It might just be the avid reader in me, but I cannot adjust to the new trend of reading textbooks online. Although I understand the financial reasons for buying e-textbooks and that classes are requiring more and more use of technology, I cannot help but feel like students are losing part of the fundamental experience of learning.

Apple recently announced a new line of textbooks for the iPad that is designed to be "interactive" by including videos and pop-ups to help enhance the textbook experience. Call me old-fashioned, but I think interacting with a textbook is more than watching a supplementary video. To truly get a sense of what the text is saying, you have to highlight, underline and annotate. And while with many resources you can digitally add these tools, some students lose comprehension when not physically working with the material. It's the same and the difference between taking handwritten notes as taking notes on a computer—those that are handwritten stick in the brain better.

However, while many professors complain about the use of e-textbooks because they are not usually the best versions of the work, technology is constantly being integrated into lecture plans and class discussions. Brandeis is ahead of the curve in some ways. Brandeis' LATTE site allows professors to post reading materials online rather than forcing us to buy a whole book when we are going to only read a section of it.

In this way, e-books not only only save us money, but also prove to be an important step in the age of going digital. While I may prefer to use a physical copy of the work we're discussing in class, it does seem as if it would be convenient to use the e-textbook version.

E-books may be useful for different types of classes and different reading materials merit different approaches to reading. A textbook for an introductory course in the natural sciences requires less interaction than a novel for an upper-level English class.

The student taking the class in natural sciences might actually benefit from a 30-second supplementary video, whereas the student taking a class on Shakespeare may need written annotations to make sense of the literature. But who says the natural science student could not benefit from annotating in the same way that the literature student could benefit from a supplementary video to make sense of what he or she is reading?

But if this is indeed where our education is headed, what really needs to happen is a complete overhaul of the e-textbook system. If we are going to proceed into the future with only our iPads and laptops and use e-books instead of real books, then we must have full online versions of books readily available, complete with the academic resources, such as footnotes, that are already included in textbooks.

I understand that I may be in the minority with this old-fashioned-stereotypical-English-major-annotation philosophy. Just because I am a kinesthetic learner does not mean that the rest of the campus is. In fact, some people learn better by seeing a visual representation of what they are supposed to be learning, and therefore e-books may be a useful learning tool for them.

As we as a community move into a digital future, we're realizing that we have to incorporate all styles of learning, even those who learn best by highlighting and underlining. Given the growing importance and significance of technology within the classroom, we do need to support and continue to grow with technology and embrace digital textbooks, while still finding ways for people with old-fashioned ways of reading to learn.

But in the end, I know I cannot be the only one who still prints out the LATTE documents so I can read and highlight physical pieces of papers, rather than staring at a screen.