EduKindle

Got a great note from Zev Lowe, one of the intrepid Kindle folks who are taking the Kindle to places unimaginable in order to help kids learn to read. Currently, Zev’s organization, WorldReader.org, is running a Kindle trial in a village in Ghana. When the WorldReader team discovered that the Kindles’ batteries were almost dead, and only after a couple of days of use, they were puzzled. Further investigation revealed that the wireless option had been enabled, and the Kindles had drained themselves searching for a signal in the remote region where they are located. So the team scooped up the Kindles and topped them off just before class by drawing on the 12-volt car batteries in a shed near the windmill that charges them. Read the whole story right here.

When I got my first Kindle two years ago, I could see a time when loads of books could be delivered to readers in remote places by shipping them via Kindle. WorldReader is doing that today. Their “mission” statement, from the top of their blog, is simple:

Worldreader aims to put a library of books in the hands of families worldwide, using e-reader technology.

The organization’s website goes a bit further:

Worldreader.org is developing the systems and the partnerships to get e-readers — and the life-changing, power-creating ideas contained in e-books — into the hands and minds of people in the developing world, where profit-seeking entities are not focused.

You can learn a lot about the project trial from the blog. Zev writes:

These kids are amazing — they’re aged from 11 to 14, many of them are orphans and new to reading, but they’re already hooked on Magic Treehouse and Curious George. Most recently, our blog covers how the people in the village of Ayenyah, Ghana – from the chief to the kids – reacted to the Kindle.

To get into the spirit of things, I created a couple of eReadUps for the kids: one on Curious George, its author, its publication history, and more, and one on the Under-20 Football Team in Ghana. Click on the titles to download these eReadUps in Kindle format to read for yourself, if you like.

Here’s hoping that WorldReader will achieve its goal and “give kids in developing countries access to a whole library of books using e-reader technology.” Of all the gifts to bring young people, the gift of reading may be the most significant for the future of the planet. Bravo!

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!)

There is interesting coverage over at Ars Technica of a recent development in the federal government’s program to support technology purchases in schools, known as the Universal Service Fund’s “E-Rate” program. Congressman Edward J. Markey (D-MA) introduced H.R. 4619 on Tuesday, called the E-Rate 2.0 Act. The goal is to update the “successful” E-Rate program, introduced as part of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, that has resulted in 95% of American schools gaining access to the internet today. According to Congressman Markey, “with the expansion of the scope of technology, students need more than just Web access at school, and our E-Rate 2.0 bill is intended to reflect those expanded needs.” Read the complete press release here.

The new bill has three key provisions. First, the bill would instruct the FCC to initiate a pilot program to provide “vouchers to enable low-income students to purchase residential broadband service.” Second, the FCC would also initiate a pilot program to “extend funding for broadband equipment and services to selected community colleges and head start facilities.”

It is the third provision that interests us here at Edukindle. Under the bill, the FCC would initiate a pilot program that would allow applicants serving particularly low-income students to “apply for significantly discounted services and technologies for the use of e-books.” That idea could prove a tremendous boon to those schools who see a future in ebooks for their students, and who want to leverage the sustainability, the affordability, and the “update-ability” of ebooks on behalf of these children.

Leave aside the fact that the device manufacturers should already be providing educational discounts to schools, as I argued in an earlier post entitled “Should Educators Get a Discount on the Kindle?” Of course they should. And if the E-Rate 2.0 legislation becomes law, you can bet that there will be a tsunami of discounts offered by equipment makers who want to get in on the billions of dollars offered under the program. (Oh, yeah, the bill also seeks to raise the current cap of $2.25 billion on E-Rate spending to adjust for inflation.)

Where this proposed legislation gets interesting, though, is when viewed in the context of other events driving the world of education right now. In recent months, large entities like the State of California have initiated programs to support the use of “open source” texts to replace traditional textbooks in the schools in order to save money and take advantage of the growing movement to create high quality materials at no cost to the user.

