The Kindle in the Classroom

Why do teens prefers phones to Kindles as e-readers?

The recent Pew report on Young Americans’ Reading and Library Habits contains a number of great take-aways, including the news that young people frequent libraries at an unexpectedly high rate. But another finding has emerged that may have an impact on the way that schools think about pleasure reading and reading instruction both inside and outside…

The New Kindle Lineup: What It Means to Educators

Just a quick update on the new lineup of Kindles announced earlier this month: as ever, the new Kindle models have one key audience in mind – the individual consumer. Backlight for reading in bed, integration with a vast media library, seamless purchasing opportunities, high resolution screen, touch navigation, whiter backgrounds, the works! All improvements…

NOOKcolor: A First Look

When my NOOKcolor arrived right on time yesterday, I thought about calling this post “Barnes and Noble Pulls an Amazon.” What I mean by that is, for the first time in the brief history of the universe, B&N got the drop on their cross-country rivals. And part of how they did that was by tearing…

6 Reasons to Love the Textbooks from CK12

The free and open textbook industry has made great strides in the past few years. There are numerous open source textbook projects cranking away right now, and one of them Flat World Knowledge, even intends to build a business on the concept. A quick Googling of the words “open source textbook” will give you a…

Notepad for Kindle Keeps Your Ideas Handy

When I got my first Kindle 1 in 2008, I thought that it would be nice if I had a way to capture ideas while reading, without having to leave a “note” inside the book I was reading, where it might be difficult to find later on. So I created a little “utility” document called…

The Graphing Calculator and the Kindle

Few pieces of educational equipment have achieved the kind of rapid and widespread adoption in schools from middle school to college as the graphing calculator. Introduced by Casio in 1985, the device has been showing up on school supply lists for quite some time, and as a parent I have personally purchased several for my…