How do you manage e-readers in school ?

[jumpinjamez]

Hello,

I am looking at the best solution to get a class set of e-readers which will be both robust and nice to use aswell as being straight forward to manage at school.

We have had some Sony PRS-350 e-readers which i found were not suited to out needs as everyone had to be registerd to a computer and a adobe account and you could register 6 per computer blah blah, blah blah.....anyway the stylus`s seem to raiser to break as well so i do not want any more of those.

The solution i would like would be a central server of the e-books we buy which we could then put on the e-readers as and when they are required and then give then out to the students.

any ideas or help on this matter would be gratefully received.

JameZ

[JJonas]

If that was the Sony e-book management software I believe that is regarded as being rubbish. I use this instead calibre - E-book management

[JJonas]

For you Kindle owners on here:

I am thinking of upgrading to a Kindle from a Sony PRS-505.
Can I use the Kindle with Calibre to transfer my books I have on the Sony device or am I heading for a DRM nightmare?

[enjay]

We looked at Kindles very briefly just to do a feasibility study before getting too excited about the idea. On the face of it, it should be reasonably easy - register 5 or 6 accounts, then register 5 devices per account (giving you 25-30 Kindles, i.e. a class-set); buy the books required from each of your 6 accounts (perhaps identifying 2 accounts for use with A-Level, and adding A-Level texts just to those 10 Kindles); set up a WiFi hotspot which bypasses the filters (Kindles need direct connection, no proxy server) and leave the Kindles to download your purchases. Number the Kindles, and give them out to the classes, making sure each child gets the same one each lesson. Then turn the WiFi off again, otherwise Whispersync will lose everyone's places for them.

That Calibre software looks interesting though...

[JJonas]

Having asked the Kindle question I found a member of staff showing off his new Kindle purchase in the staff room so I borrowed it and gave it a try and I was able to transfer(using calibre) a pdf file onto it with no problems. So I guess if you could buy multiple copies of an ebook from your ebook retailer you could use calibre to transfer the books onto the devices (providing they are DRM free). Calibre will also convert book formats, including to and from .mobi which I believe is the Kindle book format.

[rich_tech]

For you Kindle owners on here:

I am thinking of upgrading to a Kindle from a Sony PRS-505.
Can I use the Kindle with Calibre to transfer my books I have on the Sony device or am I heading for a DRM nightmare?

Yeah, I use Calibre on mine without problems

[Sylv3r]

Slightly more expensive than that mentioned above, but we are probably going to purchase more iPAD's and use them as a dual purpose including e-Book reader via the kindle, iBooks app etc.

[enjay]

Slightly more expensive than that mentioned above, but we are probably going to purchase more iPAD's and use them as a dual purpose including e-Book reader via the kindle, iBooks app etc.

Along similar lines, how about cheapy-mccheap Android tablets for £150 with the Kindle app? Possibly not relevant to you if you already have some iPads (I note you said more iPads), however for first-time-out people or those who primarily want e-readers, the Android ones might be a good middle-ground.

[plexer]

Wait for the fire to be released then.

Ben

[plexer]

Amazon Kindle Fire UK launch January 2012 claim sources - Pocket-lint

Ben