What an interesting perspective on the Kindle. As someone who watched my father purchase a Betamax VCR, only to see it overtaken by the VHS a year or two later, I can certainly see your point about shifts in technology. The reason that I’m so interested in the Kindle in the classroom is because of the potential that it has for students with visual impairments. Amazon has recently disabled the text-to-speech feature on the Kindle (I’ve read due to concern that it’s cutting into the audio-book market). However, this option would allow students with visual impairments with access to books (although limited in some capacity) on the same platform as their sited peers. This is pretty exciting when you think about the social impact for students who are blind – after all, most kids want to fit in with their peers. This also has great potential for students with learning disabilities that could benefit from audio. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the folks at Amazon will reconsider this decision and reactivate the text-to-speech feature.

But to respond to the title of your post – no. I think that there will always be room for traditional books in the classroom. They may be used differently, but they will always be there. To respond to your closing question – absolutely!

It's true. I love my Kindle. It packs easy. I always have it, so I can be catching up on my novel if I have to wait in line. But it does have its limitations. I can't share the book. The best part about reading is telling someone else to read it, so the two of you can discuss. Book clubs thrive on this form of social engagement. "I'm reading this book, you have to read it." But then ever so miserly, there's no dog-eared copy to pass on. "Go download your own," is a total wet blanket on the concept of sharing. Sometimes after finishing up my book on the Kindle, I consider for a moment, buying the paper version, breaking its binding and roughing up its pages, so I can share it with somebody else. Cheers O!

My reaction to your question "Do you see Kindles in your classroom in the future?" is a pretty positive one. My first thought was, it's kind of like the Smartboard. No one was too sure about it at first, but they've come to realize what an enhancement and motivator it is in their classrooms.
I can see the Kindle being a motivator. Like the Smartboard, I can see students becoming more involved with their learning. I am a substitute teacher in Ohio and when I walk into different classrooms, I see a huge difference in participation rates if they have a Smartboard. It's exciting, it's new, it's electronic. That's the Kindle.
Kids these days grow up in electronic rich environments. They have access to computers at school, the library, their own homes (not all of course) or at a friends. They grow up with cell phones, why not grow up with Kindles too?
I can see participation rates in Reading increase because of the Kindle. I can see learning environments expanding because they are changing with the times. If every child in your class had one, it would be more interactive for them as they follow along with a book that they may not have had access to before.
I can see it as a great motivator. Students will want to do more with it, I think, because it's electronic and not just paper or a book. It helps us to learn more about the children we teach and be able to provide more and various activities to give them the tools for a great education.
I love what Cynthia said about helping out children with disabilities or eye sight problems. I agree with her, they would always be welcome, but nothing will ever be able to replace the love (and that new book smell) of a real book that you can hold in your hands and make your own. Sometimes, you need that feel of a real book to take you to a place where your imagination will run wild.

I was riveted by your article on the Kindle reading device. I felt a sense of urgency to be proactive in keeping books in the classroom upon the ending of my initial reading. Reading is not only something that we use for academic and learning purposes, but is something that can be a hobby or an art form. It would be devastating to loose such a wonderful thing. However, in today’s fast paced world, it is important for educators to keep up with the ever changing demands of the students that we teach. I started teaching first grade in 2003. I found that keeping my students attention was a much easier task during that first year than it appears to be at present time. Could it be that I was more enthusiastic about my lesson delivery? Maybe. Could it be that when my students went home, the game consoles were a form of escape for shorter amounts of time, rather than an electronic form of a babysitter? Possibly. Despite the reasons for the difference in the lack of attention span between my first year of teaching and now, it is evident that our students today are more immersed in technology than even just a year ago. I have a four year old daughter who knows technology terms that I have just recently become familiar with and comfortable using. We walked into the local Starbucks the other afternoon and my daughter paused at the door and said “Hey Mom! Look, they have Wi-Fi here. You should have brought your laptop. Then maybe I could have gotten on Barbie dot com or Princess dot com”. I was blown away at her comment, however, it showed me how much our children embrace technology and how they are using it for learning and recreational causes. Do I think that a time limit should be put on technology use? Absolutely. Without proper limitations, our children can get lost in the uses of technology and in turn, may loose interest in or ability to use the traditional ways of learning and playing. In today’s technology driven society, I find it absolutely amazing at the number of first grade students that I come into contact with that say they play their video games when they get home instead of going outside. And if fascinates me further to realize how many of them do not go outside to make “mud pies” and play “house” with the neighborhood kids, not to mention the number of children that say they don’t know any other kids on their street. I think that it is important to embrace today’s and tomorrow’s technological advances, yet still keep yesterday’s traditional ways at the forefront. I think that the use of the Kindle device would be extremely beneficial for those with special needs and for motivating (as Amy stated) our lower achieving students. However, I think that it should be used in moderation so that the traditional ways of enjoying and loosing one’s self in a book is not lost.

