Ereaders and tablets are springing up in schools—and librarians are leading the way

Photograph by David Stuart

Buffy Hamilton only has to look at the waiting list of students clamoring to get their hands on one of five Kindles she purchased for Creekview High School to know the ereaders are bundling the three P’s of librarianship—participation, portability, and personalization—into one magical package. “The students can participate in saying what they want to read, the Kindles are portable, and there’s a personalized element,” says the Canton, GA-based media specialist. “It’s going really well.”

Commonly spearheaded by librarians, Kindle pilot programs are springing up in schools around the country, bringing ereaders to K–12 students, who are cracking the spine, so to speak, on these alternative learning tools. From full adoption of the devices at Clearwater High School in Florida to tentative beta projects such as Hamilton’s, educators are exploring how Kindles and other ereaders can mesh with curricula and enhance learning.

Tight budgets notwithstanding, school librarians are keen on digital reading, securing grants to buy Kindles, Nooks, and, in some cases, iPads—acquiring them one by one if need be. While the financial outlay isn’t small, many librarians and other educators believe the educational payoff could be huge.

“That’s the most exciting part for me, seeing kids excited about reading,” says Hamilton, who launched her program in November 2010 after learning about librarian Kathy Parker’s Kindle project at Seneca (IL) Grade School. “If we can spark or enhance that existing passion, that’s really what this is all about. It gives us another way to fuel the love of reading, while creating another way to learn and have fun. And that’s well worth the investment.”

With a reputation for skillful integration of technology, Hamilton, aka the Unquiet Librarian, generally pursues projects that don’t bend her budget. Yet she knew she needed to start working with ereading devices to at least see the potential for student learning.

While Hamilton used state money set aside for school library materials to acquire her first five Kindles, she suggests librarians explore local and community grants and other sources to fund such a program. Major companies like Target offer grants, and Scholastic has a web page listing various grants available to libraries, along with application deadlines.

Ideally, Hamilton would love to offer a one-to-one experience and assemble 30 to 35 Kindles, one for each student. Still, she’s very happy to be adding another five to the library’s stable later this year. Currently, students check out the Kindles from the library, where Hamilton keeps a waiting list, allowing kids to sign up for books they’re interested in reading. As long as there’s a Kindle version, she’ll try to purchase the title for students, who’ve found the instant download incredibly appealing.

One perk, however, was a surprise to Hamilton. And that’s the privacy the Kindles allow, letting teens check out materials they may not want friends to know they’re reading. “If you check out four to five books, it’s hard to get them into a book bag without people seeing,” she explains. “With a Kindle, no one really knows. For teens, privacy is really important. They can see what’s been loaded on a Kindle, but they can’t see who requested it and who flipped through it.”

With the first-generation device making its debut in November 2007, Amazon’s Kindle took some time to wend its way to the K–12 setting. Even today, the device is still primarily geared toward the consumer market, priced at $139 for a WiFi version and $189 for one that allows for 3G connectivity. The idea is simple—you buy a book, download it, and within seconds you’re reading.

Educators have begun adopting the Kindle for school use, exercising the option of buying a single title and porting it to six different devices, the maximum allowed by Amazon. Some media specialists, including Hamilton, have contacted Amazon about exceeding that device limit, as well as devising a more school-friendly policy overall, which would facilitate loaning Kindle ebooks in libraries. Still, the company has offered no exceptions or guidelines specific to this group.

There’s other room for improvement, too. Hamilton, for example, is not in love with the Kindle’s clunky interface and has plenty of notes on how Amazon could rework its system—if anyone cares to listen. For starters, she hates having to add the books to one device at a time. While Hamilton knows it’s just a matter of clicks, eliminating even five would help a busy librarian.

Next? She’d like to be able to see the titles’ status on each Kindle via a dashboard, which she now has to track manually. “These are little things,” she says, “but they would make it much easier from a management standpoint.”

Hamilton’s issues with the bestselling ereader don’t surprise Marcia A. Mardis, an assistant professor at Florida State University’s School of Library & Information Studies and associate director of FSU’s Partnerships Advancing Library Media Center. Mardis, who teaches library collection development, knows digital resources are here to stay. The Kindle, however, may be another story. “I hesitate to teach students to look at one device,” she says.

Her pet peeve with the Kindle? The inability to print wirelessly—a function supported on the iPad. “For those kids who can’t take a Kindle home or comprehend a test, the inability to print has been a barrier,” says Mardis. “I really feel if kids designed an ereader, the Kindle is not what they would design.”

