EduKindle

The first hint of the problem started popping up at the end of the school year in May. Kathy Burnette, a member of the Kindle Educators Group over at the Ning, summed up her problem in a post:

ARGH! We are not allowed to purchase gift cards using our purchase order accounts and that means I have no way to purchase the Kindle even though I have money. We received the check but it’s made out to our school. This means it must go into a school account and we must use a purchase order. Not quite sure what to do next…

She needed what I am beginning to call a “Kindle Workaround” to purchase her Kindles, and, a few days later, the absence of said workaround let to her next post, entitled We Had to Get Nooks!: ” Our Purchasing Department does not want us to use Amazon and they are in control of the Grant Funds.” So Kathy is now blazing the trail of using the Barnes and Noble Nook as the ereader at her school.

So, what is the “Kindle Workaround” that Kathy needed to purchase those Kindles? That’s the topic of today’s post.

First, you need to find a link at the Amazon website that, while not hidden, certainly isn’t obvious to the casual user. That is the link for “Corporate Accounts,” toward the bottom of the left sidebar on the main Amazon page. Diane Bushman, the board secretary for the Seneca Grade School (Seneca CCSD #170) outside Chicago, tells me that once you find this link, setting Amazon up as a vendor is pretty much the same process as setting up any other vendor for your district. The steps in the process are as follows:

1. Click on Corporate Accounts link at Amazon.com
2. Scroll down to Corporate Accounts by Segment
3. Click on the box labeled K-12 Schools
4. Below the intro you will see “Purchase Order Payment: Apply for an Amazon.com Corporate Credit Line to pay by PO”
5. Click the link “Amazon Corporate Credit Line” to set your school up for purchase using a P.O.
6. On the application page, you will be offered the chance to apply for a “Pay In Full” line or a “Revolving” line
(Note: Dianne opted for the “Pay In Full” line as she planned to pay for the Kindles in full once she got her invoice)
7. Once you select the type of line you want to apply for, you will be asked to log into Amazon
(In Seneca’s case, Dianne used the account associated with the purchasing card that they typically use for Amazon purchases)
8. Set up your corporate account and provide the application information required on the following screens

Dianne mentioned that approval for a $5,000 line of credit was painless and took a couple of days to complete. (Note that the Amazon.com Corporate Account Credit Line is issued by GE Money Bank, so you are dealing with a third party provider when you put in your app.)

BUT, since Seneca was interested in purchasing 80 Kindles, the $5,000 line of  credit was insufficient. This triggered a more involved but straightforward process of getting an adequate line approved, which involved providing GE Money Bank with the district’s financials. Again, Dianne found this part of the process took a bit more time and a call or two to the help line (number provided on the site), but was straightforward. In a few more days, SGS received approval for the appropriate line and then received its 80 Kindles just a few days later. (And that’s when I showed up to participate in the Kindle set-up procedure with Kathy, as detailed in my earlier posts.)

So, aside from the relative merits of purchasing Nooks rather than Kindles (and that is a reasonable debate–see Kathy Burnette’s comparison of the two devices here), no one has to feel that they can’t purchase their Kindles with a purchase order. You can. It’s just that your business office will have to cooperate and jump through Amazon’s hoops to set up an account. I believe that one reason schools that buy Nooks do so is that they already have a corporate account set up with Barnes and Noble. No problem! the news here is that you can do the same with Amazon.

(And now that it looks like the price war between Kindle and Nook will squeeze out many smaller players in the ereader manufacturing and sales arena, getting an account set up with both of these mega-vendors may be the best idea of all.)

Once Kathy’s helper-husband Steve had all the Kindles out of their boxes, numbered with stickies, and charging peacefully, the time had come for Kathy to swing into action. It was time to reconnect each Kindle with the Amazon software that would allow Kathy to manage content for each of the Kindles online. Unlike you or me, whose Kindle comes pre-registered and assigned a name at Amazon, Kathy has to manually register each of the school’s Kindles individually on the “Manage My Kindle” page. This requires another serial operation: taking each of the charged and operable Kindles (remember, Kathy checks for lemons before registering each Kindle), affixing a district inventory control sticker to the back of each device (again, hard to return a defective Kindle that has a sticker on it), and then sitting down at the computer to input the serial number of each Kindle. Ugh.

