This article talked about how the Kindle Fire is better suited for college students than for k-12 students, but that college students are not interested in using e-readers for textbooks. Some of the reasons are that it is difficult to take notes, to share books, and that there is not much of a cost-savings when buying e-textbooks.
The author of this article feels that Amazon does not "seem to be targeting any aspect of the educational market" and the author goes on to say that the Kindle Fire is "definitely a device to consume content, not to create content."
As a future educator I hope that Amazon will come out with more educational apps, and be just a fancy e-reader. I feel that more school would by them based on price alone if they had better educational apps. However, I have to agree with the article that the e-textbooks do not save enough money to make it worth buy for that reason alone. One advantage that the Kindle Fire has is that it is much smaller than the iPad.
Yes, clearly schools would benefit if Amazon could develop a base of educationally sound materials. Apple has a huge lead in this area, and Amazon does not have a particularly good track record for working with the schools, as you may have discovered in other articles.
ReplyDeleteWonder why part of your post has a white background?
Thanks!