Paper Mache Death Star

The same, enormous, financial oversight can be found in both teams behind the Kindle Fire and the Nook Tablet.  Neither "tablet" allows for (easy) blogging.

How the hell can you create an updated e-reader without giving people the ability to write?  Readers are writers.

Both, at their core, are in the e-reader family--born from the Kindle and the Nook.  It strikes me that most on those corporate teams must not be readers.

Serious readers read more than books and magazines--they read blogs, and they read blogs about books.  They also, and more importantly, write blogs...about books.

About books.  Readers are writers--did I mention that?

Why wouldn't you encourage people to blog on your e-reader?  The whole genesis of the e-reader was for people to read books on your device--which is nothing more than a clever tractor beam into gently encouraging people to buy books from you.  Ok, that is fine--but it strikes me that no one understood that readers are writers.

Log onto GoodReads once.

If you allow people to write, blog, create documents easily you will sell more Fires, or "Tablets" or Widgets.  Right now, we can not do that.  I can use the Android market to download an App like Blogger, but not from your devices.

Your new devices collectively strike me as a paper mache Death Star.

Allow people to write and create on your device and they will buy YOUR books, Amazon (or Barnes and Noble).  Amazon, you tried to corner the market with your Amazon Prime offers but completely missed an easy access point in the market.

It wouldn't have taken much.

Allow Blogger, and Tumblr, and WordPress (et.al) to have an app on your network.  Allow users to create written documents.  You are not that far off from raising the eyebrows of the education market.

But right now all we can do on your unit is buy your books and play Angry Birds and watch movies.  That's great, except that your are catering to an unproductive segment of our lives.  The time when we sit to relax and escape in a book or a lazy game or movie.  How about the other, dominant segments of our day when we are productive, creative, and entrepreneurial members of society?

People write to make money.  There are scores of us out there.  Not to mention the fact that readers are writers.

You tried to be clever and offered a limited Android market of Apps so that it is controlled by you and dollars funneled to you directly.

You completely missed a market of millions of people.  There are millions of blogs out there.  Millions.

People of all ages blog--right now, the 25-45 crowd blogs more than any other demographic.  Yet, here is a million dollar tip for you.  In the very near future, the 18-24 crowd will catch them as more schools turn to digital writing.  Imagine getting your units into schools, colleges, universities as a primary tool?

Imagine textbook companies having an exclusive contract with you.  Right now a half dozen textbook companies fight it out like pirates whenever a school district is going to replace its books.  Imagine what kind of financial boon you could create for yourself if you partnered with a textbook publisher.

They publish books, you know.  To schools where people read...and write.  And people read and write at home, at work, on the train...people do read and write.

And your devices almost let us do that.  Almost.

So it is back to buying more iPads for our school.  And back to considering a second iPad for my house, rather than something else.

Do the research--and make the adjustment.  You'll sell more Widgets.

Nook of the Market

An open letter to Apple, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and anyone making tablets,

Your projects miss the mark for educators; they are close...but they miss the mark.  For one, Apple, your iPad is priced out of most classrooms. I own one, and I have visions of what this type of hardware can do for education, but right now it is akin to the invention of paper.  Very expensive.  And blank.

Barnes and Noble, I bought a Nook Color along with a N2A cards to allow for it to easily jump into  mode, and now you are releasing a Nook Tablet.  You actually did very well under our education tests, but your screen is very difficult to work with; it is "sticky" and unresponsive too often.  I will also add that the fact that you are still a brick and mortar business shows.  We called you.  And someone answered and agreed to come to our school to show us what the Nook Tablet could do for teachers and students.  You had a specialist who dealt with the Nook, and you had someone with knowledge of education--they could cite local schools using Nooks and how they were being used.

We asked if you could show us if the Nook Tablet could allow for student creation--could we create and write on a Nook with Wikispaces, Google Docs, Blogger, and Moodle...could this device be used to create digital writing?  (We already knew part of the answer because we tested you.)  And you answered honestly, you didn't know, but you listened, and promised you would ask someone else for us, and then you set up an appointment at our school.  You are coming to us.  And, in the end, your product may not be able to do what we need it to do, you earned big points for your effort on the phone with me.  I will be a more conscious consumer of B&N products in the future, especially considering our experience with Amazon.

R.I.P Borders brick and mortar stores.  You are sorely missed already.  We called Amazon to ask a few questions about the Kindle Fire and got someone on the phone who read to us from a script--he anticipated every question with a response so highly polished that some came no where near providing an answer to specific question we asked.  We asked if Amazon had someone in education we could speak with--no.  We asked if we could speak to someone who had specific knowledge of the Fire as it could relate to use in schools--no.  We asked if someone could come out to our school with a Kindle Fire to show us what it could do for our students--no.  We asked if we could write with Wikispaces, Google Docs, Blogger, and Moodle--you told us we could browse the web.  You told us we could buy a Fire and just return it after 30 days.  You were not helpful.

A change is coming in education--technology is bearing down on us and as many have noted in their own language, the schools standing today no longer serve the needs of the young people we are putting in them.

Apple, you went after the education market many years ago and you seized control of a nice chunk of it.  You have a chance to own it...but you are letting others leverage themselves.  Look at the mad scramble to create an android tablet which could compete for consumer dollars against the iPad.  No one has really done it yet, but there is a way in if you don't take care of business.

Imagine the money you could save education if a tablet were in every student and teacher's hands--and that is what we all read from, wrote on, shared with.

Imagine the shift in how dollars are spent...now they are spent on textbook purchases, rebinding, and replacing.

Imagine the ePad--an iPad for education where students can use all of the tools needed to create and share podcats, video, blogs, documents, multi-media projects and still use the web and an in-house school email client.

Imagine that the ePad allowed for the download of texts and supplemental readings from other books, magazines, newspapers in our content areas.

Imagine that schools could spend money on training its teachers how to best prepare young people for the digital evolution in our smart phones.

Can you imagine that many teachers still fear the technology?  Can you imagine that these computers (our smart phones) are banned in some schools and that they are seen as a distraction to education?

Can you imagine leading the evolution...truly leading it?

Can you imagine making this tool affordable for all schools?