EduKindle

It is a fine, bright Saturday morning and I think that today I will clean up my Kindle. What I mean is, clean up all the content that has been chewing up space in the onboard memory. I knew it was time when I recently received the message that I could read my book but that there isn’t any space left in memory for highlights or notes. Yikes!

How did get into this pickle? Well, I am one of those who downloads every book that is offered through the Kindle Store for free; I mean, how could that hurt? I am also a big fan of Kindle’s “sample” feature–I just love getting those pages to read before I have to buy (even if some of them barely get me past the dedication). And I am also one who lets the periodicals stack up. I have a virtual pile of Wall Street Journals that’s taller than I am. Gotta do something with all of them.

My first step for content cleanup with my Kindle (an original Kindle, not a 2, although all of these suggestions should work with both) is to connect the Kindle to the computer with the USB cord and backup my complete “documents” folder by copying it to my desktop. Then I rename it something like “kindle backup 060609″ and tuck it away somewhere on the hard drive or my thumb drive. Then I ruthlessly delete a bunch of the old newspapers and other detritus from the folder that is resident on the Kindle itself. Why start this way? Because these are the items that account for pages and pages of items when I fire up the “content manager” in the menu to delete items individually.

Why not make all my changes this way? I could. But when you look at the documents in the folder, each with its own .mbp file, the picture is not as clean as it is in the content manager or in the main menu of titles itself. So I disconnect the USB and use the content manager on the Kindle or the menu list of titles in the Kindle 2 and I identify the titles I don’t need handy and delete them from the device.

I am comfortable in doing so, of course, because I backed up the whole folder before I started. No deletion will, in fact, be permanent because of this step. This is important to remember since files that you put on the Kindle yourself, or had sent to your Kindle via wifi after emailing the document to Amazon, won’t be available later from your media library at Amazon. These items are NOT archived by Amazon and it may be that they only exist, in their .azw format, on your Kindle. (Of course, the original Word doc or pdf may well still exist on your computer.)

Finally, just to be safe, I turn on the wifi and synch the Kindle, so that everything can remind itself where it is: on the Kindle, at Amazon, or safely resting in my “documents” folder backup waiting for me to miss it and drag it back onto the Kindle where I can read it again.

After fretting a bit about the limitations that the Kindle License and Terms of Use may place on educational applications, I found some other spots in the document that don’t ring true. Take the section on “Your Conduct”:

Your Conduct. You agree you will use the wireless connectivity provided by Amazon only in connection with Services Amazon provides for the Device. You may not use the wireless connectivity for any other purpose.

Not sure I follow. Amazon created a “Basic Web Browser” that can access the Internet from the Kindle. Clumsy, yes. Slow, most definitely. Wide open, seems to be… So, what could I do on the Internet with a browser and a keypad that violates these terms?

I am going to follow Jeff Bezos and his definition of the Kindle as a “frictionless experience,” one that facilitates rather than restricts more and more reading. Maybe I will download some Uncle Remus to the Kindle so I can more closely study the meaning of all this talk about a briar patch.

Library Journal has been tracking a story that involves libraries lending “loaded” Kindles to their patrons. At the heart of the matter is the question, Is it OK to lend a Kindle? The article cites an Amazon spokesperson:

Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener told LJ that a loan of a Kindle without content is OK, but sharing a device loaded with content “with a wide group of people would not be in line with the terms of use.”

Maybe with the use of works in the public domain from Mark Twain, Shakespeare, and James Fennimore Cooper, schools will remain immune to this “retail only” approach that Amazon is apparently taking. Is it possible to to unleash a revolution, with strings attached?