual textbooks
required are never available as e-books.
Having the material available online has been super convenient and having
a kindle has made it very easy for me to access without using a lot of paper and
space on the weekly readings.
Chrissie Johnston: I like the online texts because all I have
to do is print them out, plus it is cheaper than buying the book, at least most
of the time. What I don’t like is that there are no page numbers to reference.
Page numbers are very helpful when giving a presentation and while following
one. I print out the online texts so that I can take notes. I could read them
online and be okay, but I have a photo
graphic memory and in order for it to work I have to “see” the page the
information is on. I guess the bottom line is I have to have a print copy, but
I’ll work with whatever makes my life easier.
Mary Ann Kane
Describe and evaluate your reading experiences with our
online texts.
I find it most helpful to print out the online texts in order
to read them. Not only does it make it easier to carry the readings with me to
work, lunch, etc., but it also allows me to highlight the parts I think are
important before class. I absolutely love the highlights and annotations you add
to them. They make the reading much more enjoyable and allow me to leave the
dictionary with my books as I am studying. While I understand most of the
terminology used, there are times when there is a word that has either changed
meanings from when it was written or I just am not familiar with its usage. Your
notes are very helpful in that aspect! Because you add so much good information
to the readings, your online texts are much more helpful and advantageous to the
Norton Anthology. I may still refer to the book on occasion, but for the most
part, I depend on your online texts for my reading.
The only observation I see worth making is that the longer
texts are sometimes in a font too small for my old eyes. In those cases, I
merely copy and paste them into a Word document and augment the font size to one
that is more readable for me. This is no problem for others, I am certain, so
don't make changes on my account. I appreciate all the work you do in order to
make the readings more understandable and accessible.
Cristen Lauck – It’s all good
For the most part, I don’t mind reading for web
print outs. I only read them after I have printed them out because I like to
highlight and take notes on the paper.
The only possible problems I could see are if people are unable to get to
a printer easily or are limited in the amount of paper or ink they can use. But
this can be avoided by going to the school computer labs if they can get there
in time. The only other observation is that when you put your notes in the
middle of the text it can possibly throw off our flow of reading or cause us to
solely concentrate on that line but I haven’t had any trouble with it. Perhaps
you might want to think about putting your comments at the end of a passage
instead of in the middle of the sentence. Just a thought. ☺
Danielle Maldonado, Experiences with online texts
I enjoyed very much the availability of online texts within
the course. I feel like it’s a lot more user-friendly than lugging around a
large textbook. It goes without saying, though, that as graduate students in
Literature we should own a good anthology of American Literature to have on hand
for teaching and future reference. I have several Norton Anthologies but it
wasn’t the exact text we were using in class.
With the cost of books today, offering our texts online gives
the opportunity for those struggling financially to either read on the computer
screen or print out texts a little at a time. I was happy to return my text and
get $75 back.
The course website and availability of online texts also
granted us instant access to course materials. Whether you had your book with
you or not – at school, at home, on a break at work – you could access texts via
the Internet, which made it easier to find time to read.
Some readers may find it difficult to read on their computer
screen. You’re also at a slight disadvantage if you don’t have printed texts in
class when we refer to passages. However, I find that some of the most outspoken
and knowledgeable students in the class never take notes or make annotations; it
really depends on how best you learn. It’s also probably no surprise that the
older you are, the more apt you are to print out your texts for well being of
your eyes.
I printed all of my texts out because I simply can’t sit at
my computer and read without demands for Elmo on Youtube. That also offered me
portability as to where I wanted to read, though. It’s much easier carrying
around 20 printed pages than a 10-pound text. I found the highlights and
annotations very helpful for reading but almost a hindrance for presenters. That
is, when searching for gothic elements or evidence of the sublime to present in
class, it’s difficult because you’ve already pointed out many instances. I was
worried that I was repeating information or “cheating” since it was already
available to the class.
One thing about your courses that I enjoy is the website.
It’s always available for me to check due dates, get more information and see
what others have done as well as access the course texts. In fact, I think that
students should still have to provide an online handout, presentation or notes
to be available the remainder of the semester with their presentation. It helps
to refer to that when writing your midterm or final. I would recommend
continuing to offer the course both ways. That way you’re reaching different
types of learners and students can read the texts as they wish.
Veronica Ramirez
The online texts have become an invaluable tool for this
class that at first I did not use. I always bought the books because I love to
have a hard copy, to be able to cuddle up on the couch, and also to have them as
reference for a later date. I also never sold the books back to the bookstore
because I like to have them in my personal library. This semester, I have
completely flipped, and in reality, I wish I had not bought the Norton Anthology
book as I have only picked it up once, when my laptop battery was dead.
The annotations in the online text not only make it easier to read, but
make it easier to understand what the importance of the text in relation to
romanticism is due to your notes.
Dr. White, you have made an avid book collector into a fan of online reading,
but more importantly your notes and annotations make it easy to follow the
class, go back and study the notes, and prepare for the midterm and class more
efficiently. In response to your
questions about printing: I usually
only print out the class notes, and not the text, since I know where to go back
and look for it. I really do
appreciate the work you put into your webpage since it makes the class more
organized and easy to maneuver through.
Another aspect of the online texts is that if you pull down
the Tool menu in the web browser it has the option to send it to OneNote.
I am not sure if you have used OneNote but it is a great tool because you
can save it on your computer, highlight it, and freely annotate the text as if
it were a printout and then print it out with additional annotations.
Thank you for working so hard on those online texts!
Amy Shanks,
Experience with
Online Text
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I like to print the text out because I don’t like reading off of computer
screens and I like to mark the text.
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One of the greatest benefits of having the texts online is seeing the
highlighted portions and notes from the instructor. I find them very
helpful!
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I have always found anthologies to be cumbersome. I prefer printing off the
selections
Helena Suess, Online Reading Experience
I have found the
online texts immensely useful, surprising myself a little as I’m a bit of a
luddite who will probably never accept the death of print, or carry around a
“book” made of circuitry and LCD rather than pages and ink. But being able to
read the course materials online saved me the trouble of purchasing and carrying
either one huge book or however many smaller ones. The annotations and boldface
combined with a web browser’s search feature make locating important passages
incredibly easy, and the possibility of copy-pasting into a word processing
document allows for notekeeping that doesn’t result in favorite books being
dogeared or scribbled over. My only issue with the format is pretty obvious: I
can only access it if I have a computer, and when traveling or running errands
I’d much rather stick a five-dollar quarter-pound paperback in my bag than lug
around a massy ingot of fragile and expensive electronics.