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May 05, 2009, 08:24 AM ET
Amazon Expected to Unveil New Kindle for Textbooks
Rumors are buzzing this week that Amazon is set to unveil a new, wider-format version of its Kindle e-book reader in the hopes of making it a platform for electronic textbooks.
Amazon has invited journalists to a news-media event tomorrow morning at Pace University for a big announcement, and though officials from Amazon and Pace refused to talk to The Chronicle, anonymous sources told The Wall Street Journal that the company will unveil a bigger model of the Kindle and describe a pilot project with six major universities to try textbooks on it. The company will announce new deals with magazine and newspaper publishers, the newspaper said.
But a previous effort to use e-book readers in the classroom bombed, and it’s not clear how Amazon will do any better.
In an experiment last year at Northwest Missouri State University with another e-book device, made by Sony, students and professors quickly asked for their printed books back. Students were excited by the devices at first, but they became frustrated by how difficult it was to quickly flip through the digital textbooks or make annotations.
In the end, the university’s officials, who remain excited about the promise of e-textbooks, decided to continue their pilot program using laptops instead of dedicated e-book devices. In surveys, students have shown much greater satisfaction reading e-books on their computers than they did on the Sony Reader. Interactivity — the ability to annotate and take notes — were the main factors cited by students, rather than the size of the devices. —Jeffrey R. Young
Categories: Gadgets
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