Just last summer, the Democratic Leadership Council floated a proposal entitled “A Kindle in Every Backpack” (which you can download here in Kindle format), arguing in part that “the ‘Kindle in every backpack’ concept isn’t just an educational gimmick—it could improve education quality and save money.”

Bringing ebooks into classrooms effectively and pervasively, though, will require more, a lot more, than funding for devices. The state of the art right now in terms of materials that can be used right away in classrooms is pretty much limited to novels and nonfiction texts–whole books, that is, where reading from one page to the next is the required activity.

For educational texts that require charts, graphs, and images, a device like the Kindle has a long way to go, and I mean more than simply adding color. Reference works like textbooks require different chunking or configuration when they are displayed on an ereader. Anyone who has attempted to read a PDF document, even on the Kindle DX, can tell you that formatting and navigation tools are not yet up to snuff.

Don’t get me wrong. Once money starts to flow to ebook resources and devices, the marketplace will work this out. But it will involve more heavy lifting than anyone imagines.

Wandering through my local Barnes and Noble over the weekend I ran into something unusual. A Nook. For months I have been drawn to the banners and brochures near the help desk, only to learn that the helpers didn’t know when the store might have an actual Nook on display. This was a pleasant surprise.

I think that we have to view the Nook differently than we view all the other devices that are beginning to flood onto the market. First, and most importantly, the Nook is connected to an existing distribution franchise, much as the Kindle was when it hit the market in late 2007. As we learned then, connection to a bookseller with existing distribution makes all the difference to an ereader device. Otherwise, why wasn’t consumer electronics giant Sony more successful in the years before the Kindle, especially given the size of its head start in the market? First mover should have counted for something, right? Clearly now, with 20/20 hindsight, we recognize that the Kindle ushered the ebook market out of the backwaters where it had been languishing on Sony’s watch, precisely because it nestled its new reading device in the nest of one of the biggest book distribution systems on the planet. Now, Barnes and Noble, is following that lead, and stands to succeed in some measure because of it.

Second, the book distribution system in which the company is nestling its Nook is one that the public is very familiar with and comfortable with. Who else holds mind share, even awareness, for bricks-and-mortar book distribution? Borders, maybe. Books-a-Million, not so much. B. Dalton? These examples prove the point: Barnes has a head start in an arena that Amazon cannot touch, the world of real-world bookstores. You just can’t hang out in an overstuffed chair, sipping your latte, and browse through books, at Amazon.

It is an interesting side note, I think, that Barnes also recognized the importance of something that is in the DNA of any book retailer: color matters. The color touch screen at the bottom of the Nook reflects this awareness. It is more than just a way to one-up the Kindle’s feature set; the ability to display cover art, so important to the look and feel of a Barnes and Noble store–the impact of those piles of brightly-colored books on tables and racks that greet you when you walk in the store–that element of the book browsing and buying experience is incorporated into the Nook.

(During my few minutes with the Nook, that color screen was kept on a pretty tight leash by the power management software in the device and kept going dark at what seemed to be very short intervals. It wasn’t hard to wake up, but because that screen is used in lieu of physical controls, its disappearance takes all your navigation options with it, and that I found a bit unnerving.)

How will this hit the sensibilities of people in schools? Well, kids like and expect color, so that’s a plus. If Barnes is successful in getting sample devices into all its stores, I think that teachers and kids will appreciate being able to get one into their hands to see what it is like before purchasing. (Remember Amazon’s workaround for its inability to provide this kind of real world preview? It enlisted its customers to meet up with prospective customers with its “see a Kindle near you” program. Wonder how effective that was?)

