Based on our admittedly informal and small sample survey, the answer is YES. 83% of our respondents indicated that they would consider a Mini instead of a full sized iPad for their schools. On the flip side, over 80% indicated that the Mini does not offer them anything new that they don’t already have access…
Tag Archive for school
The New Kindle Lineup: What It Means to Educators
by Will DeLamater
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…
Buying Your Kindles Using a Purchase Order
by Will DeLamater
The first hint of the problem started popping up at the end of the school year in May. Kathy Burnette, a member of the Kindle Educators Group over at the Ning, summed up her problem in a post: ARGH! We are not allowed to purchase gift cards using our purchase order accounts and that means…
Kindle Phone Home: Getting 80 Kindles Ready for Kids, Part 2
by Will DeLamater
Once Kathy’s helper-husband Steve had all the Kindles out of their boxes, numbered with stickies, and charging peacefully, the time had come for Kathy to swing into action. It was time to reconnect each Kindle with the Amazon software that would allow Kathy to manage content for each of the Kindles online. Unlike you or…
Getting 80 Kindles Ready for Kids
by Will DeLamater
I had the pleasure of spending a day with Kathy Parker last week to learn how she sets up all the Kindles the district purchased for Seneca Grade School’s entire eighth class for the coming school year. It is quite a process! I have noted in many previous posts that the Amazon Kindle is first…
It’s Not the Kindle, Stupid! It’s the Text…
by Will DeLamater
As a blogger on a topic tied to a specific device, the Kindle, it has been easy to overlook the real hero of the ebook revolution, and that is the digital text itself. The virtues of ebooks for schools reside not in the features and benefits of a specific reading device, despite what the pundits…
eReadUps Launched: Build Your Own Kindle Book
by Will DeLamater
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…
Kindle for PC – What’s in it for Educators?
by Will DeLamater
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…
Leaving a Digital Trail with Your Kindle
by Will DeLamater
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…
Read President Obama’s Speech to Students on Your Kindle
by Will DeLamater
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…