Kindles in School and sharing books

[Steveaudus]

has anyone actualy purchased a set Kindles for a school?

This is my question we started using a set of 30 iPads with iBooks, which is great but the students are too easily distracted with other apps, so our English department are considering Kindles.

The best thing about iPads is just one copy of a book has to be purchased, and then that can be transferred to the whole set of iPads, can you do the same thing with Kindles?

Doesn't the DRM proctection prevent the books from being copied?

Thank you for any advice.
:-)

[HarryT]

If you register multiple Kindles to the same Amazon amount, they can share books, but the publisher determines the number of devices that the book can be simultaneously loaded onto. For most books, this number is 6.

I'm sure you'd agree that it's unreasonable, and hardly fair to either the author or the publisher, to buy just one copy of a book and read it on 30 readers simultaneously.

[kranu]

To address your issues with the iPad, you could lock them down to iBooks, if you're willing to do a little jailbreaking.

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=931043

The Kindle could be equally distracting if the students download games for it, or just use the web browser for stuff (though not as appealing).

[SamuraiXSendai]

Originally Posted by Steveaudus

has anyone actualy purchased a set Kindles for a school?

This is my question we started using a set of 30 iPads with iBooks, which is great but the students are too easily distracted with other apps, so our English department are considering Kindles.

The best thing about iPads is just one copy of a book has to be purchased, and then that can be transferred to the whole set of iPads, can you do the same thing with Kindles?

Doesn't the DRM proctection prevent the books from being copied?

Thank you for any advice.
:-)

I am not an Apple fan, but it hardly seems fair to make 30 copies of a book. Abuse like this just causes publishers to grip their DRM tighter.

[Steveaudus]

We don't mind paying for the book,
but we can't buy a book 30 times on a amazon account.

Would we have to 30 amazon accounts one for each Kindle..... what a pain!

[jbcohen]

I don't see DRM as really relevant to the current topic, its simple and easy to strip from any book at all. I recall a classroom in Virginia that becuase of budget cuts simply could not afford printed copies of the books that were needed and simply could not buy the several licenses for the books in electronic form so what they did is to purchase one copy strip the DRM from the books with software and load it on to the Kobos the class had been given by several parents. Once they read the book(s) they went into the school's electronic library. The Kobos could care less about the DRM and finacially this was the only way the class was going to be able to read the books.

[kindlekitten]

Originally Posted by Steveaudus

has anyone actualy purchased a set Kindles for a school?

This is my question we started using a set of 30 iPads with iBooks, which is great but the students are too easily distracted with other apps, so our English department are considering Kindles.

The best thing about iPads is just one copy of a book has to be purchased, and then that can be transferred to the whole set of iPads, can you do the same thing with Kindles?

Doesn't the DRM proctection prevent the books from being copied?

Thank you for any advice.
:-)

there have been a few reports of school districts going to kindle only environment. it is my understanding that Amazon has special programs/prices for schools as this was one of the driving concepts behind the development of the Kindle. I would suggest contacting KINDLE! not AMAZON customer support and beginning the conversation. good luck, and it would be nice to hear how it goes if you decide to go this route!

[ficbot]

Originally Posted by jbcohen

I don't see DRM as really relevant to the current topic, its simple and easy to strip from any book at all. I recall a classroom in Virginia that becuase of budget cuts simply could not afford printed copies of the books that were needed and simply could not buy the several licenses for the books in electronic form so what they did is to purchase one copy strip the DRM from the books with software and load it on to the Kobos the class had been given by several parents. Once they read the book(s) they went into the school's electronic library. The Kobos could care less about the DRM and finacially this was the only way the class was going to be able to read the books.

This is completely unacceptable. I don't know what rules they have in Virginia, but I know that where I live, if the ministry of education found out, our school could lose their accreditation. If they truly can't afford a certain book, they shouldn't buy it. There are plenty of other choices! I know of at least two fairly rigorous-looking on-line homeschool curriculums which are based exclusively on public domain books, for instance. And there are several vendors who sell DRM-free books which do not have restrictions. I have no issues with (for example) removing DRM on personal books I purchase so that I can read them on a Kindle instead of a Sony. But to do what you are suggesting is imho crossing a line, and if somebody in charge finds out about it, the school could find themselves in more trouble than they might be expecting.

Steveaudus makes a good point about being prepared to pay extra for the license but not having any means to do so short of creating multiple accounts. That's a fair complaint, and I wonder why none of the major vendors have addressed it.

