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Tablet computers being used by students for reading, writing, submitting homework, research, etc. is a no-brainer. It is inevitable. No reason for Amazon not to have a share of that.
The big news in this for me is that Amazon has got some major textbook publishers to commit to re-designing their textbooks as tablet apps rather than print books.
Up until now, the conventional wisdom has been that e-readers are most suitable for reading novels: all text, all the time, from start to finish. Text books, among other p-applications, have not been seen as a good "fit:" they have charts, graphics, and pictures to go with that text, and you might jump around within the text, constantly going back to this table or that glossary or some answer key.
So, kudos to Amazon for using its clout to nudge the big publishers in the inevitable direction. It's past time, I say.
By the same token, I'm puzzled by those who poo-poo new standards with all their bells and whistles: embedded videos, mp3's, animated graphics, whatever. In the future, I take it for granted that people will carry tablets or slates for school, work, leisure, etc., and among other things they'll be reading novels on those devices with little or no eyestrain.
Between now and then, there will be some heavy-handed, awkward, misguided, mistimed, mispriced, whatever developments and diversions getting from where we are now to where we will be then. But there are profits for whomever can grab market share now if they can hold on to some of that for later.
I've seen schools now that issue computers or Kindles to their students, but there's no 500-pound gorilla of educational computing. If Apple gets a jump on tablets for educational use, that's something.
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