EduKindle

One of the most active Kindle implementations that I know of in a school is taking place in Seneca IL under the supportive leadership of Kathy Parker and her “Kindle Crew.” Kathy’s unabashed enthusiasm for kids and reading has found another object in the Kindle. In addition to her enthusiasm, Kathy has been incredibly willing to take the time to share her experience and that of her colleagues and their students as they begin their Kindle journey. Her blog posts at the Ning make for interesting reading for anyone who wants to see the Kindle through the eyes of a middle schooler.

I want to share some of the information here because I think it is incredibly valuable for those of us who see a future for ereaders in education. I have long felt that font size and clarity play an important role for many students in becoming proficient readers. Over a year ago, I wrote about this and my thoughts at the time were these:

Research that I have seen over the years suggests that font size also plays a part in students’ ability to access text. We certainly see larger text supplied for very young eyes in picture books and early readers. What we don’t know about how the size of print affects older students’ reading is astounding. That is another reason to investigate the Kindle for educational purposes.

The first student reports bear this out:

We are 7th grade students at Seneca Grade School and enjoy using Kindles in our RTI class. One reason we like Kindles better than using a book because we can change the font size. We like the largest font because it makes us read faster.

There is so much concern today about the fact that most eighth-graders in this country do not read at a proficient level. In response to this concern, there are a ton of reading remediation programs to address this need, and many different theories about its cause. I guess I think that being able to see the text clearly is a pretty good starting place. The Seneca students are clear about their preference in font size, given a choice:

The font that everyone prefers to use with the Kindle 2 is the largest font size.

Um, that’s a 20 point font, far larger than what they encounter in their textbooks. So, a summary of this admittedly informal bit of research is that 1) kids naturally select the largest font available because 2) it makes them read faster. Hmmm, pretty encouraging stuff for literacy directors to consider as they plan for ways to get their struggling and resistant readers reading again.

I love the students’ comment that “when you go to the next page, the “flash” on the screen, doesn’t bother our eyes.” Take that, Nicholson Baker and your ilk! The ominous, untoward flash that has led many reviewers to recoil in indignation quite simply “doesn’t bother” their eyes.

The kids even comment on what is really the game-changer embedded in the Kindle: books come to you and follow you around:

…another feature is we like the fact we don’t have to carry around alot of books because the Kindle has a variety of titles downloaded onto it.

In Len Edgerly’s interview with him, the headmaster of Cushing Academy said something to the effect that being able to have in his bag a device that holds the greatest literature of western civilization is “thrilling” to him. Yes, that’s the scholar’s view of the Kindle! It is also something that matters a great deal to young readers–access to material that they want to read. Lee Ann Spillane in Orlando has noted that her high school students liked it best when she had books like Twilight loaded onto the Kindle. It provides tons of reading in a very portable package.

Finally, these kids have conquered the gnarly problem of position versus page number on the Kindle. Because their Kindles are shared, synching to the furthest page read can be a disaster! I mean, whose furthest page are we talking about? So the Seneca students and their teachers have a simple fix:

We keep our place/location using the Kindle 2 by writing it down the location number. This way when we use the Kindle 2 we can search by location number.

There you have it, the secrets to Kindle success from the inventive students of Seneca IL: grab a Kindle, load it up with a lot of good books, crank the font, and jot down your location number. Pretty simple, and pretty effective! Thanks Alex M., Alex H., Ashley, Thomas, and Kale (and all the others who helped) for helping us grown-ups see the road ahead.

In a surprise update (a surprise to me, anyway), Amazon announced improvements to the firmware of the Kindle 2 yesterday. Thanks to Teleread, Len Edgerly, and the KnuckleHeadNetwork, I learned about the improvements in great detail.

For an educator, this upgrade is a win. First, the K2 will now support PDF files directly, without conversion. On top of that, Amazon is offering a PDF conversion via email that will make the text reflowable. Interested to hear what people who have tried that think.

