An Invention
An Invention
The neon green digits on the short, black clock read 1:37 am. After promising yourself that you’ll never stay up this late again, you hastily finish filling in a worksheet, stuff it into a binder, and flip through the wrinkled pages of your assignment book. Read pages 178-245 in Chemistry textbook. Your strong resolve to finish homework before morning light plunges when you realize the difficulty of this subject. Heaving a tired sigh, you reluctantly open the cover of the enormous book, and flip through the glossy pages until the black number in the corner reads page 178. A picture of test tubes with colorful liquids, as well as the lettering: Thermodynamics of Chemical Equilibrium welcome you into the world of chemistry. But when you begin seeing words such as titration curves, acid-base equilibria, and electroneutrality, panic sets in—there is no way that your tired brain can even begin to understand the long, complicated sentences, confusing vocabulary, or the equations throughout the extensive chapters. You valiantly take another sip of a Starbucks Double Shot, and force yourself into the chapter. You get halfway into a sentence when a warm fog seems to wrap itself across your eyes, making your eyelids slowly droop. Sleep is good, you groggily think to yourself, as you drift further and further away from the white pages of the textbook.
What if there was a way to make school readings easier to understand and remember? I think that the invention of an electronic book would be an effective invention. It would be in the shape similar to that of a regular book, but instead of pages it would have a touch screen, a stylus, and photovoltaic panels (for charging) on the back of it. At school, a student would be given microchips (instead of textbooks, novels, or packets), which would include all the material and readings that would normally be within the pages of a book or worksheet. The student would simply insert the microchip into the side of the device, the screen would activate, and up would pop the material.
On the side of the reading would be an “options” bar, which would include choices such as highlight, reword, define, remember, and summarize, for example. In order to highlight a particular sentence or word, you would simply double tap the section with the stylus after selecting “highlight,” and that section would be highlighted with a specified color. The “reword” button would be used on a complicated sentence that the user might not understand. After clicking “reword,” the user would tap on the beginning of the sentence and once again at the end; the device would load, and up would pop a different version of the same sentence, understandable for the average student. To define a word, the user, after clicking “define,” would double tap on a word, and the definition would be revealed to them. The “remember” button would be used after highlighting a particular segment of the reading. After tapping “remember,” the device would copy the excerpt into a personal page to be stored for later use. In order to summarize a paragraph, the user would simply highlight and tap “summarize” and up would pop a summary of the paragraph. However, since most students would choose to summarize an entire chapter, there would be a limit to the number of summaries that could be used in each chapter. Finally, there would be chapter reviews and practice tests, so the user could determine whether he/she understood and remembered the material.
I think that this device would be a great tool for students who want some extra help with learning textbook material, comprehending novels, and retaining the information as well. While some teachers might think that this is cheating or too similar to Spark Notes, I disagree. If students used this device properly, I think that it would help them do better on tests, and to fully comprehend the material.