Kindles in the classroom
By Joe Wikert
A tip of the hat to my former colleague Steve Pool for this one. Steve, by the way, is Director of Content Management and Production at VitalSource Technologies, an Ingram company.
Steve recently sent me an e-mail to tell me a quick story about his son, a freshman at a local high school, and the Kindle. His son explained how "his World History teacher at Fishers High School, Chris Edwards, told the class to put away the textbooks for the day. He was tired of teaching from the book. Then he surprised the class by unveiling five Kindles the school had purchased. He was told that his is the first school to order and use them in the classroom. They read an article about India from the National Geographic. But it wasn’t India he was talking about when he got home. It was the Kindle."
Steve went on to say that, "my son knows I have been working in digital publishing for years and I keep telling him ‘print is dead,’ but he has resisted the notion of reading text from a screen. This coming from a so called digital native. But today when I asked him how was the experience he had to admit, ‘it was pretty cool’. And then, ‘where can we buy one?’"
Very cool! I’m curious to hear more about this and so I’ve got an e-mail message in to Mr. Edwards to see if he’d be willing to do a quick blog interview. I hope to be back soon with the interview.
September 2nd, 2009 at 1:26 pm
I’d love to hear more about this! I am a 5th grade teacher, and I am going to present at our local Chamber for a grant today to purchase some Kindles for my classroom. I think it’s a novelty right now, but anything that encourages children to read in general is great. If they remember the experience, I’m sure they will eek some knowledge from it as well!