EduKindle

Can’t find the expansion slot for additional memory on your Kindle 2? That’s because there isn’t one. And, as I have indicated in earlier posts, that’s not a good deal for educators.

This change seems to be part of the “closing” of the Kindle, where a sleek form factor trumps functionality. If the Kindle is to become the go-to reader of choice, it needs to be more rather than less useful; the device does not yet support folders, so keeping things on different chips was one potential way to store and organize your library. This removal of the SD slot also eliminates the possibility of a third-party vendor (I can hear the boos and hisses from Seattle) offering formatted books on a chip to readers. With 1) wifi that is hard to turn off and 2) no chip slot, you are pretty much left with the Kindle Store as your source of books.

And this is as it should be–in a retail universe.

But for schools, we need something more adaptable to different situations and uses. To the extent that the DX follows the design of the K2, it will fall far short of its promise as a device that could make sense in a classroom.

There is another way in which Amazon is “veering away from supporting educational uses.” The Kindle 2 actually makes it harder to manage the settings of the device. How? Most importantly, the Kindle 2 pushes the wifi “on/off” setting into a menu and removes the button from the exterior of the device. Stylish, yes. Helpful, no.

OK, I am an admitted battery life freak. So maybe I am overreacting to the fact that I would have to open up a menu on the device to toggle the wifi on and off. And I also admit that my whining on this topic sounds remarkably like the whining about “new new” things that I deplore when others do it. BUT, this innovation of removing the wifi switch from the exterior of the device encourages the user to keep the wifi ON (all the easier to buy books with, my dear).

For me, I watch that switch on the back of my Kindle 1 like a hawk, and even audibly sigh when I notice that I left the darned thing on for hours without realizing it. Because of that switch, I can check and adjust the wifi setting when the Kindle is 1) in display mode, 2) off, and 3) in sleep mode. The user of the Kindle 2 can perform that check when the Kindle is 1) in display mode, 2) um, oh yeah, that’s it.

Now one of the great advantages of my Kindle over my iPhone is battery life. A key feature that gives the Kindle (and other e-ink readers) promise in the educational space is the low power requirement. That advantage is eroded by anything that fails to optimize power management. Clearly, the Kindle 2 makes it harder to manage battery life. (Plus, I’m thinking that 3G network chews power even more than the old-style Whispernet, even if I stipulate that the Kindle 2 has better battery life than the Kindle 1.)

Next: Why Educators Should Mourn the Departure of the SD Chip Slot from the Kindle 2

OK, ket’s be fair. Amazon created the Kindle as a consumer device for reading books, novels primarily, with a little assistance on the side for newspapers, magazines, and blogs. As a business system, the device actualized the ebook value chain for the biggest etailer of books on the planet. It only makes sense.

It also makes sense that Amazon struggles with how to protect that value chain. The problems are obvious and much-commented: there’s DRM (to ensure control of the content), there’s the exclusivity of the system and the device (to ensure control of the channel), there’s the limited capability (to ensure the Kindle doesn’t serve a lot of purposes that Amazon doesn’t have in mind or become, gasp, an “open” device).

But despite these limitations, some of us took one look and saw the potential for this device to actualize another value chain, the delivery of educational materials to students. It isn’t what Amazon intended, and the Kindle 2 demonstrates that Amazon is actually veering away from supporting educational uses.

(But what about the BIG Kindle, you ask? More on that at another time. The announcement last week shows primarily Amazon’s canny awareness that this marketplace is about to get away from them, and that being first to market with a big reader, even if that reader isn’t ready for the market yet, is the only card they have left to play.)

So, what is it about the Kindle 2 that should be discouraging to educators?

1. This device actually moves away from encouraging user input. How? Look at the keyboard. I tried to type a little bit with those tiny pimples and found the process MORE difficult than with the little chicklets on the Kindle 1. Their layout seems to support the sleek design of the device rather than the user’s need to type quickly. For a consumer reading novels, not a biggie. For a student of teacher attempting to annotate a text, just a little more difficult than with the Kindle 1 keyboard. My guess is that these vestigial bumps will disappear when the Kindle acquires its MUST HAVE touchscreen for user input.

Next: Why Fewer Buttons On the Outside of the KIndle is Bad News for Educators