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  • Nobody (but me) Likes Kindle for Coursepacks

    By Joshua Kim November 11, 2010 10:15 pm EST

    I want a Kindle option for my digital coursepack. Almost everyone I'm working with insists that this is a bad idea. iPad, yes. Browser, yes. LMS integration, yes. Print-on-demand, yes. But Kindle, no.

    The iPad is the biggest yes. Check out XanEdu's iPad page. Study.net is already in the market with their first iteration of an iPad play. We hear lots of talk about iPad's becoming standard in some programs, such as executive MBA type degrees. The iPad provides a path from paper to digital, with the iPad offering features such as annotation, highlighting, and collaboration Course videos can supplement articles in the digital coursepack when delivered through an iPad app. In fact, many of the features of the traditional LMS will eventually migrate to the digital coursepack iPad app - representing a threat (or an opportunity) for the dominant LMS providers.

    But back to the Kindle. The anti-Kindle coursepack argument goes like this:

    • Kindles make poor coursepack platforms due to their inability to offer robust annotation, note-taking, and sharing features.
    • There is no good way to distribute coursepacks to Kindle users, as the distribution channel is controlled by Amazon and Amazon is not interested in opening a path.
    • If Amazon does open a path for digital coursepacks on to the Kindle, it will demand too high a revenue share.
    • The Amazon file format is proprietary, does not support EPUB, and the Mobipocket format often does a poor job of converting complex text.
    • Complicated files, those with graphics and tables, don't work well on the Kindle.

    Am I missing any anti-Kindle courspack arguments?

    Thing is, I like my Kindle. I find reading on it to be a pretty good experience. I like that it is so light. I like that it was cheap ($139). I like the light built into the case. I like that the battery lasts forever. I like carrying my Kindle around, and if I were a student I think I'd want the option to also read my course materials on my Kindle. I'd also want the paper copy, and the iPad copy, but the Kindle version would be important to me as well.

    From what I can tell, the big coursepack providers are also moving away from the Kindle. They want to talk about the iPad. They want to talk about the RIM PlayBook. They want to talk about the coming wave of Android tablets. The Kindle is a more difficult conversation.

    What do you think?

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Comments on Nobody (but me) Likes Kindle for Coursepacks

  • Kindle & learning
  • Posted by G P Witteveen , Outreach Consultant on November 12, 2010 at 7:30am EST
  • I'm tracking my learning curve at neoazw.blogspot.com and in the past weeks with Kindle have found the balance of pluses and minuses to be clearly on the side of the positive hybrid reading experience. It makes thin soup compared to the heavy stews of full color, magazine-style textbooks. But taken as supplement (for example carrying the body of the text and selected reference images in a simpler linear flow), the Kindle would be a great magnifier of the learning process since it is easy to search, pull out selected text and add brief comments. The conversion process to the AZW format is painless. The native reading of TXT and PDF is handy. And the ability to display (monochrome) image files (maps, photos, tables, and so on) all are good, too. So an instructor can bundle all sorts for documents and sources, make the conversion if needed (from HTML, DOC, RTF) and distribute to students to load onto Kindle or the its desktop eReader software.
  • Platform independent
  • Posted by Rebecca Hedreen , Distance Learning Librarian at Southern CT State U on November 12, 2010 at 11:00am EST
  • Personally, I want platform independent coursepacks. Material in standardized, open formats can be displayed on any nearly any system, modified for disability use, and even, gasp, printed! Lets get the materials out there in usable formats, and let learners choose the options--e-paper screens, notetaking, highlighting, speech-to-text, etc.--that they need and want via the hardware/software packages available. Then devices (and apps) can be sold on the basis of functionality, not content (i.e. "I have to get an iPad, because Publisher X only has a package for iPad.")
  • Posted by biggest kindle problem on November 12, 2010 at 11:00am EST
  • I was taking a course this semester and downloaded the textbook in kindle format as a bit of an experiment. It quickly became a frustrating experience. The lack of pagination made citing passages take me ten times longer than it should, as I would have to type the passage into amazon's search inside version of the book to get a page number. Worse, pulling up particular pages rapidly during in-class discussion was next to impossible.

    Also, I access ebooks on about 4 different devices depending on where I am. I actually had to buy a second copy at a very awkward moment because I had run out of devices I could read copy #1 on, and kindle wouldn't let me remove a device. As a Librarian, I suspect ebooks are the future for much of scholarly publishing, but at least Kindle is NOT ready for prime time on the campus.
  • Other thoughts
  • Posted by Dennis Dow at Online on November 12, 2010 at 11:15am EST
  • I've been exploring the idea myself for my classes. You don't need Amazon to distribute kindle readable material. You simply need to convert the material to .mobi format yourself. That's where part of the problem lies. My coursepack would have 20 or so different items to be converted each semester.

    I wouldn't see the iPad as a solution to the problem as distribution would probably be pdf, which doesn't annotate well either.

    Still looking for solutions.
  • Alternative ways to get documents onto the Kindle
  • Posted by Jason M. Varner on November 12, 2010 at 7:45pm EST
  • "There is no good way to distribute coursepacks to Kindle users, as the distribution channel is controlled by Amazon and Amazon is not interested in opening a path."

    -- Wrong. Whoever makes this argument hasn't bothered to actually learn how the kindle functions. In addition to transferring files by USB cable (which may be cumbersome for larger-scale setups) you can do what I did for making available a few (religiously themed) documents:

    1) Convert documents into a Kindle-friendly format (.mobi in my case, or .txt / .pdf) using a tool like Calibre, etc.
    2) Host them somewhere on the Internet (the free Dropbox.com Public folder, in my case)
    3) Link to the hosted files on a blog or webpage (such as the online version of a course syllabus, etc.)
    4) Kindle users can use the web browser built into the Kindle to download the documents/ebooks onto their Kindle *directly* through/with the Kindle web browser (no computer + USB cable necessary; no need to go through the official Amazon-controlled distribution channel)

    If you want to see how easy this method is to setup and use, check out my own project (scroll down to "Kindle-friendly eBook Files") at: tiny.cc/cr4k

    The only 'feature' missing here is the ability to automatically "push" content/documents/ebooks onto users' Kindle devices -- individual Kindle user effort is required to download the files. But no intermediary computer + USB device is required; all materials can be acquired directly on the Kindle.

    If anyone has success with doing this, or needs help setting it up, leave me a Comment on my linked page above. Good luck!
  • Posted by BKing on November 14, 2010 at 6:15am EST
  • I agree. Love my Kindle for reading vs. the iPad, but I also agree with another poster that pagination is a huge issue. I tried using the Kindle in a book discussion group, where others had the book in paper. Impossible. It would be nice to paginate a Kindle book to it's paper counterpart.

    But the reading experience on the Kindle is 100% better than iPad IMO.

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