EduKindle

For all the users of Kindlepedia over the past year, I am delighted to announce that, in partnership with Joshua Tallent and the “talented” folks at eBook Architects, we are launching a new Kindle content tool called eReadUps. Like Kindlepedia, eReadUps builds Kindle-formatted books based on articles from the largest open source provider of information on the planet, Wikipedia.

But eReadUps goes farther, a lot farther.

At eReadUps, you can build multi-article books using the first few results from Wikipedia for free, always. And once we emerge from the “beta” period in a few weeks, you will be able to sign up for a premium membership and enjoy many other features that the site has to offer, like:

1. Access to every every source on our growing list
2. Ability to build eReadUps from as many articles as you like
3. Free storage for all your eReadUps in your own personal My Stuff page
4. Access to more articles in other languages
5. Choice of article format: .mobi for the Kindle and ePub for most other readers
6. A free book just for signing up, and free content every week on the site

The free book currently offered to members is Wikibooks’ extensive guide to First Aid, a handy reference to have on board for Kindle lovers.

So, if you like to grab information that interests you or that you need, get it formatted especially for the Kindle, store it online, and have the option to add it wirelessly to your Kindle library, give eReadUps a try! To request a beta code, just click on Join Now and send us your email address. We will send out invitations as they become available.

(Special thanks to Len Edgerly and the Kindle Chronicles for featuring eReadUps in the TKC Podcast #83, which also contain Len’s interview with Kindle guru Stephen Windwalker, author of the Kindle Nation blog and several books about the Kindle. Well worth a listen!)

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 recently purchased a Sony Pocket Edition Reader to see how the rest of the ereader world looks compared to my Kindle. The view from here is surprisingly good. The Pocket Edition is small, tight, handsome, and, it actually does some thing that my Kindle can’t do. Like check a book out from the library.

If you, like me, entered the ereader world through the Kindle, the idea of impulse buying has been deeply ingrained by the slick Amazon consumer model, based on instantaneous access to the most popular titles. With the discount price of no more than $9.99 per book, this system encourages the kind of anytime, anywhere buying that Amazon pioneered when it opened its online bookstore in July 1994. I personally succumbed to the Amazon system in the late 90s, and I have been a fan and customer ever since. When I saw the Kindle, I had to try it and to this day use my Kindle 1 more than any other device, including the print book, to read with.

But last night my daughter looked at my sony Pocket Edition sitting on the table and asked “Dad, is that your new favorite ereader?’ Stricken by a pang of guilt for having been caught loving an ereader more than my Kindle, I mumbled something to the effect of “Oh, for right now I am using it more.” But the truth is , maybe I do have something going on on the side with my Sony.

Aside from the sleek simplicity of the Pocket Edition, and its VERY CONVENIENT size, my current infatuation with the device has to do with its ability to do something my Kindle can’t do: borrow a book.  My public library in Southern Maryland is part of a state-wide consortium that offers ebooks and e-audiobooks for download if you have a library card from a participating library. The process is simple. I navigate to the portal through my local library’s website, log in using my library card, and search or browse the catalog. What I am looking for are books I want to read that are formatted in the EPUB format that my Sony Pocket Edition likes. When I find what I am looking for, I check the book out for 14 days using the eBook Library software that came with my Pocket Edition. The interface is like the iTunes interface, except more primitive and a little buggy at times, but very workable. Voila! I am reading a book for a couple of weeks and my credit card bill is $9.99 lighter. Does anybody think that this isn’t how it will work in the future?

What are the downsides of this arrangement? Well, my local library has all of 71 titles available in the EPUB format. The eBook Libaray software does inexplicably “do nothing” at times when I ask it to do something on my Windows XP machine, though that has only happened once and it was resolved by closing the program and reopening it. The Pocket Edition has to be cabled to my computer to make any of this happen–zero direct internet connectivity. No keyboard for notetaking on the Pocket Edition, and the bookmarks I place are only useful as long as I have the book.

But for getting a popular title for free for two weeks, having it display in different font sizes clearly and reflow properly on what I would call a state of the art e-ink screen, on a piece of consumer electronics that feels solid and fun to use and that can truly fit easily in my pocket, the Sony Pocket Edition does things that I can’t do with my Kindle.

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!

Yesterday, President Obama delivered a speech remarkable for its mainstream admonitions and for the brief firestorm of controversy it generated in the past week. Was the President trying to “politicize” the process of getting an education, as some critics suggested, or was he using the bully pulpit to encourage kids to crack the books? You be the judge. Here is the President’s speech, rendered in pristine condition for reading on your Kindle:

Prepared Remarks of President Barack Obama

What I liked reading in the coverage of the event were the comments of school children themselves, most of who were pretty impressed that the President would take the time to speak to them directly…about anything. How did your students react?

