When I asked educators about the usefulness of Clean Reader, the responses were definitive. Teachers don’t like it. It smacks of censorship. It dilutes the purpose of art, or worse–it bastardizes it in the name of correctness. One teacher said that the app is “a violation of all of the principles of intellectual freedom that…
Related: Beware Automatic Book Updates on Kindle Dan Cooper at Engadget put this question to his readers. What did they come up with? 1. Bring back the page turn paddles (er, buttons): The desire to limit physical movement to a minimum while reading seems to be the motivator here. 2. Why no ePub, really? Could…
More and more, reading with Kindle doesn’t require that you actually OWN a Kindle. Of any type. In fact, I spend most of my time these days on my iPad Mini, but I like to use the Kindle app and the Amazon ecosystem to collect articles, buy books, and review my documents. Here is a…
August 23, 2016 – Update: Amazon recently introduced a feature that takes real page numbers to a whole new level. The feature is called Page Flip. It allows you to “step back” from the page you are currently reading on Kindle or Kindle Reader and navigate around the book without ever losing your place. You can…
David Pogue, the uber-tech-reviewer for the New York Times, took a minute this week to decipher the place of the new Kindle Paperwhite in the still robust market for E-Ink-based readers. On balance, I think he got it right. The Paperwhite addresses a concern long held by a certain segment of e-book aficionados: how to…
One of the most consistent questions over the years about Kindle management concerns how to disable the ability to make purchases directly from the device. For educators, this is almost a show-stopper with Kindle. This uber-consumer reading device, designed with book purchases in mind, makes it just too darned easy to buy a book, and…
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…
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…
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…
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…