Kindles

[Badzeye]

Hey all,

 

im being asked about getting some Kindles for school. I was wondering if any you have any experiance on how to do it? I was told by someone we can assign them all to one account and purchase a book and it will go to all of the associated kindles. That doesnt seem legit to me and a google shows me we should only be able to assign 6 to one account?

 

Any advice? thank you

[DGardiner]

thats is probably outside the TOS and shouldnt be doing it.

[paulkerton]

You can have as many Kindles as you want registered to your account, but for most books, once they gets added to a 7th kindle, the 1st one will have the book automatically removed from it when it's back on wi-fi.

Also dependent on the book, as some are limited to 1, like some text books for schools.

[LukeMoss]

I think you'd get yourself in trouble with that, we were once told to do it by a consultant to save money on purchasing apps for the iPads until I came along. Fair to say the advice wasn't given again and we signed up to VPP.

 

Unfortunately, I don't know enough about managing kindles to be of any more help. I would stay away from purchasing once though and buy as many books as you do devices.

[Ditto]

I've not heard of a well-managed environment of Kindles in a school. Have a look at https://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000598521.

 

I do recall in the US, there was a management product and it might be Whispercast, but last time I looked it was not supported in the UK. I'd go back and ask what the educational goal is and then come back to Edugeek to seek the best advice. Although costly up front, Chromebooks might be a consideration, but other Android tablets might be suggested. It's a real shame Amazon haven't engaged with the UK educational market more, as I think for some primary settings they could be useful.

[mavhc]

eink kindles or kindle fires? Check proxy support for starters.

[TechMonkey]

As Mav says, in school they will not play nicely with a proxy, but a transparent proxy should be OK.

 

It depends on what they are talking about. If they mean using the Family feature of Amazon, then that may be a grey area. There are services like OverDrive and Wheelers that allow your library to lend out purchased books, so yes buy a book and share it. They also often can tie in with the Library system. Obviously there is an additional cost for the service.

 

So in answer, just buying Kindles wouldn't be a good solution. Find out what they want to achieve and go from there.

[msi_school]

I have looked at Kindles a couple of time and there is no good way to manage them, I think Capita have plug in for their library systems which does ebook loans on android and iPads but then you are creating new problems for your self.

 

I have seen them given/loaned to pupils but the family were responsible for the amazon account.

[simpsonj]

We use Sora here.

I'm not sure we would recommend it, but it's probably a better option than kindles.

[mikeprice]

As with most things

 

go back to the actual Teaching and Learning targets of the project

 

last time I was involved with any kindles they had been bought (without IT approval or involvement) because it was an easy way to save money

which didn't work

because no-one who knew about IT was involved until they got into trouble

 

as usual

 

I would suspect that someone has come up with an idea which is 'obvious' - but has no clue how to do it in the real world

and is thinking of doing things that are illegal

[mavhc]

you can always use open source books and email them to kindles

 

https://www.gutenberg.org/ https://standardebooks.org/

[DaveTheTech]

Its been a couple of years since I looked, but it was only the american version that was supported for a school type scenario.

In the UK it was a much more hands on process.

[Badzeye]

Thanks all, doesnt look like there is a nice way of doing this. Ill feedback what ive learned and see what they say.