When I saw the news about the lawsuit filed at Arizona State University concerning Kindle accessibility issues, I think I had a quick negative reaction to the upshot of the suit, that providing Kindles to sighted students creates a disadvantage for blind students. A journalism major at ASU, a plaintiff in the suit, sums up the argument:

“Not having access to the advanced reading features of the Kindle DX—including the ability to download books and course materials, add my own bookmarks and notes, and look up supplemental information instantly on the Internet when I encounter it in my reading—will lock me out of this new technology and put me and other blind students at a competitive disadvantage relative to our sighted peers.“

My reaction was, wait a minute, how can we expect every new innovation leap fully formed from the mind of its inventor and accommodate the needs of every user on its first outing? I can think of a lot of gadgets brought to market in the last decade that were not readily usable by everyone in the population. In fact, the new Kindle sports a helpful feature, onboard text-to-speech functionality, that seems to be right up the alley of those who have trouble reading the print for themselves. Making an ereader device that offers many advantages to blind as well as sighted students appears to be a step forward, rather than “unconscionable discrimination against and callous indifference to the right of blind students to receive an equal education,” as claimed by Dr. Marc Maurer, President of the National Federation of the Blind, one of the plaintiffs in the suit.

Then, as I thought about this a bit more, I began to be persuaded by the merits of the suit.

This same Dr. Maurer, in a more reasoned and less inflamatory section of his statement, makes a lot of sense when he says:

“Given the highly-advanced technology involved, there is no good reason that Amazon’s Kindle DX device should be inaccessible to blind students.  Amazon could have used the same text-to-speech technology that reads e-books on the device aloud to make its menus accessible to the blind, but it chose not to do so.“

You know, the guy has a point. Is it possible that Amazon didn’t see this coming? Any school administrator worth his or her salt would have noticed that the very feature of the Kindle that addresses the needs of the blind highlights the limitations of the device.

Welcome to the world of publicly funded education and Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, wizards of business!

But this is the kind of thing that Amazon, with its laser focus on the consumer experience, isn’t really thinking about as it proposes the Kindle as an academic device. The company has already redesigned the keypad almost out of existence, and seems not to have considered that its commitment to pdf handling bypasses the value of its text-to-speech technology altogether, meaning that neither the sighted nor the blind will be able to have a textbook in pdf format read to them on the Kindle.

So, I am forced to side with the plaintiffs in this case. Amazon and its partners (the universities themselves) should have seen this coming. As one commenter on this situation observed,  retrofitting the bathrooms in your building to accommodate folks in wheelchairs doesn’t really cut it if you don’t build a ramp to ensure that they can get into the building.

Now that I have been using my Kindle DX for a couple of weeks, I have some observations. First, all of the menu-driven controls that I criticized a little bit in assessing the changes from kindle 1 to Kindle 2 are not as problematic as I thought. Switching the wifi on and off is pretty easy, and, as long as I make the assumption that the thing is on when the machine is asleep or off (and I can’t see the indicator), not a difficult to deal with as I thought. Also, the battery life is better, so leaving the wifi on doesn’t kill the machine as quickly as it does on my Kindle 1. All good. And I do have to say that since getting the DX, my Kindle 1 has pretty much stayed put in my bag.

As I look at the DX, I think that its fate will be one of the following:

1. The DX will be known in the long run as the Kindle, and people will ask, “Wasn’t there another, smaller version of the Kindle before this one?” (Yes, it doesn’t fit in a handbag the way the Kindle 1 and Kindle 2 fit in a handbag, but given the size of the handbags carried by my wife and daughter, the DX will fit in a lot of handbags just fine.)

OR

2. The DX will be overwhelmed by the flood of newer, bigger machines from other manufacturers in the next 18 months, and people will wonder about that funny machine that Amazon used to produce that was too big to be really convenient, too expensive to be adopted en masse, and not quite functional enough to read a magazine or newspaper on. (And isn’t that the one with no color?)

Somehow, I think it will be one or the other: the standard for ereading devices, or a footnote in the development of ereaders, an historical oddity. Whichever it is, the machine I have in my hands right now is pretty cool!

The devices that we use to access content are getting smaller and smaller. One could make the case that the iPod Touch and the iPhone are in fact small pocket computers, and one wouldn’t be far from the truth. (The coming update to the iPhone operating system promises to allow, among other things, the ability to cut and paste text.) In the past couple of years, another type of small computer has made a splash in the marketplace, the Amazon Kindle and its raft of look-alike, e-ink and Linux-driven brethren. This group of “other” devices includes the PRS series of readers from Sony (including the 700 series with touchscreen), the BeBook and its standard and pocket-sized editions, the CyBook, the eSlick, and the Cool-er, all branded versions of the Netronix ereader with e-ink screen but no wifi, web browser, or touchscreen.

Of course, laptops themselves are getting smaller. The Asus Eee and the new wave of inexpensive netbooks challenge ereaders and iPod variants for a spot at the low end of the cost continuum and for space in the user’s backpack. Netbooks are now being offered by wireless providers like Verizon for less than $200, the cost of an iPhone, and well below the cost of any current e-ink ereader. With full operating systems and full internet connectivity, aren’t these devices the best choice for students who require word processing, email, and other services for school?

The answer is yes…and no. Let me tell you why.