I do see what you are saying, but I think the novelty of the kindle will quickly fade. Students are not going to like reading more because it is on a computer screen. If they wanted to, they could find pretty much any text online, but they don't. The way to turn a student into a reader is to expose the student to a book that he/she can fall in love with.

I don't think a kindle is a bad thing, but I don't think it is going to revolutionize education. If we teach the same old stories in the same old ways, we will get the same old responses. We as teachers need to learn how to reach this generation in other ways than through technology. Technology can help, but in my opinion, it isn't the golden ticket here.

(On a final note, I love that you talk about book smells! I actually sometimes pass around an old book to my students and make them smell it! They usually hate it, but some day when they are old and they open up a book they read in high school to that sweet, musty aroma, they will be transported back to my classroom Sophomore year and will understand why that smell is so amazing!)

There are a lot of advantages to electronic books, and maybe they will replace paper inevitably, but this is also associated with some loss I suspect.

Holding a book in your hand, annotating it with ink, marking the pages, putting little tabs to mark important sections; these are not just quaint rituals, they are also ways that readers interact more deeply with the book and vicariously the mind of its author. I feel as if the deepest levels of reading are probably significantly more difficult with electronic media, at least any media I can personally imagine, and my experience has been that deep reading as I think of it is almost impossible with a Kindle. There are many properties of that medium that continually distract and provide an unreliable flow in the reading experience. This is a minor point when reading a brief article or a catalog, but when absorbed in a novel or an advanced textbook, it is a huge difference. The Kindle is better than a web page by far, but still has plenty of idiosyncrasies.

Of course the technology will improve, and maybe new rituals of interaction and new capacity for resolution will eventually replace the present awkward version. But I fear the skills may be all but lost by then as the paper books begin to dwindle, and we may lose the unique source of intelligence provided by deep cognitive processing and unique interaction we still enjoy with paper books.

I support the value of the Kindle (my wife loves hers for the expressed reasons).

I disagree that digitized text will somehow become unable to be read. The examples given are of technology that has been replaced by cloud computing – storage of digitized content on multiple servers that are backed up and shared constantly among whatever new devices appear, all made possible through standardization of the exchange medium. This means that the digitized record is safer now than the original paper-based or other form of recording could ever be. Importantly, this movement also means that the enormous numbers of students who will never be able to read from the original Velum can still read and learn. After all, this is what education should be about. We need to provide opportunities for everyone to learn and reach his or her potential.

FYI - DigitalOwl, Florida-based software company, is one of the first to venture into the fledgling digital textbook market. The company is sponsoring a Florida Digital Textbook Initiative, replacing traditional textbooks at several Florida schools with e-textbooks on laptops and ebook reading devices.

Matt Gomez, marketing manager at DigitalOwl, believes that schools are ready and eager to introduce electronic textbooks to the classroom. Since announcing the initiative, DigitalOwl has received inquiries from around the U.S., and around the world, from schools who want to learn more about the opportunity.

What I notice is missing from this discussion so far is that California is planning to replace *textbooks* with electronic versions. I love to read and will never abandon paper books, but I can see electronic textbooks. Think of the money and time saved when a new edition comes out! You might even get "updates" in between editions (as we do with software) - that's right, Pluto is no longer a planet and here's why (my district's science textbooks were adopted the year Pluto was demoted).

By all means keep other traditional texts in the classroom, but don't bemoan the loss of paper textbooks.

I was at the airport recently and saw a man pull out a Kindle. I've never seen one or heard of it before. I was fascinated for a second once I realized what it was. Then I thought, I hate reading on the computer. I prefer to print any reading material off the computer screen. I find it relieves the strain on my eyes and gives me a chance to mark up the piece if need be. Also, when I leisurely read, I like to relax and not feel the rays from the computer screen on my face. I think many will resist the tech evolution and if we reflect, books have withstood the time, unlike the cassette tape.

I do think the Kindle can have a place at school but in a limited fashion. First of all, anything digital is pricey. Some schools do not have sufficient computers for their students and digital textbooks will be years on their supply list. Second, the price will make damage liability an issue and an expense the school or parents might fight. It is hard enough to have students and parents take responsibility for the textbooks without a fight .

It would be nice to experiment on a class. Have one half use the Kindle and the other half use the book. After the second week have the students switch and report their preference.