Position Paper

[Just to reiterate, this paper was written with a specific audience in mind--my principal and the school board--therefore I wrote it specifically to give to these people. This assignment had immense real world application for me and will be instanteously useful. Thank you for the opportunity to utilize the skills I learned in this class to change my own school.]

E-Readers and the Future of Literacy: Analyzing the Potential of Kindles in the Classroom

Andrew Chilton

Position: The use of Kindle software in the classroom has the potential to eliminate unnecessarily costly physical books, engage the student through the use of interactive technology, and prepare our students for the globally competitive digital world. 

Before I analyze the intricacies of the possibilities of this exciting technology, let me start with a few introductory remarks about the basics of this software. Kindle, a digital software package that is offered by the world's largest online retailer, Amazon.com, is a program designed to read digital texts through various hardware devices. It is completely free to download, easy to set up and utilize from a variety of devices including laptops, smart phones, Kindle devices, and the iPod touch (Free Kindle, 2011). Because our school system is already rolling out the 1:1 laptop initiative, the only cost initially would be in paying technology support services personnel to install the programs.  Once installed, students would simply use the software to access the digital copies of books in their library collection. There are millions of books available through Amazon.com and Gutenberg.org, including millions of classic books that would be frequently used in English/Language Arts classrooms, such as Pride and Prejudice or the works of William Shakespeare that are completely  free. For example, I have analyzed my own English III and English IV reading list and found every single book I teach for free offered for the Kindle. If my classroom alone had utilized Kindle software instead of buying physical books, we would have saved an estimated $8,000-10,000. This is an astounding savings and moreover that money could easily be used for other urgent needs in the school.

For those books that are not free, the prices are on average 50% less than the normal printed text (although these numbers are dropping to a still respectable discount of 35-40% off (Musket, et.al)) and there are a multitude of advantages to the digital text. One such advantage of a digital text is its “perpetual perfection,” meaning it will never age, tear, mold, or be lost. There is no replacement cost to these digital books—their copyrights will never expire after purchase and the cost will be no more than the standard upkeep that is already given to our student laptops.

Another advantage is the ability for students to interact with the text in meaningful ways. Kindle software offers students many possibilities not feasible for physical books, including:

1.      The ability to “highlight” important parts of the text

2.    Type notes in the margins

3.    Add “bookmarks” of important places in the text to return to later

4.    Search by keyword notes and highlights they have previously entered

5.     View the dictionary definition of any word they encounter

6.    Modify the text (font size, typeface, line spacing) based on their preference

7.     An audible feature that will allow a digital voice to read to them.

The Kindle software offers differentiated instruction based on the needs of the individual and allows students to digitally interact with the text in ways educators could only dream of. All of these possibilities offer opportunities to interact with our students in ways that are based on sound principles of literacy (Vacca, et.al).

          Although this technology is in its infancy, there have been multiple peer-reviewed studies done on the effectiveness of Kindle software in the classroom. Seven universities, including the University of Washington and the prestigious Reed College, did an extensive study on Kindle’s application in the college classroom and found that Kindle offers many exciting opportunities and minimal drawbacks (Hickey 2011).

The advantages found in the studies include many of the advantages I mentioned earlier, as well as reports that students seemed to comprehend the information more efficiently and were also able to utilize their reading material for assessments and writing assignments much easier because of the search capabilities of the software (Marmarelli 2011)(Swain 2011). This makes perfect sense because students are given the opportunity to interact with the text in meaningful ways that are only possible with the new digital software of Kindle.

References

“Free Reading Apps”. Amazon. 2011. <http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=amb_link_354015842_4?ie=UTF8&docId=1000493771&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center2&pfrd_r=0FQQQ7PX7RF0YD7NFQNN&pf_rd_t=1401&pf_rd_p=1275383342&pf_rd_i=1000412651> Accessed July 2011.

Hickey, Hannah. “College Students use of Kindle DX points to e-reader’s role in Academia” UW Today. May 2, 2011. <http://www.washington.edu/news/articles/college-students2019-use-of-kindle-dx-points-to-e-reader2019s-role-in-academia> Accessed July 2011.

Marmarelli, Trina. The Reed College Kindle Study. 2010. <http://www.reed.edu/cis/about/kindle_pilot/Reed_Kindle_report.pdf> Accessed July 2011.

Musket, Paul, Darla Runyon, and Robin Schulze. “E-Textbooks: An Interesting Ride”. UW Bothell Learning Technologies Blog. 2010. <http://depts.washington.edu/etuwb/ltblog/?p=986> Accessed July 2011.

Swain, Jeff. Initial Thoughts on the Kindle for Education. 2010. <http://www.personal.psu.edu/wjs186/blogs/five-4-six/Initial_Thoughts_on_the_Kindle_for_Education.pdf> Accessed July 2011.  

Vacca, Richard, Joanna Vacca, and Maryann Mraz. Content Area Reading: Literacy and Learning Across the Curriculum. 10^th ed. New York: Allyn & Bacon, 2010.