However you cut it, the real utility of a learning appliance has to do with two things: its adaptability to academic tasks and its portability. Why does portability matter? If a learning appliance can’t be used at school and at home and at every place in between, it only supports part of the learning process (that part which requires a computer) and none of the others (the parts that require other things, like books, pencils, erasers). The primary obstacle to portability for a laptop computer is its relatively high power requirement. You may get a few hours from your laptop battery but, absent an outlet, the laptop as learning appliance goes dead at some point.

The laptop also gets a knock against it because it is not really adaptable to a primary academic task: reading. It seems like no surprise that as students’ time spent on a computer has risen, their reading skills (and scores) have dropped. [see ACT report, as well as To Read and others] The kind of access to information that students have through computer networks requires a bunch of skills that seem appropriate to living in the midst of an information explosion, but one skill that is not brought into play in this environment is what has been termed “long form” reading, meaning the kind of reading that one does when absorbed in a novel. “Short form” reading, yes, but not its more venerable counterpart.

Why is long form largely excluded when a laptop is the primary learning appliance? Screen fatigue. The backlit laptop screen produces eye fatigue and other kinds of reading ennui that I can’t quite define. Maybe it’s like stting in a motionless Ferrari listening to the radio. It is hard to fully engage with the experience without firing up that beautiful machine and taking off. Maybe it’s also the shape of the thing (the laptop, not the Ferrari), not easy to hold in one hand or cradle on your stomach in the hammock. In any case, it is hard to find anyone willing to make a strong case for “long form” reading on a backlit laptop computer screen.

So where does that leave us? Laptops do more than ereaders, but the power drain is high and a primary academic function, reading, is not adequately supported. Ereaders do less than laptops (or iPhones), but their power requirements are strikingly lower and they do promote long form reading. But how much less than a laptop does an ereader like the Kindle do? (Note that as of this writing, only the Kindle can be used for this comparison. In 12-18 months, however, a whole new generation of ereaders with larger screens and wifi options will make this argument valid for the bulk of available ereaders.) The Kindle does have basic internet access, so live links to internet resources can be utilized, but only in a slow and monochromatic way. The Kindle is no match for the laptop as regards onboard software that supports, well, almost any purpose. You could do the reading for your English or history class on a Kindle, but you couldn’t write your paper on it. Nor could you email it to your teacher, or upload it to a proofreading site, or copy and paste a quote from Churchill into it–none of these. Once you had read the book, you would still have to find a word processor and a printer or email connection to complete and submit your assignment.

But, when you think about it, you have to leave your laptop right now and use another appliance (better known as the book itself) in order to complete the same academic task. So maybe this isn’t an either/or between laptops and ereaders after all. Maybe it is the case that all or most academic tasks require (and will continue to require) more than a single appliance. That it probably the long and short of it.

But if you only had one, which would it be?

My modest proposal at this point is…the Kindle. Why? Because the Kindle supports the ongoing, critical academic function known as long form reading. It supports easy and rapid distribution of content (like the laptop), and it does allow limited access and interactivity with the resources of the internet. It works for days rather than hours in the absence of an electrical outlet. It is small and light. It is designed for onboard dictionaries and lookup functions that support the needs of the reader. It readily supports resizing of text.

It does all these things, but make no mistake, the key to my choice of the Kindle is its support for long form reading.

Poor Anne of Cleves. Or should I say, lucky Anne of Cleves?

This historical character, played by Joss Stone on Showtime’s The Tudors, is one of the most enigmatic of Henry’s wives. She acts as a kind of historical pivot on which Protestantism, international politics, the changing character of Henry VIII, and the ineffabilities of male-female attraction swivel on the television show and in the history books.

Despite a brief appearance, Tudors creator Michael Hirst gives her a couple of classic lines. One captures the dilemma faced by every girl who came Henry’s way: “If I fail to please the King, will he kill me?” And then, with regards to the marital bed, she cites Henry’s relentlessly unhealing leg wound as a bit of a downer in the foreplay department: “It stinks, no?” ‘Nuff said.

So, if you are interested in this woman who went from the King’s wife to the “King’s beloved Sister,” and would like to read about her on your Kindle, head on over to the Tudors download page and drag the article to the documents folder on your Kindle.

And that’s it for another season of the Tudors. Given the speed with which they dispatched Cromwell last night, it looks like one more season will do it!

I have been learning a lot about pandemics in the last few weeks. Who knew that the risk level for pandemics now stands at five out of six? The Wall Street Journal, which I read on my Kindle, has two articles in today’s paper, looking at worst case (The Age of Pandemics) and the most likely case (Why Swine Flu Isn’t So Scary) scenarios.

As usual, I thought it would be fun to read up on the situation on the Kindle. So here are articles on pandemics in general, the H1N1 outbreak that is affecting us right now, and the interesting case of “zoonoses,” which are diseases that start in animals and then jump to humans. The WSJ “Age of Pandemics” article points out that zoonoses “account for 60% of all infectious diseases, and 75% of all emerging infections.

Who knew? (Well, to be fair, I guess the WHO knew.)

You can download these Wikipedia articles on the “Science and Health” downloads page here.