Where do you get the serial number? Well, it is printed in extremely small print on the back of each device (have your magnifying glass handy if you look there), so Kathy takes the serial number off the box each Kindle came in. This is why it’s important to keep the Kindles numbered from the beginning, and also to jot the number on the box itself when you put the sticky on the Kindle. (Kathy keeps the box associated with each Kindle around in case the Kindle has to go back–apparently Amazon likes it that way.)  Ugh.

OK, anyway, now it is time to put that serial number from the box into the Manage My Kindle page at the mother ship, which will enable Kathy to track her content downloads to specific devices, even if it is a broken Kindle that a student has brought back to her. Registered properly, “Kathy’s 53rd Kindle” will mean the same thing to Amazon as it does to Kathy, and as it does to the student who has it in her bookbag. It is time for Kindle to Phone Home.

If this is beginning to sound like an assembly line operation, well, that’s because it is. Sitting at her desk, Kathy calls out for one of the helpers to bring her a stack of charged and stickered Kindles. Not just any stack, but the one with the next Kindle number in her system. Why? Because when Kathy registers the next Kindle, Amazon will assign it the next number in its sequence, meaning that if Amazon knows that Kathy has 52 Kindles, the next one she registers will become “Kathy’s 53rd Kindle” by default. No time for confusion this. The conversation goes as follows:

Kathy: I’m ready for more Kindles!

Helper: What number are you on?

Kathy: 54.

Helper: You have Kindle 54 or you need Kindle 54?

Kathy: I need Kindle 54.

Helper: Ok, who has Kindle 54?

Helper 2: I think its on the table by the door.

Helper: No, this says Kindle 78.

Helper 2: Maybe it’s in the server room.

Helper: I’ll look.

You get the picture. Registering the Kindle that has the number 55 on its back in the 54th position, a misstep with grave consequences if not noticed immediately, is to be avoided at all costs. So an orderly exchange of Kindles is essential at the moment of registration.

On the Manage My Kindle page, Kathy scrolls down to the “Register a new Kindle” link at the bottom of her list of Kindles and clicks it, opening a text box into which she can type the serial number from the box. Sixteen digits in, a push of the button, and that Kindle is officially connected to home base. Kindle Phoned Home. On to the next. Eighty times. Ugh.

But, you know, it was kind of fun. Kathy is so enthusiastic about the benefit to her kids that the time flies with smiles all around. In May, Kathy put out a tweet about how much the Kindles meant to the kids at her school this year:

8th grader 2 mention being first “Kindle 8th Graders” in her commencement speech tonight. Jeff Bezos you impacted ed.

Whether you meant to or not, Jeff Bezos, you impacted ed.

I had the pleasure of spending a day with Kathy Parker last week to learn how she sets up all the Kindles the district purchased for Seneca Grade School’s entire eighth class for the coming school year. It is quite a process! I have noted in many previous posts that the Amazon Kindle is first and foremost a device designed for individual consumers, and the ways in which Amazon’s focus on the individual consumer limits the use of the device for academic purposes. For example, those of you who have commented on the post Page Number versus Position on the Kindle know that creating footnotes that reference specific places in the text of an ebook on the Kindle presents a hurdle. In addition, students who used the Kindle DX in university trials this past year generally gave the device low marks for academic use, mainly because it is difficult to flip pages to find a passage quickly and accurately, and because the device has limited note-taking functionality. What the college students liked about the Kindle were the same things that consumers like: the portability, the congenial e-ink screen, and the ability to access books wirelessly in an instant.

Well, Amazon’s consumer bias also makes setting up multiple devices a chore for folks like Kathy. The system is designed to work with a single device, or a few that a family might have on a single Amazon account. So, setting up 80 Kindles at a time involves repeating a process that a consumer might do once eighty times in a row. And that’s before you even start downloading books to the devices, another serial process that must be repeated 80 times for each book you want to put on all the Kindles.

But all of this didn’t seem to disturb good-natured Kathy, pictured above with the author, near the table where a dozen of the new Kindles were receiving their first charge. Kathy immediately starts the charging process once she gets the Kindle boxes open so that she can tell right away if there is a defective Kindle among the bunch. So far, on this shipment, she has only found one, which Amazon will quickly replace.

As she sets the Kindles up for charging, Kathy also numbers the Kindles with a sticky note. This step accomplishes a few things. First, it creates the first identifier that Kathy will use to record the Kindle in her district inventory. Second, it tells Kathy where each Kindle stands in the queue to be registered in her Kindle account at Amazon. Linking the physical number of the Kindle to the name that the Kindle will ultimately hold in the Amazon system (e.g. “Kathy’s 52nd Kindle,” visible at the top of each device’s Home screen) is key to managing content on the individual Kindles once they are in the hands of students.

