Now that Amazon and Overdrive have completed their deal to make Kindle titles available through Overdrive’s client libraries, the web has been astir with commentary on the roll-out, which was announced last week. It was a much awaited moment for Kindle owners, who have decried their inability to borrow books from the public library, as…
Kindle’s Impact on Student Reading
Book Spam: Seven Steps to Identification for Teachers and Students
by Will DeLamater
There was a news story this summer that has been a long time in the making: SPAM hits the world of e-books. Anyone who has been following the Amazon Digital Text Platform since its beginnings has seen this coming a long way off. A search for a copy of Pride and Prejudice as recently as…
Beg, Borrow, But Please Don’t Steal: How to Share E-Books at School (and at Home)
by Will DeLamater
UPDATE: Read the latest instructions for sharing a Kindle book: How to share your Kindle books How to share e-books among as many readers as possible is a matter of great interest to educators. Right now, there are basically three ways to leverage e-books to increase distribution of titles in schools: 1. Sharing (books among…
Notepad for Kindle Keeps Your Ideas Handy
by Will DeLamater
When I got my first Kindle 1 in 2008, I thought that it would be nice if I had a way to capture ideas while reading, without having to leave a “note” inside the book I was reading, where it might be difficult to find later on. So I created a little “utility” document called…
The Graphing Calculator and the Kindle
by Will DeLamater
Few pieces of educational equipment have achieved the kind of rapid and widespread adoption in schools from middle school to college as the graphing calculator. Introduced by Casio in 1985, the device has been showing up on school supply lists for quite some time, and as a parent I have personally purchased several for my…
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…
More Research Says Bigger Fonts Help Kids Read
by Will DeLamater
Once I started digging in to why everyone seems to crank up the font size on the Kindle, more and more evidence has been sent my way. I want to thank Kerrie Smith, the Australian teacher and LEO at Education.au, for pointing out another significant research compilation on the importance of variable text size. This…
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…
Should You De-Synchronize Your Kindle?
by Will DeLamater
September 26, 2016 Should you de-synchronize your Kindle? As my lawyer might say, it depends. Let me explain. Amazon makes it possible for you to read a book that you have purchased on whatever reading device that you happen to have with you at any time, as long as two requirements are fulfilled: Requirement 1:…