Kindle coming to students
Last month I while visiting Tara and Dale I had the chance to play with Tara’s new Kindle, the electronic book reader from Amazon. Given that I like gadgets and books a lot, it is only natural that I would be most intrigued by this device…. And I quite liked it. The price point still seems high to me, but given that you can carry 200 books with you, music and more, i could be a very cool device for us global nomads. Tara gives her first impressions on her blog, but my short interactions was pretty positive: The screen looks like paper. That it does not support PDFs is a big disappointment, one I hope they address in future versions. And the future is almost here: Today Amazon confirms that they will release a student version–larger screen better suited to text books. Beyond that details are sketchy. My list of features would include:
1) True Wi Fi, not just Amazon’s whisper set
2) Either pricing text books at a student price or the ability to sell it after you finish a course (10 dollars seems like a good price point to me in the over inflated text book price market)
3) Better annotation technologies–highlighting, stickies, maybe even linking to online articles that you may want to highlight.
4) I would love if it could switch from greyscale to colour for charts and maagzie supscriptions.
5) Battery life. Reports on the original Kindle suggest that batter life is pretty good…but it has got to be better.
6) Multi touch interface–for better annotation.
7) true rss feed support to get access to blogs and newspaper–not through Amazon, which charges for this, but through wifi.
resizable font (which the current kindle does)
9) sd slot so you can expand your collection easily.
10 Support for every format–PDF, Doc, Text etc.
I am sure there are mroe features I am missing, but given I have only play with one for an hour….What are your thoughs?
For those in a market of an ebook reader, I found the ebook reader matrix a helpful tool.
Thanks for the Kindle news!
The textbook industry isn’t going to cut margins without a serious fight.
While you ticked off a list of technological features for the next generation textbook, you ignored the elephant in the room.
Why is any school anywhere using textbooks in any form? Electronic textbooks are just crappy instructionist tools written by unimaginative committees dominated by bureaucrats lacking both talent or expertise.
This is the golden age of book publishing. Schools should be littered with trade books written by experts. They exist on every conceivable subject at every developmental level in convenient book form.
Why not have students read books written by experts who share their passion, insight, flare for language and expertise rather than the overpriced schlock peddled by multinational textbook and standardized testing (you can’t have one without the other) companies?
Textbooks, in any form, are educational kryptonite and learning prophylactics. Teachers depend on them as a substitute for thinking.
Jeff, you work in private schools unrequired to use either textbooks OR test students, but choose to do so anyway.
Perhaps you can convince your school and others to break their dependence on textbooks (paper or online) and testing while Amazon or some other company develops the next generation eBook (an idea nearly as old as the videophone).
PS: I wrote about “The End of Textbooks” here 4 or five years ago – http://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+end+of+textbooks%3a+with+so+many+vital+sources+of+information…-a0102792759
Great points Gary!
I agree that if anyone should be able to break this textbook bond that has been formed it should be international schools. We don’t have NCLB we don’t have to prepare reports for a state or local government. If anyone in the world should be able to move ahead in this new information rich world it should be private schools, and especially those in the international world.
I still think what Shaun writes about the Kindle holds true….think of the connections teachers could give kids? The content they could push that would be more relevant, more up to date then today’s text book. Now…..how do we convince the boards that this is the future….that I don’t have the answer to……yet.
Hi Shaun, Jeff and Gary,
First, Shaun: I have held and used the very device you are describing. A textbook size machine that allows students to annotate pdf,s read e-books, subscribe and follow RSS feeds, access the web using wi-fi, with a full-color screen. It’s even able to play videos from the web, video games, edit photos, create presentations, and so on. The battery life is six hours, and it is lightweight enough to carry in a purse or shoulder bag. It’s not the next-generation Kindle, rather the current generation of Lenovo Thinkpad Tablet PC. In fact, every student and teacher at my school have one of their own, and we’re using it in all the ways you envision schools using a newer version of the Kindle, and many more!
In fact, if Amazon did equip its Kindle with all these features, wouldn’t it push the price up to the same range as the tablet pcs, anyway?
Regarding Gary, not sure what you have against textbooks. “Educational kryptonite and learning prophylactics”? “Teachers depend on them as a substitute for thinking”? Those are pretty broad and narrow-minded generalizations. I happen to use an e-text that I find extremely useful for student learning, and just as all good teachers do, it is simply ONE of MANY resources I employ in my teaching. If you know of some free alternative to a text from which students of higher level courses like my AP and IB Econ classes can glean the basic principles of our science in a format that would be recognizable and acknowledged by leading universities as valid and reputable, please, by all means, point me in that direction.
In addition to our econ text, my student read various Economics blogs and news sources, write on their own blogs, and conduct extensive research on real world scenarios illustrating the principles laid out in, yes, their TEXTBOOK. So, what’s your beef with textbooks? I don’t see what makes them such an evil and mind-numbing curse on education when they’re used wisely and as one of many tools in the classroom.
JEFF, WHASSUP? How are ya? Cool UTT wiki! I’ll try to contribute to it! PEACE! Jason
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