Nearly a month has passed since I first reported the arrival of my Kindle. I’m still not sure how widespread its adoption will be in Australian education but I just thought I’d share some of my experiences. Quite a number of people commented and linked back to my earlier post, and I hope you’ve seen Jude O’Connell’s post Kindle-ing Discussion from late October which talks about her initial reactions. In it Jude has also listed some great resources for getting free or near free books for the Kindle. I’d encourage you to read her post because in it Jude does describe some of the features of the Kindle that she finds attractive.
I still don’t want to get into discussions about whether the Kindle is the best e-book reader on the market for Australian educators and school librarians to consider. However I do think that Australian education systems should be taking a serious look at it.
It is hard to believe that I’ve had my Kindle a month. In that time I’ve read 2 books including one very large one, and downloaded another 20. (I’m all ready for my next extended plane flight.) I’ve uploaded pdf format documents into it using Amazon’s free conversion service, and I’ve also added some books from other sources such as .mobi format books. Just recently Amazon has belted out an upgrade which allows you to add pdf formats directly to your Kindle (by connecting it to your computer and treating the Kindle as an extra storage unit), and you can now change the orientation of the document. The upgrade has also extended the length of time the battery will last “between drinks”.
The International version is the 6″ Kindle, and I see this as useful in particular for secondary students and teachers reading fiction. I don’t think this one will replace textbooks for science etc. I think probably that will be the Kindle DX, which is not yet available in an international version, which is in American A4 size.
Where the 6″ Kindle is brilliant is in the delivery of fiction. What about the complete works of Jane Austen, or Emily Bronte, or Thomas Hardy or even William Shakespeare for $2.99? Amazon has taken advantage of the fact that many of “the classics” are in the public domain. Some individual titles are available to US Kindle owners free, while International users pay $2 for delivery, but that is just a feature of the deal that they have done in Australia. Basically those books are coming free. It is just the cost of download that you are paying for.
The other thing I’ve discovered is that using your computer as the “half way house” you are able to transfer books from one Kindle to another. This is really good news for school libraries.
One thing I have discovered is that if you transfer a pdf document directly to your Kindle, this is sometimes not as useful as it sounds, because often the formatting of the original pdf is preserved. What that basically means is that if the text is relatively small in the original document, it will be squidgy small on your Kindle, and the usual text-sizing ability of your Kindle will have been disabled for that document. I’ve continued to use Amazon’s free conversion service to get the document in their (azw) format.
So I guess you have to ask yourself whether the purchase cost of $259 US is worth the investment? If you had a bank of Kindles available in your school library, would students borrow them? If you encouraged parents to purchase one, and then provided Wuthering Heights for the student, would that be worth while?
I’m, as always, interested to know what your thoughts are.
13 Comments
How does this differ from just using a netbook as a reader? These have other uses as well. Is a Kindle just using the marketing model of the gillette razor - buy the device but the real money is in the consumables?
I have had my kindle now for a month and love it. I find it much easier to read from the kindle than I do from a computer screen. I have used Stanza desktop http://www.lexcycle.com/ to convert from either Gutenberg or documents on my computer. I have even placed a copy of the family history book I published onto my kindle. The only downside I’ve discovered is that you need to switch it off while the seatbelt sign is illuminated on a plane. So I couldn’t read for almost half my short flight to Sydney last weekend.
We have just purchased our first few Kindles so that staff can have try and see where the Kindle might best benefit our students. One thing we are concerned about is the ease of buying new books - it is one press away. How do you prevent students’ from just downloading whatever they want? Juust turning off the facility can be easily gotten around. Thanks for your blog - it is very interesting to see how others are using this new technology
Norman - I think I would just register one of the Kindles and then upload to all the others from your central store on your library computer. Then if students go to the Wireless store they can’t do anything because they don’t have an account for that Kindle. I’m not sure how feasible that solution is but perhaps someone else has an idea
Now they have released PC for Kindle (free) Ken, I think there is no reason that you couldn’t download Kindle books to your netbooks. I think the real money as far as Kindles used for education is likely to be in the textbook providers who will be trying to recoup a similar profit margin to what they get in their printed copies.
Kerrie, I have posted details about how to access kindle for PCs on my blog http://readingpower.edublogs.org/ I would be interested to hear if anyone is using kindle for PCs on netbooks. Regards,
Anne
I’m interested to know how that works Anne. Do you thinks kids will read a book on their netbook? Is the battery life good enough?
i have been thinking of getting a kindle or a nook for a while now and still cannot make up my mind. the main thing that has annoyed me about Ebook readers are that most specialty books are still not available on them. and i would be forced to keep buying books. has anyone found a solution to this problem? any other ebook stores besides the official amazon and barns and noble one?
Pierre, sometimes it is a copyright issue that causes the non-availability. There are a number of places now that are dealing in e-books, some “publishing houses” that are dealing in e-books only, but I think you are probably talking about non-fiction which is beyond my expertise
There is a Kindle Educators group on Ning if you want to check it out: http://edukindle.ning.com/
If the netbook has a 6-cell battery, the battery life can last an entire day at school. The other bonus is that if you want to read under the blankets after lights out you won’t need an itty-bitty book light.
Have had a Kindle for 2 weeks now and am still discovering more uses.
Find I’m probably reading a little faster than paper based books.
Can see that it will be particulary useful for those students who need class texts e.g English novels enlarged for easy reading while having it read aloud to them at the same time. Will purchase one for library for this purpose alone.
I have to agree with your comment Kerrie that school libraries should be taking a close look at the Kindle - even if it is just another example of an eReader, it is the first really useful version to be available in Australia. I’m very keen to see what the new Apple device will be like, but the pricetag will put it out of limits to be a bank of ebook readers for schools. That eBooks have a future is a certainty - just when we will roll these things out is not so clear. I might get a chance to experiment in 2010. I’ll keep you posted!
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