Sometimes I find it to be a real challenge to get my son to read on outings away from home instead of play games on his Nintendo DS. He doesn’t carry a book, even a small paperback, because he says it weighs too much with all his other stuff. My solution is to leave all the other stuff at home and just carry the book, but that goes over like a lead cloud. When I insist, I’m bombarded eventually with the whole I’m bored routine, so I quit insisting he leave the Nintendo DS at home. In fact, the less of an issue I make it, the less he will actually play it in the car or while waiting somewhere.
I have a partial solution to the reading problem, but I am less happy with it as time goes on. I have a couple of ebooks on my old Palm Tungsten E PDA. I’ve read all of them and I need to download some new books. I’ll have to take the old ones off because my old Palm doesn’t have much memory. It’s also hard to read on the small screen and the Palm Reader is really clunky. It’s definitely old technology whose day has come and gone.
I keep a small variety of books on my son’s reading list in the car so he has no excuse for not being able to read. I keep a fair number of my own books in the car, too. The back seat of the car is becoming a junk pile of books! It’s in total disarray and I have to clean up the back seat before anyone else can ride with us.
I also keep all the textbooks I use when tutoring in the car so they’re accessible when I get to any library and I don’t have to remember to put them in the car. Forgetting a textbook for a tutoring session can mean the difference between being productive or wasting the student’s time and my own. At $45/hr that is NOT cool. With gas prices so high, I’ve removed some of the reference books I used to carry because more weight means worse gas mileage.
But what if there was a way to have all your own books, all your homeschooled student’s books and even audiobooks, textbooks, references, newspapers, blogs and Wikipedia available in a single, compact, light-weight, electronic gadget that has a long battery life and can wirelessly download anything formatted for the device without having to use a computer? What if it also came with a USB cable to allow you to download certain other formats of written material, like MS Word documents, pdf files, and some other eBook formats available through your public library? That would be really cool. I’m not sure how good the sound quality is or whether you can download MP3 files to listen to music, podcasts, etc. That would be a great benefit.
Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? But it’s not. It’s real and it’s getting more affordable. It’s the Amazon Kindle
Please watch the following introductory video:
That video was published by Amazon.com, so it doesn’t point out any negative features, but there are plenty of YouTube reviews of the Kindle and other eReaders, so hop over there and play several of them. In my own experience and that of several people who made review videos, we all had similar likes and complaints.
There are several eReaders going on the market by several manufacturers including Bookeen Cybook Gen3 ($379 for 512 Mg), iRex iLiad ($599-$649), ECTACO jetBook
Apple is definitely missing from the list. All these eReaders may have sound quality that’s good enough to play music, too, so it could end up replacing the audio iPod. Apple came out with the iPod Touch, which looks a lot like the iPhone, but plays audio, video, podcasts, runs applications and has some games with fantastic graphics. The iPod Touch costs $299 for 8 Gb and $499 for 32 Gb. Apple hasn’t come out with a comparable device for reading yet, and I would like to see what they eventually put on the market. I’m not sure they will want to compete here because what makes for great multimedia generally isn’t great for reading text.
There are a couple of things I don’t like about other eReader devices that the Kindle handles very well. Other readers are much more like reading an ebook on your Palm Pilot. Paging is slow, bookmarking has to be learned, not all models allow you to clip pages and annotate, they don’t have the full resources of the world’s largest bookstore at your fingertips anywhere you can use a cell phone, and you can’t forget you’re reading on a screen rather than a paper book. After a few pages on the Kindle you forget you’re reading on a device.
What I don’t like about the Kindle:
- It’s white and it shows dirt if you carry it around and use it without the cover. I’d like to see a version in black. I’m sure as time goes on and the Kindle’s popularity increases other colors will become available. They chose white because we read books on white paper and they wanted the device to disappear from your reading experience and it truly does that.
- The corners of the device are sharp, and after holding it for a couple of hours they dig into your hands. It’s uncomfortable. I’d like to see new models with rounded, smooth corners.
- You can’t hold the device by the sides easily without accidentally turning pages. There should be some way to hold the reader by its sides and not turn the pages when you don’t intend to.
I have this complaint about all ebooks that aren’t free in the public domain. When you’re done reading it, you can’t pass it on to a friend. But that’s the case with all electronic books. Even when you check ebooks out from the library, you have to download the license to view it and when the license expires (if you haven’t gone online and renewed) you can no longer view the ebook. Same goes for audiobooks. You can’t share them off the device when you’re done with them. If they’re on CD or tape you can pass the CDs or tapes on to someone else.
In my short time of researching and trying eReaders, I find the Kindle
Computer technology makes homeschooling much easier than it would be without it. We are usually the education pioneers when it comes to innovation, especially to help our kids learn faster and better with superior research and multimedia skills to present their work to us, family members, homeschool groups and even on YouTube or other video/multimedia sharing sites. I predict we will be some of the first parents to introduce a portable technology solution for our children to read more often with greater flexibility.
What do you think? Please speak your mind about technology and homeschooling in general or the Kindle in particular in the comments.
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