Overall, digital devices are encouraging students to read, says Mardis. But whether a stand-alone device is the answer versus a reading app on a multifunction platform like a tablet remains to be seen. “If the issue is reading comprehension for kids, I want to see more evidence before I can feel that platforms will be around for a while,” she says. “The research on reading off websites shows that comprehension among students is not as high [as when they read print].”

Mardis, who coauthored a white paper, “From Paper to Pixel: Digital Textbooks and Florida Schools,” on how to best incorporate digital textbooks into classrooms, cites various studies, including “Weaving the Literacy Web: Changes in Reading from Page to Screen,” which illustrates how comprehension changes when students read on the Web and the need for different strategies when using online tools with students. “But then again it’s hard to say how the engagement piece will balance that out,” adds Mardis.

For its part, Amazon is trying to meet some of its user’s demands, last month adding page numbers to Kindle books, which correspond to the print version of a title. For book clubs and classes using both printed books and Kindles, this will be a big plus. Kindle users will also be able to share notes or highlighted text with their classmates. The new features, however, will only be available on the latest generation device, the Kindle 3.

Meanwhile, Kindles are working out just fine at Chambersburg Area Middle School in south central Pennsylvania. That’s according to Joanne Hammond, head librarian for Chambersburg’s school district and librarian at the middle school. Back in July 2008, she used grant money to purchase a single Kindle to try out with staff. In fall 2010, the program began in earnest when librarian Teresa Miller acquired the devices for the middle school, which now hosts a Kindle club, where student members can come into the library and grab a device for leisure reading.

“I love using the Kindle and I’m going to the library even more because of it,” says Andre Kerlin, a seventh grader at Chambersburg Middle School and a Kindle club member. “I think it’s very cool to be able to read tons of books on one thing.”

Students have, in fact, picked up books (so to speak) that they may not have tackled if they’d seen the size of the printed volume, says Hammond. “I had a child in the reluctant reader group who has been waiting for Twilight,” she says. “And when we handed her the Kindle and said she’d have the novel in 30 seconds, she was thrilled. That’s a long book, but she won’t realize that on the Kindle. And these are the kids who will sometimes pick the skinniest book possible for reports. But now she comes regularly to the Tuesday and Thursday group and reads.”

Over at Chambersburg’s Senior High School, librarian Melissa Engel-Unruh has been using Kindles with her struggling readers. With 33 devices—more than enough for a classroom—she’s watched as the Kindle has caught on with teachers, too. This semester one of her colleagues launched a social studies project in which students will use the device to read selections from Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone (Farrar, 2007) for a class unit on Africa.

Chambersburg has since taken to another device. At J. Frank Faust Junior High School, librarian Katherine Miller used a $3,500 grant from the Greater Chambersburg Chamber Foundation to purchase five iPads. Students are using the Apple tablets in the library to access iBooks.

A difference Miller’s already noted between the Kindle and the iPad’s iBook feature is the accommodation for multiple readers of the same title. So, for example, if an eighth grader reading Sharon Flake’s You Don’t Even Know Me (Hyperion, 2010) is on page 35 of an iPad and a ninth grader is on page 79, the book will sync to whoever read it last. So students have to jot down where they left off—not very 21st century. This is not the case with the Kindle, which can hold places for individual readers, even if they’re reading the same book.

Of the many available apps on the iPad, Miller particularly likes iTranslate, which allows the school’s English-language learners to easily look up words in their first language.

Miller is tracking how the students are using the iPad, and the potential effect on learning, using brief lessons. “I have them complete an activity to help me gauge their reading comprehension, which also gives them some skills for when they read in the future,” she says.

Informal assessments not withstanding, it’s pretty hard not to see the sheer fun inherent in an iPad, at least for now. Whether Kindles, iPads, or cool gadgets yet to come see widespread adoption may depend on whether the “wow” factor of these devices will hold among students, while also having a positive effect on student comprehension and learning.

With budgets as they are, it’s unlikely many media specialists can purchase a full, school-wide set of ereaders anytime soon. Still, most librarians believe they’d be amiss not to try piloting the devices with students, acquiring as many as school budgets and hard-earned grants will allow.

“This is the beginning of a shift,” says Hamilton. “Five or 10 years ago, we had one to five computers in the classroom. Now, we have computer labs, libraries have PCs, and even mobile laptop labs. Initially the price points were a little extreme, and now these things are more ubiquitous. Maybe I’m overly optimistic and naive, but I think in the next 5 to 10 years these grassroots projects will be the standard.”