Obviously, I'm going to remain hooked on the technology that is being made more readily available to teachers, since that is my chosen career, and this particular blog is no exception. I mentioned the Kindle on the first day of class, but since a lot of people still seemed fairly uninformed about the advancing technology created by Amazon, I thought I'd take it one step further. The Kindle is a software and hardware platform that allows the user to read electronic books (e-books), and was first released by Amazon.com in November 2007. The second generation, or Kindle 2, was just released in February of this year.
The Kindle all but eliminates the need for hard copies of various texts - you can find everything from essays, to newspaper subscriptions, to nearly every book imaginable online, available for purchase to read on the Kindle. And, teachers are beginning to take an interest. A recent article in the Salt Lake City Tribune details the purchase of 147 Kindles for teachers to familiarize themselves and uncover ways to promote literacy in the classroom. Currently, the market for Kindles in the classroom remains small to non-existent. However, officials expect schools to begin making a slow transition to this mode of new education. Not only would it eliminate a tremendous paper trail, but free of space required to store textbooks, allow updated versions of a text to be accessed immediately after publication, and relieve students of the days of lugging around an over-filled backpack.
A recent report also announced that printing the NY Times costs twice as much as sending every subscriber a free Kindle -- not that I am in favor of such an action. For me, at least, there's something gratifying about sitting down with a cup of coffee and reading a real, printed newspaper. But, it would appear that this ideal may not last forever. For more information about the Kindle, check out http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00154JDAI/?tag=googhydr-20&hvadid=3098353127&ref=pd_sl_41di7k8jq1_e.
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