Blog 8: Will the Kindle Change Education?

When the Kindle was invented it turned several heads and everyone wanted one. Well one teacher thought outside the box on how it could help technology. Teachers are now discussing the potential of handheld technology tin education and seeing it how it cuts the price of books. There are three things pushed in the article why the Kindle is indeed for the classroom.

The first reason is it’s a Handheld Library. The Kindle is larger than a book, but easier to carry than a laptop.  The Kindle weighs just 10.2 ounces and the text displayed on the six-inch screen is readable. One of the teachers push with paperback you were limited on what you could get because of the price and how long it would take to get there, but with the Kindle you could get the copies of the books you need in just an instant. Another way it could help in the library you have access to more material to the subject you are teaching than ever before.  The final thing that it pushes you can now carry thousands of books in a students backpack without causing permanent injuries to the kids back.

The second reason is it can help with the Text to Speech that it comes with. Kindle’s text-to-speech audio function can help address the challenges of students with vision problems, language barriers, and lack of reading fluency.  Audio books are not new, but with the Kindle could be taken to another level and help people with their education.

The final factor that can help it, but also harm it is it durability. The tryouts may shed light on other issues that worry K–12 educators, such as how durable the plastic tablets are in students’ hands and backpacks. Amazon says the Kindle can survive repeated drops from 30 inches, but one broke when it slipped from a student’s hands.   Another issue is the ability to transfer content from one user to another. Amazon.com’s system limits to six the number of Kindles that can access content from one user’s online repository. But Amazon also allows publishers to choose whether to protect their content with “digital rights management” technology, limiting downloads to just one device.

The deciding factor comes to us teachers. Each kindle cost about $250.00, but the books are pretty cheap. It be interesting n how this impacts the classroom. 

Reflection in my classroom

Well it has been several years since this article has been published and with that so had the Amazon Kindle. Amazon now has the Amazon Kindle fire, Amazon Kindle paperwhite, and just the Amazon kindle. I would go with the Amazon Kindle fire due to all you can do with it. I like that Amazon Kindle has a feature called Kindle FreeTime and is it’s a setting you can enable to create a safe digital environment. FreeTime makes it safer for all the kids. Also there  so many apps that you can use for education and most of them are free. You also can get into YouTube to show an important video to your class. The last thing its pretty cheap and that’s important when it comes to buying technology in class.  This is why I have them in my classroom and I love them so much.