Thursday, March 26th, 2009

My dad gave me a Kindle 2.0 for my birthday recently, so naturally I feel  the urge to write about it here.  But I want to apply my philosophical position with regard to the adoption of new technology to it.  To wit: Does this item enhance education, or is it, like Twitter, an attractive bit of fluff?



One of the touted benefits of eReaders is the fact that they can replace paper delivery of written data.  This is indisputable, you don't need paper to read a book with an eReader.  But a several things come to mind as I examine the claim to greenery. 

1) This is an electronic device made by processes that pollute; this electronic device also contains heavy metals, plastics, and probably other environmentally unfriendly substances.  It is true that current methods of producing paper are also environmentally unfriendly, including greenhouse gas emissions and acid washes to make paper smooth, but that's mostly where the environmental impact ends. Paper biodegrades pretty quickly and does not leave much behind.  These eReaders do not biodegrade and will leave everything we cannot or will not recycle behind to sit in a landfill somewhere. 

2) Cost.  A Kindle is $359.00.  Not cheap. Supplying a classroom of 30 kids with at least 15 Kindles will cost $5,385.00.  Books aren't cheap either, but they usually run 10% to 20% the cost of a  kindle.  In a K-6 classroom where number of different books (textbooks and readers) used in a school year is usually less than 10, the cost of a Kindle does not defray the cost of textbooks.  Plus if you're attempting to use Kindles to keep from buying textbooks, then you need to have a 1:1 ration of Kindle to student.  Which double the $5385.00 figure I've just used.  We may get closer to break even in 7-12 classrooms, but the real break even point comes and is surpassed in post K-12 education.

3) Replacement.  Right now eReaders are cool gadgets, and as such are attractive targets for petty theft.  Also, they are more fragile than books.  They will break in the hands of  kids.  They will get left on the bus.  They will get sat on in school.  They will need to be replaced.  See #2 for cost.

4) Personal configuration.  You can highlight text in a book.  You can write in the margins of a book.  You cannot do these things with a Kindle, though you can take notes in a special notebook application. [Edit: Well, yeah, you can.  Highlighting text is possible as is adding notes to the books.  But, the notes exist in a separate space attached to the text by end note numbers.]

Upshot: I find the paper replacement arguement weak.  We have a long way to go before paper is less attractive than an eReader for general use in a school setting.

But that does not mean that the the Kindle is devoid of educational uses.

1) Text to speech may be a little clunky, but it has the virtue of making audible the text on the screen.  This could be an excellent augmentation device to a reading skills program.  It can help (a bit) with pronunciation and comprehension.

2) The MP3 player can be used in conjunction with a picture book or a slide show to deliver a multimedia presentation (still images and black & white only so far)

3) The contents of Kindles can be controlled remotely.  You can use Amazon's (free so far) Whispernet (G3 cellphone communications) to upload files to the Kindle.  This means that a school can proscribe the contents of the Kindle, making the purchase of customized or partial textbooks possible.

4) The Kindle's size is attractive.  A few hundred books can be stored in a device the size of a small tablet.  No more giant backpacks on little kids.

5) Kindle 2.0 comes with a basic web browser.  It's nothing to write home about.  It handles tables badly (and most web pages use tables extensively).  It doesn't scale the page to fit the screen.  BUT...  You can use the web browser in conjunction with a web page or site that you design.  So you can create a text heavy web page, post it to your site's server and give you students access to it via Kindle.  Now the Kindle can be used to take tests, respond to questions, participate in online polls, make use of wikis, etc.  And as later versions of Kindle's software improve upon the browser, these capabilities will only expand.

Conclusion:
- Not green enough yet.
- Too expensive to replace general texts
- But small numbers of them can currently be useful and...
- A ton of potential, especially with an improved web browser.

Daniel


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