But I have gotten a step ahead of myself. You can’t get to this stage until you have opened up each Kindle’s packaging by pulling the little tab across the end of the tight little box the Kindles come in. (Anyone remember the big, white book-like enclosures for the first generation of Kindles?) Kathy’s assistant in the process, husband Steve (himself principal of a nearby school that is using Kindles), showed me what a chore that is, since the tabs don’t really sit up where you can pull on them. For this batch of Kindles, at least, a fingernail couldn’t quite do the job (and I tried it myself!). Steve discovered that some kind of implement is required–a letter opener or pocket knife–to lift the tab so the sealing strip can be pulled off and the Kindle liberated for use. This seems like a small thing but, repeated eighty or a hundred times, it adds a significant step to the batch processing of Kindles for student use.

Once the Kindles are opened, labeled, and charged, they are ready to be registered with Amazon. The details of that procedure will follow in Part 2 of this post.

Should you de-synchronize your Kindle? As my lawyer might say, it depends.

Let me explain. Amazon makes it possible for you to read a book that you have purchased on whatever reading device that you happen to have with you at any time, as long as two requirements are fulfilled:

Requirement 1: Amazon software must be installed on all reading devices.
Requirement 2: An internet connection must be present.

When these two requirements are met, Amazon allows you to access your whole library of books that you have purchased through the Kindle store no matter where you am or what device you happen to have with you at the time.

Very cool.

For me, it means being able to fire up Drive or How We Decide or Iconoclast while waiting for a haircut or for a movie. My Michael Connelly novel is with me during rain delays and long lines at the supermarket. Synchronization means that I have achieved a state of multiple-platform nirvana wherein all my books are with me all the time.

Even better, I don’t have to remember what page I was on in any of them. The mother ship at Amazon always offers to “synch to furthest page read” when I open a book on a different device than the one I was reading on last time. This way, I never lose my place and the reading experience becomes, as Jeff Bezos would say, “frictionless.”

Except when my wife is reading the same book on her Kindle. Then, the “furthest page read” may not be MY furthest page read; rather, it may be HER furthest page read. The synchronization feature also means that her highlights appear in “my” copy of the book. In this case, the ability to share books among multiple Kindles/devices registered to the same account creates a conflict with the ability to synchronize one’s reading among those various devices.

This conflict raises a special problem for teachers who may be leveraging the ability to load books on multiple devices and make more texts available to more students for the same price. What to do?

I only recently learned that you can “de-synchronize” the Kindles and other devices registered to a single account, and if the downside of synchronization is just too great–Josh keeps underlining all the text in everybody’s copy of Old Yeller–then it is easy to take care of the problem.

Just go to the page at Amazon called “Manage My Kindle” and scroll to the bottom, where you will see a link named “Manage synchronization between devices.” This is where you will find the following guidance from the Amazon team (see below, #1):

“You should turn synchronization off only if:
* You and someone else are reading the same book, AND
* The Kindles are registered to a single account”

The recommendation seems sound, if a little bossy. So many advantages of the Amazon Kindle system flow from the synchronization feature that it only makes sense to keep it on (which is the default setting) unless it is creating a problem for you.

If you decide to “de-synchronize” because you want each device in the classroom (or at the house) to operate independently of the others, then look for the button on the right that allows you to “Turn Synchronization Off” (see illustration, #2).

Click for larger image

Remember, teachers, that turning off synchronization does not in any way interfere with your ability to load books onto Kindle, or with the students’ ability to highlight passages or make notes. Those highlights and notes will simply be stored “locally,” saved only on the specific Kindle on which they were made. They can still be accessed by your or the students by tethering the Kindle to a computer with the USB cord and accessing the text file where those notes and highlights are stored.

Now, sometimes it might be cool to have multiple students commenting and highlighting a book across multiple devices. That might even become a best practice for Kindle/ereader use in the classroom. A literature circle or book club of kids take on a read together, share their notes and highlights, and then each create a summary piece of writing explaining a passage or two that received particular attention from the group. Or make the marked up text a group project, finding six passages that seem significant and each making a comment that the teacher could read and respond to or even grade.

Hint: one special power of the synchronization feature is that the highlights and comments that are made in the text by an individual or a group are available for viewing online here after login. Sign in and look at the column to the right; there you will find a icons for “Highlights” and “Notes.” Students could be required to put their name at the end of each note they create, and the teacher could browse these notes easily without have the Kindles handy or any file transfer reqquired.

