getting more familiar with Kindle

It feels like I'm spending lots of time getting content into the Kindle.  Hopefully this is only at the start of the semester and won't continue all semester long!  If it does continue, it's going to be more of a time drain than I really want!

For example - one professor gave us a stack of 30 or so double sided pages that we are going to use as extra readings this semester.  I threw them in my scanner and made them into .jpg files.  Some of the pages were a book thrown into a coppier and this was generation X of the photocopy.  Some were printed from the web and some were typed by the prof and printed. 

The typed and recent web-printed documents did OCR pretty well and became Kindle documents.

The book pages were cleaned up a bit - delete large black spots, change rotation and put into pdf format.

Converting a document to Kindle format isn't hard, but there are lots of small OCR generated typos that the OCD in me wants to fix, each and every one.  I'm trying to limit fixes to major formatting issues and things that change or confuse the ability to read the document. The time spent reviewing the document gives me a preview of what's in it as I skim for formatting and major word damage by the OCR tool.  It reads better on the Kindle, the notation and dictionary work great with these.

The PDF document is fast to create, even if I do edit the image slightly to remove unsightly blemishes.  But handwritten notes on the page, or things circled/highlighted before it was copied make me crazy.  They're fast to make, but slow to read.  No enlargement of the text is also a down side to the pdf format.

In the end, short term usability (2-3 class periods over the semester) means I shouldn't waste too much time on them.

It still gets attention from classmates when I pull it out.  I try to encourage them to ask questions about it, but after class, it's a tool, not a topic for classroom discussion.  Yes, professors ask too.  It's funny how many think it's the Apple iPad, just because it's big.  They think Kindle=small.  They're all amazed at the screen though.