Grabbing a Screen Shot on the Kindle

I have been reading Disrupting Class on the Kindle and note that Christenson et al use a number of charts and graphs in the book.  (Is this why the book costs twice the usual price for a Kindle-enabled book?)  The resolution of the skinny-lined figures I’ve run across so far begged me to capture them and view them on a larger screen.  But how to do this?

“Save page as clipping” only preserves text, so I had to try the “screenshot” (the equivalent of “printscreen” on your PC) option.  The first thing to remember is that the screenshot can only be saved on an SD card, so if you don’t have an SD card handy, you are out of luck.  I pulled mine out of the digital camera, powered down the Kindle (important step), inserted the card (a 2-gigger), and fired the Kindle back up.

The keyboard shortcut to capture a screenshot on the Kindle is alt+shift+g.  I hit the keys and then powered down the Kindle to remove the SD card.  My PC found the screenshot in the root of the card, and I copied it to my computer.  When I opened the .gif file in my picture viewer, it was bigger and easier to read that it was on the Kindle.

If you keep a card in the Kindle, a lot of these steps would be unnecessary.  Grabbing these charts and graphs for later review using the “screenshot” function works just great.

You can find more keyboard shortcuts at MobileReads wiki.