Ultimately, it should (emphasis on “should”) be hard for Barnes to squander the leverage of its brand and its physical locations in competing with Amazon. It is off to a weak start by failing to learn from Amazon’s early supply problems with the Kindle. By rushing to take advantage of the recent holiday buying season, Barnes let everyone know that its Nook operation is still rough around the edges–for sure. But given the fact that they have produced a nice, tight little reading device, and that they still own a bunch of comfy chairs and latte machines to go with it, they will find a number of customers for the Nook that Amazon has yet to reach.

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.

The remarkable finding that there is a LOT more water on the moon than previously thought makes for an excellent story in the annals of modern space science. I mean, quasars and pulsars and the like are pretty interesting, but what could be more fun to minds of a scientific bent than throwing a rock really hard at the moon and seeing what splashes up? (Thanks to NASA for the picture.)

So I used Kindlepedia to make an article on LCross, the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, from the page at Wikipedia. You can download it here.

One nice feature of viewing this article on Kindle for PC is that all the external links are live, meaning that you can follow all the footnotes and references to their sources. Of course, you can also use those links if you are reading on your Kindle and the Whispernet wireless connection is on.

At any rate, we are back on the moon, and the article points out that the results from LCROSS are expected to have a big impact on a decision about whether we ever could colonize the moon. With the amount of water kicked up by this little rock-throwing experiment, I’d say the future of the moon looks bright.

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.

Anyone interested in the Kindle is surely aware of Len Edgerly’s excellent weekly podcast at The Kindle Chronicles. This past week, Len interviewed Michael Koenig, director of MBA operations at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, one of six universities across the country doing a Kindle DX pilot this year in some of their classes.

Darden has taken a very specific direction with the Kindle. It is being used in several MBA-level classes to support the school’s distinctive “case study method.” The school describes the method in this way:

Students are exposed to over 500 cases in a variety of industries and functions during their time at Darden. In each class, students contribute their own viewpoints to the business situation at hand, while building a strong frame of reference and broadened perspective from the classroom discussions. If you are able to visit a Darden class, you will see that Darden students do most of the talking.

At Darden, Koenig tells Edgerly that the Kindles are used exclusively for students to read the cases assigned for class. This pilot does not involve textbooks, a use that observers have anticipated ever since Amazon introduced the DX with its native handling of PDF files and larger screen. Rather, the Darden use seems to fall into the “sustainability” category that other university pilots are focusing on. Millions of sheets of paper are used to print supplemental reading materials like case studies for classes across the world, and one of the most promising uses of ereaders in education will address this expensive problem.

I found a couple of interesting points in the interview. First, Koenig describes the use of the Kindle’s wireless capability to  “push” the case studies onto the students’ Kindles. He notes that the lack of a folder system to organize materials on the Kindle makes navigation through the hundreds of cases students read in a year more difficult. Listing cases by date should help, but it is clear that ereader devices used for academic purposes will require some form of onboard folder system.

Koenig also makes it clear that the Kindles are relatively invisible during class time. He implies that the emphasis on lively discussion in class means that fumbling around with the five-way controller (or flipping pages for that matter) just doesn’t work. To me, this also reflects a thoughtful acceptance of the Kindle for what it can do really well–make it easy to carry and read a bunch of documents or books anywhere. In some ways, the Kindle and other ereaders suffer from a set of expectations created by other devices meant to do other things, like laptops. Where’s the color? Where’s the video? Where’s the animation?

But that’s not what the Kindle is about. As James Fallows writes in The Atlantic:

Amazon should work on making the Kindle the preferred long-form reading device for all the stuff that’s long enough that it gets tedious on computer screens and is awkward on small iPhone-type displays — texts you otherwise want in physical print (either book or printed-out document) but that aren’t so dependent on a visual experience (loaded with graphics, photos etc) that only physical print or a large, high-quality computer display will do.

This is the point that I made in an earlier post on why the Kindle may just be the “perfect learning appliance.” It won’t be doing the same things as a laptop or an iPhone anytime soon, nor should it.

Darden has it pretty much right, in my opinion. Their model comes closer to foretelling the near future of the ereader in education than anything else out there.