Kindles for Kids!

What is a Kindle?
The Amazon Kindle is a software/hardware tool that Amazon.com developed for its customers so that they can display books and other media at the click of a button. This device is used without a computer connection!
The Kindle provides its users with free web service were ever there is one available!

How can it be used?
Not only can the Kindle be used to purchase books in a classroom, it can be used to purchase newspaper and magazine subscriptions as well! Many classic books are offered on the Kindle free of charge or at a low price.
Users can highlight important content, "dog ear" pages for reference, and they can also add notes to certian areas for the text. Students and/or users can search for synonyms or certin words for further understanding and look up definations in the Kindles built in dictionary!
Kindles are for anyone that can read!

Advantages of the Kindle

• The Kindles design is slim and light weight. Its even lighter than a paper back book! This makes the kindle easy for a child to hold up.
• Once a book is ordered through Amazon.com on the Kindle, it only takes 60 seconds to download. This is much faster then having to go to the bookstore and find the book and buy it!
• It doesn't have a glare in the sunlight and read like "real" paper.
• The Kindle can hold up to 1,500 books! So, once a book is ordered it wont need to be ordered again. In a classroom, this means that the book your using for your classroom wont have to be re-ordered for next years class!
• There are 650,000 books to choose from in the amazon.com liberary.
• Kindles have a built in PDF file viewer! this could be useful in a classroom or students that need to pull in book notes to read along with a book for further understanding.
• Kindles can also read content out loud. This could be useful to a student that might not know how to pronounce a word or to a blind student.
• Kindles can last up to 1 week on a single charge. This is nice for the teachers because charging 20 Kindles could be a challenge.

Disadvantages?
Kindle cost $189 and the Best seller books can cost up to $9.99! Kind of a hefty price but if you think about it, that's how much you would be spending on the book in the book store...
Magazine and newspaper subscriptions cost about $5.99 to $14.99
(Remember: once you have paid for a book, it is in the Kindle for good until you delete it!)
I don't know if allowing children to take these devices home with them is a good thing because they can get stolen or damaged. This means that the Kindles can be for in-school use only.


How useful is this Technology Tool for Teachers?
In my opinion, I would love having a class set of Kindles for my classroom. I don't think the cost is too much since they can be passed down from class generation to class generation. Books wear down and the pages get messed up. If these Kindles are taken care of by the teachers and the school, they can be used for many years to come.

Learn more about Kindles from these Websites:
Kindle @ Wikipedia.com
News article about Kindle challenges
Kindle vs. Nook vs. iPad article