So, in the end, whether you keep your devices synchronized or not just “depends” on the kind of reading experience multiple readers on a single Amazon Kindle account want to have.

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.)

I’ve had my Sony Pocket Edition for a couple or weeks now and I have to say that I like it. It is a handsome unit, very tight and solid. It fits in the palm of your hand and, yes, in the pocket of your pants.

I was drawn to this ereader because of the size. My Kindle DX spends most of its time on and end table in my living room because of its size–the DX is just not that convenient to carry. The DX needs to go inside my bag next to the folders and legal pads (where it fits very nicely), but it’s not the reader I grab in the car waiting at the drive-thru or at the dentist’s office. (Right now, I grab my Kindle 1.) But the Sony Pocket Edition is a great candidate for the quick, easy, have-a-minute read that these devices make possible. In this regard, size matters.

Now, I have read chapters of books on my iPhone using the Kindle app, and that is good in a pinch as well. But the thing that hooked me on ereaders in the first place is the e-ink screen. In this regard, I just don’t get Nicholson Baker and the others who find e-ink screens to be a muddy mess. The Kindle and the Sony both produce a crisp e-ink display that I find pleasurable to read, and the Sony not a bit less than the Kindle.

From a Kindler’s perspective, the greatest limitation of the Sony Pocket Edition is the absence of wireless connectivity to a source, any source, of reading material. This is the Kindle’s gift to the world, and soon to be matched by other devices.

But what I found is that the Sony interface through their “eBook Library” software provides an experience very similar to the one that I have happily participated in with my iPod Mini and iTunes. The Sony software, once installed on your computer, looks like a primitive version of iTunes. There is the list of folders and devices on the left, the list of items in the selected folder or device on the right. Plug in the Pocket Edition and it is recognized, just like my iPod with the iTunes software. The Sony software certainly doesn’t offer all the bells and whistles that iTunes does, but it gets the job done. It allows you to access content and transfer it, create collections, and otherwise manage your reading, both on and off the device.

Now the BIG up for Sony is its integration with Google Books, where a treasure trove of Epub-formatted public domain texts await. And the Library+Sony Bookstore make it VERY easy grab and load those books.  More on that wondrous process in the next installment of my look at the Sony Pocket Edition.

I know that we are all about the Kindle here at EduKindle, but as others in this space step up their games to compete with Amazon, I plan to look at all comers and compare what they offer to the Kindle value proposition. The real emphasis here is on the “edu” part of EduKindle, so if another reader offers something that the Kindle can’t or won’t offer, we need to look at it from the perspective of how it might help kids and teachers.

With larger readers all the craze these days, led by the Kindle DX and by the promised arrival of the Plastic Logic reader in the new year, I was quite surprised to find myself drawn to this smaller “pocket” reader. Maybe that comes from finding the iPhone to be a better ereader than I expected it to be, or maybe it grows out of the fact that I still love my Kindle 1 for its portability. The DX is just a tad too big for my everyday reading, with the exception of my morning perusal of the New York Times.

So I saw this little unit and decided to give it a try. A fuller review from an educator’s perspective to follow!

Pierre Gorissen has produced a nifty video on how to use the Kindlepedia tool from EduKindle to create reference articles for you Kindle or any other ereader that supports the Mobipocket format.

In addition, Pierre has written a little script that allows you to make a bookmarklet in your browser (works fine in my Firefox) that will automatically send any page you are on at Wikipedia to the Kindlepedia engine and return the article for download, perfectly formatted with a linked table of contents and live links throughout. He demonstrates how to set this up in the video.

I am posting the video here, and you can see more of Pierre’s handiwork at the EduKindle Community site.

This week I created a “partner” site for EduKindle called Kindle Educators Group. The idea is to build a discussion around ideas and experiences related to the use and/or potential use of the Kindle ereader in the classroom and as a “learning appliance” (see my post on this topic here).

This forum is built on the popular “Ning” software that many educators are already using. A great example of what a Ning can become is Jim Burke’s English Companion Ning for ELA teachers. Jim has attracted over 5,000 members in just a few months, demonstrating how effective this kind of professional community building can be for folks trying to improve their teaching and their kids’ learning.

You can post to your own blog at the site, start a discussion, add an event, comment on colleagues’ posts, and much more. I just started a discussion on what people think about the potential of the Kindle to improve struggling students’ reading skills.