This is a blog posting I'm making through Flickr with my photo of the Kindle(TM).
After I added it to Flickr, I clicked "Blog about this" and used the Flickr site to post to this site. I didn't know how it would turn out. The photo came through much larger than I expected it would, but I think it's eyecatching so I'm not going to change it.
The Kindle arrived in my middle school library two weeks ago. I was able to get a “Technology Integration Challenge” grant through our Chamber of Commerce for a Kindle, along with a budget to support downloads for the professional staff at my school through the end of this calendar year. If you don’t know about the Kindle, visit http://www.amazon.com/, which is the sole proprietor of it.
I’d written the grant with the request to have the download budget cover two years so we’d have access to bestsellers for that length of time, but the Chamber Foundation preferred to give me the same amount of money with the stipulation that I use it by December 31. Never one to turn down grant money, I agreed to their terms and set about polling the teachers at my school as to what books they wanted to read on the Kindle.
It was a challenge to work out how we could use the Kindle in a school setting, in a library that is required to make all purchases through requisitions and purchase orders, because the Amazon Kindle account has to be connected with a credit card. My supervisor worked diligently to get special permission for me to use the business office’s credit card for the periodic times I make downloads. I then delete the credit card from the account immediately following the downloading so that the next person to borrow the Kindle from the library doesn’t have one-click access to buy any number of books that person desires.
The nicest part of having the Kindle in a school library is that sample downloads of the first part of a Kindle book are free. It means that if I’m considering buying a book, I can download a sample and decide whether I like the writing style enough to make a purchase of the full book. Most bestsellers cost $9.99 to download, but prices vary and are often less for books that are no longer bestsellers. One of the professional reference books I downloaded cost $24, but that is still a lot less than the hardback version would cost.
Having professional reference books on the Kindle makes the material more appealing to teachers. I’ve bought many a professional reference book that no one has ever checked out, no matter how much I rhapsodize over the glories of it. Within the suggestions teachers have given me this week for Kindle downloads, there have been three professional development books as well as books on autism, politics, and financial planning. The Kindle obviously is the factor that makes these books appealing to my peers.
The Kindle screen is user-friendly in terms of readability. When my eyes are tired, I increase the font size. Font size cannot be changed in the “Kindle Store” section, where you choose the books you’re interested in, but it can be changed when you view the downloaded material. I read two books on the Kindle this past weekend and loved the experience!
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