Second, the battery life has been extended. Since the same battery is in the device, the software must manage the connection to the Whispernet better in some way. I have to say by manner of recantation that my whining about the departure of the exterior Whispernet switch in an earlier post was wrong. The battery management on my DX has only gotten better and better, and this update promises even more.

Finally, the firmware update apparently enables manual control of the page orientation on the K2, a must-have feature for the reading of PDFs and the viewing of images. Even with the zoom and the landscape orientation, the Kindle resolution still isn’t good enough for the detailed illustrations from, say, an AP Biology textbook. But it’s getting there…

I knew something was up when I got up this morning and saw Ralph Ellison staring at me from my sleeping Kindle DX. Just a little extra touch from the Kindle folks, and a nice one at that.

Amazon released in beta this week its Kindle for PC application, and educators will welcome this development. Even though you have heard me rant a bit about the anti-education direction the company has taken in the development of the Kindle ereader (loss of SD card slot, loss of replaceable battery, loss of external Whispernet on-off button, and so forth), I have been generally more positive about the development of the online and now software tools that the company has created to support the use of the device: Kindle for iPhone app–great, addition of ability to view notes and marks online–fabulous, and now, Kindle for PC–not bad at all.

Ereader software for computers is one area in which Amazon has NOT led the way; many, many companies have created ereader software for devices from the Palm Pilot to the netbook. These providers have contributed to the current plethora of formats for ebooks, and each has tried, in its own way, to lock readers in to a particular format, all the better to lock in business with them. This is a game that Amazon knows well and has played aggressively with its closed system and its proprietary format.

Adding a desktop app that integrates with your Kindle library and, of course, the Kindle Store, can be construed as just another tactic in the battle for business. But for educators, “this time we win!” (to quote Brad Pitt’s line from The Mexican). Why? Well, let’s start with the fact that, while there aren’t a whole lot of Kindles in schools these days, there sure are a heck of a lot of computers! Now, any student who goes to the library to study or who fires up the computer at home can view content in the format exclusive to the Kindle. With the popularity of the Kindle and the “cool factor” that it brings, this may be the way that schools and educators begin to think about making academic reading content available across their networks. Kids “get” the idea of a Kindle, and now that idea is readily available at every school in the country.

Could kids have been reading ebooks at school before Kindle for PC (KFPC)? Sure they could have, but in fact they weren’t. Now there is a model in place for a “anywhere, anytime reading” that includes the PC on the desk over there and the ereader device in my bag (and the iPhone in my pocket). Could this arrangement have been cobbled together before KFPC? Sure it could, but it wasn’t very convenient. Now it is. A win for the consumer mentality applied to the schoolhouse.

David Rothman at TeleRead has a nice review of KFPC from an ebook reader’s perspective that I don’t need to repeat here. The software is very basic, with a plain interface, and very few tweakable options that allow you to customize the interface. No two-page reading pane, that sort of thing. Can’t make notes while reading (a limitation for educational uses that amazon is working on correcting). But teachers like simple, teachers like things that don’t crash. So, for me, I think this app is a solid step forward for doing business with Amazon in an academic context.

And what is even better, maybe, for folks like Kathy Parker and her Kindle Crew out there in Seneca IL, is that a PC station qualifies as one of the six devices onto which most Kindle books can be downloaded and viewed. The minute I loaded the app and connected with the mother ship, a new mobile device popped up in my list of such devices on the “Manage Your Kindle” page: “William’s Kindle for PC”, right there next to “Will’s iPhone.”

Educators should not be confused by others’ confusion over whether KFPC will display books not obtained form the Amazon Kindle Store. It absolutely will. In fact, once you open a “free” book that you got from Project Gutenberg in the Mobipocket format that the Kindle prefers, it will appear in your onboard KFPC library unless you remove it. In fact, all the books on your computer that are formatted a Mobipocket files will take on the KFPC icon image shown here. If you look quickly, you can watch the transformation take place. This makes it easy to check a file, a position number, a Table of Contents–whatever–on your PC before you view it on your Kindle. Handy.

