Amazon Kindle Paperwhite e-readerI’ve been reading a lot of denser stuff this month, and I gave been struggling a little with how to maintain it. I treated myself to a new poetry anthology around the Christmas break time, and I was dismayed to find myself struggling a little with it. I guess that for this modern girl, the classics are less of an instinct and more of a learned skill, and it’s a skill I was letting get rusty.

So, how to fix it? Well, I have been using my eBook reader to help me. Here’s how.

1) An eBook reader is perfect for ‘chunking’ text.

We use this term in our school programs to describe the act of taking a larger text and breaking it into smaller sections so as to appear less overwhelming to students. For example, I am doing a ‘novel study’ right now with my Grade 2 and Grade 3 classes of a simple, but lengthy French children’s book. We typically handle 2-4 pages a day, and the 60-page story should cover me though to March break.

My Kindle’s ‘time to read’ function serves the same purpose for me. It has options to tell you how much time you have left in the book as a whole, or in the chapter only. I downloaded an inexpensive and well-formatted (so far) anthology derived from the Harvard Classics series which has chapters designed to be read in 15 minutes a day. It’s the perfect length for me. When I find myself tiring, the ‘time to read’ progress indicator motivates me to finish the chapter.

2) The highlighting feature makes reviewing easy

I never was one to write in books, but I was a prolific note-taker. The eBook reader streamlines this process for me via the highlighting function. I have been reading some fabulous how-to guides this month which have been packed with useful information I want to retain for later. I have been simply highlighting, point-form style, as I go. When I’m done, I can go back and read just the highlights for a quick reinforcement. I have also pondered making an Evernote note for each of these books and copying the highlights into it. Then I can go back and read all my notes at once!

3) The copy-and-paste function frees information for other uses.

The best part about saving notes and snippets right from the book is being able to easily port them over for other uses. When I read in French, I can send whole paragraphs to Google Translate right from within the book’s text! If I want to save these translations, one tap will turn them into a note I can reference later. If I do go ahead with my plan to review my notes via Evernote, I will have a plain-text file I can convert into flash cards, or cheat sheets or screen-savers or any of countless other uses.

I’m a little sorry I let myself slide when it comes to reading more challenging materials. I used to mow through a hundred pages of classics a week during university! But I think that with practice, I can get that mental skill back again. I am using my eBook reader to do it, one step at a time.

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"I’m a journalist, a teacher and an e-book fiend. I work as a French teacher at a K-3 private school. I use drama, music, puppets, props and all manner of tech in my job, and I love it. I enjoy moving between all the classes and having a relationship with each child in the school. Kids are hilarious, and I enjoy watching them grow and learn. My current device of choice for reading is my Amazon Kindle Touch, but I have owned or used devices by Sony, Kobo, Aluratek and others. I also read on my tablet devices using the Kindle app, and I enjoy synching between them, so that I’m always up to date no matter where I am or what I have with me."

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