[emalvick]

This is an interesting topic, especially with regard to the justification of essentially pirating a book because of costs, NOT the multiple accounts issue, which is legitimate.

Has it really gotten so bad that we can't afford textbooks for our students? When I was a student, schools had no choice but to buy textbooks for each child. If a school thinks that just because you can easily copy a file, they should do it to save money, then (1) I don't want my child going to a school with that type of ethics and (2) Our schools and governments need to work on their priorities with regard to books. Books are the foundation of almost all schools and all subjects. Very few classes happen without books.

I would suspect that Amazon and many other corporations would want to support an e-book environment (good business sense) and would work to accommodate schools and education systems.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by jbcohen

I don't see DRM as really relevant to the current topic, its simple and easy to strip from any book at all. I recall a classroom in Virginia that becuase of budget cuts simply could not afford printed copies of the books that were needed and simply could not buy the several licenses for the books in electronic form so what they did is to purchase one copy strip the DRM from the books with software and load it on to the Kobos the class had been given by several parents. Once they read the book(s) they went into the school's electronic library. The Kobos could care less about the DRM and finacially this was the only way the class was going to be able to read the books.

I would hope that any school that did this would be prosecuted to the full extent that the law allows. This is utterly unacceptable. The teacher who took this action should be dismissed from his or her job.

[Giggleton]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I would hope that any school that did this would be prosecuted to the full extent that the law allows. This is utterly unacceptable. The teacher who took this action should be dismissed from his or her job.

And what about the children who wish to read the books?

[CarolynBG]

I am about to start a small project in a local school. 16 Kindles. We don't need all the kids to have the same books at the same time. It is my understanding that most (not all) books have a 6 device limit, BUT that once a kid is done with the book it can be deleted from that device then downloaded to a different device. I got this straight from an Amazon rep. So this is the equivalent of your buying the eBook actually means you've got 6 copies of it, and a copy can be passed on to a different person once one is done with it.
Of course, if the idea is to have a textbook that everyone is using, then I guess you'd need to have as many accounts as (# of students divided by 6 [or however many devices that book is allowed to be on]) and then register 6 Kindles to each account, and buy a copy of the book for each account. That scenario *does* seem to be within the legal and allowed parameters for Kindles and books for Kindles, as far as I can tell.
But for the scenario like mine where you are essentially setting up a lending library, they can all be registered to the same account and if more kids want the book than copies are allowed to be on devices, you'd just have to have a waiting list of some sort.
cjbg

[CarolynBG]

Originally Posted by Steveaudus

The best thing about iPads is just one copy of a book has to be purchased, and then that can be transferred to the whole set of iPads, can you do the same thing with Kindles?

I'd have to imagine the rules for iPad are similar to those for any other device... the publisher sets the number of devices a book can be on. Some of the free old books seem to have no limit, but if, for instance, you were buying a book for the Kindle app on the mac, it's subject to the same limits as on any other device -- 6 [default; some are different] devices (of whatever type) total at a time. I haven't looked into this particular issue on other devices (Nook, iBook, etc.) because we went down the Kindle path before I got to this question. So I don't know what, for instance, rules are for books loaded onto iBook. Still am thinking the publishers would set similar rules over all devices. (when you say loading books onto iPad, do you mean iBook per se? I didn't play much with that because we weren't going to buy iPads, too expensive, but what little I did with it was a real pain...)

cjbg

[ucfgrad93]

Originally Posted by Steveaudus

We don't mind paying for the book,
but we can't buy a book 30 times on a amazon account.

Would we have to 30 amazon accounts one for each Kindle..... what a pain!

Originally Posted by HarryT

If you register multiple Kindles to the same Amazon amount, they can share books, but the publisher determines the number of devices that the book can be simultaneously loaded onto. For most books, this number is 6.

I'm sure you'd agree that it's unreasonable, and hardly fair to either the author or the publisher, to buy just one copy of a book and read it on 30 readers simultaneously.

Steveaudus if a publisher allows a book to be on up to 6 Kindles at once, then you would need to buy it five times in order for it to go on 30 Kindles. You would need 5 Amazon accounts. That seems pretty reasonable to me.

Originally Posted by HarryT

I would hope that any school that did this would be prosecuted to the full extent that the law allows. This is utterly unacceptable. The teacher who took this action should be dismissed from his or her job.

Agreed, that is completely unacceptable.

[RainingLemur]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

And what about the children who wish to read the books?

Kids WANTING to read books?