eReaders to encourage reading

[AngryITGuy]

It's been suggested by the SLT at my school that we look to invest in eReaders to try and encourage reading.

The device that seems to be mentioned a lot so far has been the Kindle, but I think thats more to do with the amount of publicity it has had recently.

I was just wondering what peoples thoughts are on such devices within schools will they work or is it just a gimmick?

I also wanted to see if anyone has gone down this route already and find out how its gone so far and what issues you came across with such devices.

Cheers

[jamesb]

I'm now on my second eReader (the first was a Sony and got accidentally left behind in a pub). I don't know whether or not they'd encourage the kiddliwinks to read, if they don't read already, but one advantage is the free books available for them from various sites. Admittedly these do tend to be classic books, though in a school library five eReaders populated with a few hundred classics would work out a lot cheaper than just a copy of each one.

The drawback I can see with a Kindle would be the link to an amazon account, though if you were buying one per student you could buy them unregistered, and get the students to register themselves. A few free books could then be stuck on a webserver in the school so that the kids can pull them down and have a few to be starting with.

[MK-2]

Most, if not all schools will have a school library. Granted they may not all get the very latest books, but if the kids cannot be arsed to go to the school library and read a real book, why would they go there to read a virtual book?
It seems SMT in places always see the solution to any problem as "throw money at technology and it will be fixed".

Surely only a matter of time before SMT's are proposing Xbox Kinect for PE lessons to encourage kids to move about

[aerospacemango]

Interesting......

Our principal wants us to look into the feasibility of using e-readers for the Governors.

Turns out that each month, they get sent a mighty batch of papers n stuff. Could this be an easier way forward? Send it ALL out as a PDF, get them to download it onto the reader, and all the info is there?

Any thoughts are gratefully received!

[jamesb]

Interesting......

Our principal wants us to look into the feasibility of using e-readers for the Governors.

Turns out that each month, they get sent a mighty batch of papers n stuff. Could this be an easier way forward? Send it ALL out as a PDF, get them to download it onto the reader, and all the info is there?

Well, with the Kindle whispernet you could set up addresses for each of them that'd convert the PDF to work on their Kindle, then download directly to the device over Wifi or 3G when they next turn it on. I think it's about 10p per file sent this way, so if you know what your printing and mailing costs are you can work out whether it's cost effective.

[3s-gtech]

We have a Sony eReader for the Library. It doesn't get used, the kids aren't interested - if they want to read, they get a book. That's the impression here anyway, I'd say there are better ways to tackle this than throwing money at it.

[gwendes]

Most, if not all schools will have a school library. Granted they may not all get the very latest books, but if the kids cannot be arsed to go to the school library and read a real book, why would they go there to read a virtual book?
It seems SMT in places always see the solution to any problem as "throw money at technology and it will be fixed".

Surely only a matter of time before SMT's are proposing Xbox Kinect for PE lessons to encourage kids to move about

I personally read more now I have a Kindle. I don't have to think 'What would I like to read?' as I'm running out of the house. Kindle is always in my bag so I always have something interesting to read...

[stevenlong1985]

I Have 16 E-readers, a pain to set up, you have to register each E-reader to an adobe account so you can buy books and be validated to read the books. adobe allows you to register a maximum 5 or 6 E-readers and then You have to contact them to rest the account. Once I did that i was fine for a while, but then I need to do a firmware update for each E-reader, I had to activated the readers again!