Will electronic readers take hold in the classroom?
August 7th, 2008 by Treena ShapiroWhen my 5-year-old tried to carry her big brother’s backpack, the weight of it almost made her fall over backward.
It didn't surprise me. More than once, I’ve pulled a muscle in my chest slinging my son's bag over my shoulder when he forgot it or was too tired to carry it.
It’s no surprise that he instantly fell in love with Amazon’s Kindle, a lightweight electronic reader much slimmer than any of the fantasy novels he likes to read. For a kid like him, being able to download several volumes out of the air and carry them all at once between his thumb and forefinger must be a marvel.
At what point is the pricey Kindle going to become an accessible educational tool that will allow kids to download all their textbooks, and recreational reading besides?
For me, the Kindle is handy device and I quickly grew attached to it once I figured out how to stop losing my page. It’s a pricey gadget, but the books are cheaper and with two avid readers sharing it, it will eventually pay itself off.
Still, while it’s convenient and saves paper, but I don’t have a lot of practical application for it, considering I don’t do a whole lot of reading for pleasure away from home.
As an academic tool, however, it shows a lot of promise.
It could save a lot of students from straining their backs, a problem I’m well aware of after using a heavy backpack on one shoulder from elementary school through college, which seems to have permanently left me slightly bent to the right.
These e-readers have the potential to lighten kids’ loads and – assuming they keep track of their Kindles – it would also mean they could bring their books home with them every night to help them with their homework.
It’s unfortunate that right now, the Kindle and similar readers are too cost prohibitive to expect every child to have one, and even if they did, the Kindle’s extensive offerings don’t seem to include textbooks aimed at middle school students.
Why not market a more affordable reader that can help the younger set, and even save some trees along the way?
I’ll always have more affection for traditional paper books, but the Kindle’s convenience makes up for some of that. I have to admit that when I finished my book late the other night, I was happy to be able to download the next volume in the series without having to wait to hit a bookstore in the morning.
I don’t mind my son using the Kindle to read his favorite fantasy fiction, but I’d like it a lot more if he could use more to further his education.
I wonder, are affordable e-readers for kids even on the horizon?
August 7th, 2008 at 10:47 am
[...] Original Family Tree [...]
August 7th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
The most important question: Can they get it to smell like the fresh pages of a brand new book?
August 8th, 2008 at 3:46 am
A couple comments.
Firstly, electronic readers, like any other technology developed in a free market economy, will get better and less expensive over time. Perhaps after the initial phase of early adopters are saturated, Amazon will eventually treat this much like printer manufacturers treat printers; they sell them cheaply and make their money on inks. So perhaps, electronic readers will become loss leaders or small profit makers to get the book sales.
Secondly, electronic readers will have a hard time catching on in academia until they include some of the features books present to every good student. Imagine if the screen were interactive. The student could highlight passages, make notes, "bookmark" pages, have the reader compile his notes, and have the reader provide a table of highlighted content that could be individually named by the student for quick reference. The reader would also have to enable easily accessing those highlighted passages in the book. Now that would be an academic tool worth having.
Thirdly, don't always assume that not using paper is good for the environment. I used to think that way until I actually researched how lands by various owners are managed. Paper & forest products companies have been some of the most responsible stewards of the environment for decades. They plant multiple trees for every one harvested, responsibly manage the land by selectively cutting trees, and cut the underbrush to prevent forest fires from spreading. Most catastrophic forest fires take place on "public" land that is left to overgrow and not managed, so when fire does come, it spreads...... well, like wildfire.
When you own the land, every day is Earth day.
Cheers!
August 9th, 2008 at 9:14 am
E-book technology is closer than most people think -- in the form of a laptop. Many textbook publishers make their materials available electronically or via the web. Nearly everyone has read a PDF, and Adobe reader software is *FREE*.
Chances are your middle or high schooler is already lugging around a laptop, so no need to add another (single-use) device.
August 10th, 2008 at 9:53 am
Whether the Kindle becomes the solution for education, e-books certainly will. Not only will the ebook lighten the load for students (great point, Treena), but it will also provide students with more to read than is currently available to them (for example, the works of Shakespeare always at the ready), and it will make increasing economic sense for budget-strapped school districts that want to stop purchasing and repurchasing the same paperback and text books year after year. The Kindle just shows us for the first time how powerful this emerging technology really is.
August 12th, 2008 at 8:32 am
I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you down the road!
August 19th, 2008 at 8:56 pm
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