For example, I created an article from Wikipedia using the Kindlepedia tool about the Berlin Wall. You can download it here. Once it is on your desktop, the icon will look like the book above, and it will go into your onboard library (NOT the library at the mother ship) and open up for reading. Note that this version of the article appears in full color and nice, sharp resolution on the screen. And if you don’t finish reading it in KFPC, just pop the file onto your Kindle and read up on this topic later. Really handy.

So its a big thumbs up for Kindle for PC from an educator’s standpoint. I will look forward to comment from other Kindle-curious educators about KFPC and the ways it makes ebook reading a reality in schools.

Kindle for Mac, anyone? (Amazon says it is on the way.)

As you can tell, I have been expanding my consciousness of the ereader world beyond the Kindle. I have a Sony Pocket Edition, an Aztak Pocket Pro, a Cybook Gen-3, and am sorely tempted to purchase a Nook, should one ever become available. But I was Kindle born and raised as an ebook reader, and I still think (along with others) that the Kindle 2 still represents the best value out there.

One of my reasons for thinking so has to do with the Kindle’s almost seamless connection with the mother ship at Amazon. When the Kindle came out I was struck by Amazon’s brilliant step forward with the ereader by making it a part of a business system. The unexpected addition of the wireless lifeline to the world’s biggest bookstore brought the value proposition of ereaders and ebooks into crystal clarity for me in a heartbeat.

But that very same tethering of the device to Amazon’s cloud of convenience poses what some see as a “darker” side of the device. In several lucidly argued posts, Ted Striphas raises the concern:

I’m rather taken with the idea of a right to read given the ways in which new e-book systems, such as the Amazon Kindle, tether reading to corporate custodians who in turn mine the machines for intimate details about how people read.

Striphas’s concern is one that resonates even more powerfully in the age of the Patriot Act:

The [Kindle] automatically archives detailed, even intimate, information about what and more importantly how people read on the Amazon server cloud.  This kind of information [...] can instead be subpoenaed by prosecutors who are anxious to dig up dirt on suspects.  The question I raise in the speech, and the question that also seems to emerge in the case of Google Books and the coming Editions service, is, what happens to a society when privacy is no longer the default setting for reading?

That’s a little bit scary, and gives me pause. (Not that I am reading anything I shouldn’t be. Really.)

It’s just that we have so many examples of how centralized control of media historically reverts to commercial or political exploitation. A hegemonistic book authority could easily limit or control people’s reading for its own purposes. Look, for example, at the situation in medieval Europe before Gutenberg hit the scene, or at what happened last summer when, for all the best corporate reasons in the world, Amazon remotely deleted a book from its customers’ Kindles without asking or even warning them.

If it is reasonable, and I think it is, to see Amazon as the “custodian” of our books and our reading history and our notes and our marks and our highlights, then we may have a problem, since we depend on the idea that the interests and intentions of our custodians are benign, at least, and certainly not pitted against our own. And yet the relationship with this corporate custodian is that of a vendor and a customer, two roles that overlap in certain areas but certainly not in all. Trusting that free market forces will reign in abuse–well, that premise is somewhat out of favor these days.

Striphas summarizes his concern:

As these devices become more prevalent, I worry about the effects they might have on how people practice and conceive of reading.  Until now it was relatively difficult to monitor closely how and what people read.  What will become of reading, and people’s relationship to it, once that freedom is definitively diminished?  Indeed, a right to read seems to me of paramount importance in a context where someone is looking over your shoulder every time that you open an electronic book or periodical.

Yes, I guess we do have a problem.

Can’t find the expansion slot for additional memory on your Kindle 2? That’s because there isn’t one. And, as I have indicated in earlier posts, that’s not a good deal for educators.

