Does Amazon's Kindle hold the future for English education? The Kindle is handheld, wireless reader. Instead of purchasing actual books, readers can download books onto this PDA-like device in minutes. Over 130,000 books are currently available, a number which grows daily. Entire personal libraries can now be reduced into Kindle. The books are cheaper to download than to buy traditionally as well, with most books selling for $9.99. Books aren't the only text available on Kindle. One can subscribe to newspapers and magazines from all over the world, read blogs and even read documents from email.
But will this technology make it into the classroom? Eventually I think it will. Imagine, years from now, instead of students signing their names into five different text books on their first day of school, they are giving a Kindle-like handheld reader. They download the textbooks they need for their classes. And teachers are no longer limited to the readings in their textbooks. Want students to read a couple of sonnets not in the Norton Reader? Just upload them onto their readers. English offices no longer need bookshelves of class sets of To Kill a Mockingbird and Hamlet. Teachers no longer need to make copy after copy of readings.
Obviously the cost will need to drop significantly. (I can't imagine many schools dropping $360 on each student.) But I think that in my teaching lifetime we may get to the point where these would be economically viable.
http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Amazons-Wireless-Reading-Device/dp/B000FI73MA
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