But in spite of all these factors, I’ve still bought one. Why?

The fact is, I’m impatient. I’ve long seen the benefits of digital media. Indeed, I’ve even published books electronically myself. A decade ago, I owned a PalmOS device (a Handspring) on which I read a number of ebooks as well as kept track of appointments, played games, and so on. That device finally failed, and I didn’t replace it, so all the content I’d bought for it, while still in my computer’s archive folder, is essentially lost. Still, I did enjoy the handheld experience, and know I’ll use any ebook reader I finally acquire. There’s the practical issue of portability, too. My husband and I live in our motorhome nearly half the year, and there is just not enough room to carry all the books I’d like to have available in there.

But what about that iPhone I’ve written about so often? I’ve even written about the Kindle for iPhone app on this blog and I use it still. But as much as I love my iPhone, it is the case that my eyes aren’t as good as they used to be (which never was that great), and these days I simply cannot read for long or as well on even as good a screen as the iPhone’s simply because of its small size. I find that although I have read entire books on it, I don’t retain as much sense from them as I want to. Also, the iPhone app doesn’t let me highlight blocks of text to refer to later. Yes, I can create bookmarks, but that’s not quite the same. Since I have bought some of my textbooks for grad school as ebooks, these are critical shortcomings.

In short, the Kindle for iPhone app is a stopgap. I had hoped Apple would announce a tablet computer or ebook reader this summer, and if they had I would have held off a while longer, but they haven’t. Oh, if they do eventually come out with a new gadget, especially if they make a deal with Amazon to allow Kindle-formatted ebooks to work on it, I will cheerfully throw my Kindle up on eBay and jump on the killer iBook. But until that day, Amazon is getting my somewhat grudging allegiance and money.

The way a BBS worked was that a geek somewhere would install special software and at least one modem that allowed incoming calls to connect to his computer (it was almost always a guy), where the visitor could see the “board” and post his or her own messages in a thread, or start a new topic. These systems were text-based, mostly due to bandwidth limitations, but also because most personal computers in those days were not capable of displaying much if anything in the way of graphics beyond ASCII art.

So why am I dredging up these ancient memories? It’s because this week I started an online Master’s program, and the software used for that, called Blackboard, reminds me sooooooooo much of the old BBS!

Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not disparaging the use of this technology. It seems to work pretty well, and of course it is not anywhere near as primitive as my comparison implies. With the new software it is possible to embed videos and other multimedia (do people talk about “multimedia” anymore?), and of course we can include links to other sites in our posts since the Web has been invented, which adds another whole dimension to what was possible back in the day. But the general structure, with hierarchically organized message threads and primarily text communications, is very dejá vu-inducing.

So, I’m feeling right at home. And I don’t miss the static-y whine of the carrier tone at all.

College study is essentially an exercise in knowledge management, and one of the tools of the KM trade is the ubiquitous database. Now it just so happens that in the past few weeks one of the companies who make a DB system I’ve used for over a decade, FileMaker Pro, have released an iPhone app that syncs with their consumer-grade product, Bento. I’ll be honest and say that when I’d tried out the 1.0 version of Bento about a year ago I was unimpressed. I saw no reason to buy it since I already had FMPro (albeit an obsolete version), and could use it for whatever I wanted to do, thank you very much. But ah! To sync with my iPhone! That’s a different story!

So, first I bought the iPhone app (for $4.99, a real steal for a DBMS), and it was pretty cool, but I quickly bumped up against the limitations of a handheld device’s small screen and limited input capabilities. Then, remembering my earlier lack of enthusiasm for Bento 1.0, I thought I’d see if it was feasible to design and export my databases in FileMaker Pro. It is, sort of, but looks pretty cumbersome, and besides that, the version that I have (6.0) is so old it’s not even eligible for an upgrade, and lacks the tools required to export in the required format easily. I’d have to buy the latest version for either $299 or $499, depending on which flavor I chose. Bento 2.0, at $49, began to look a lot more attractive.

You guessed it. I caved. And I’m not sorry. Here’s one result:

 

Bento is pretty! The folks at FileMaker have put considerable effort into making form design painless. So, while this system lacks many of the more powerful bells-and-whistles of the pro software, including the ability to publish standalone versions of databases one builds with it, for personal use or within a small enterprise (where everyone can have a licensed copy of the enabling software) it is very impressive. And putting together good-looking and useful database apps quickly, then syncing them to my iPhone to carry with me wherever I go is fast, too. In just one day I’ve built and started using four databases that will help me stay on top of things in grad school, and I’ll be making more for other purposes as well, you can be sure.

If you look closely in the left column of the screenshot of my “Writing Assignments” database, you’ll see icons for several others, including “Classes”, “Reading Assignments”, and “Discussion Board Topics”. In addition to having the shells of these apps, thanks to instructor soon-to-be-Dr. Jeremy Littau’s superbly organized and early-delivered syllabus, I’ve already entered 27 reading assignments, 12 writing assignments and 26 discussion topic records in their respective “boxes” (/bento/ is Japanese for /box/), and within the same 24 hours have finished some of the readings and made notes about them in the appropriate records’ fields. I’m feeling much more confident now that I’ll be able to keep up with what I assume will be classrooms full of people a generation or two younger than me. Wish me luck!

The degree I’m embarking on is taught entirely online, so I’m sure I will encounter many new aspects of educational technology to write about here. And while the Mizzou J-school is very Apple-centric, maybe this week’s announcement of the new Kindle DX by Amazon.com portends things to come in the realm of e-textbooks, too. I’ve already used Kindle for iPhone to buy one of the required textbooks for my first class, and bought another one using Stanza on the iPhone, so in LOLcats parlance, “Wired? I is.”