This change seems to be part of the “closing” of the Kindle, where a sleek form factor trumps functionality. If the Kindle is to become the go-to reader of choice, it needs to be more rather than less useful; the device does not yet support folders, so keeping things on different chips was one potential way to store and organize your library. This removal of the SD slot also eliminates the possibility of a third-party vendor (I can hear the boos and hisses from Seattle) offering formatted books on a chip to readers. With 1) wifi that is hard to turn off and 2) no chip slot, you are pretty much left with the Kindle Store as your source of books.

And this is as it should be–in a retail universe.

But for schools, we need something more adaptable to different situations and uses. To the extent that the DX follows the design of the K2, it will fall far short of its promise as a device that could make sense in a classroom.

There is another way in which Amazon is “veering away from supporting educational uses.” The Kindle 2 actually makes it harder to manage the settings of the device. How? Most importantly, the Kindle 2 pushes the wifi “on/off” setting into a menu and removes the button from the exterior of the device. Stylish, yes. Helpful, no.

OK, I am an admitted battery life freak. So maybe I am overreacting to the fact that I would have to open up a menu on the device to toggle the wifi on and off. And I also admit that my whining on this topic sounds remarkably like the whining about “new new” things that I deplore when others do it. BUT, this innovation of removing the wifi switch from the exterior of the device encourages the user to keep the wifi ON (all the easier to buy books with, my dear).

For me, I watch that switch on the back of my Kindle 1 like a hawk, and even audibly sigh when I notice that I left the darned thing on for hours without realizing it. Because of that switch, I can check and adjust the wifi setting when the Kindle is 1) in display mode, 2) off, and 3) in sleep mode. The user of the Kindle 2 can perform that check when the Kindle is 1) in display mode, 2) um, oh yeah, that’s it.

Now one of the great advantages of my Kindle over my iPhone is battery life. A key feature that gives the Kindle (and other e-ink readers) promise in the educational space is the low power requirement. That advantage is eroded by anything that fails to optimize power management. Clearly, the Kindle 2 makes it harder to manage battery life. (Plus, I’m thinking that 3G network chews power even more than the old-style Whispernet, even if I stipulate that the Kindle 2 has better battery life than the Kindle 1.)

Next: Why Educators Should Mourn the Departure of the SD Chip Slot from the Kindle 2

OK, ket’s be fair. Amazon created the Kindle as a consumer device for reading books, novels primarily, with a little assistance on the side for newspapers, magazines, and blogs. As a business system, the device actualized the ebook value chain for the biggest etailer of books on the planet. It only makes sense.

It also makes sense that Amazon struggles with how to protect that value chain. The problems are obvious and much-commented: there’s DRM (to ensure control of the content), there’s the exclusivity of the system and the device (to ensure control of the channel), there’s the limited capability (to ensure the Kindle doesn’t serve a lot of purposes that Amazon doesn’t have in mind or become, gasp, an “open” device).

But despite these limitations, some of us took one look and saw the potential for this device to actualize another value chain, the delivery of educational materials to students. It isn’t what Amazon intended, and the Kindle 2 demonstrates that Amazon is actually veering away from supporting educational uses.

(But what about the BIG Kindle, you ask? More on that at another time. The announcement last week shows primarily Amazon’s canny awareness that this marketplace is about to get away from them, and that being first to market with a big reader, even if that reader isn’t ready for the market yet, is the only card they have left to play.)

So, what is it about the Kindle 2 that should be discouraging to educators?

1. This device actually moves away from encouraging user input. How? Look at the keyboard. I tried to type a little bit with those tiny pimples and found the process MORE difficult than with the little chicklets on the Kindle 1. Their layout seems to support the sleek design of the device rather than the user’s need to type quickly. For a consumer reading novels, not a biggie. For a student of teacher attempting to annotate a text, just a little more difficult than with the Kindle 1 keyboard. My guess is that these vestigial bumps will disappear when the Kindle acquires its MUST HAVE touchscreen for user input.

Next: Why Fewer Buttons On the Outside of the KIndle is Bad News for Educators