Kindle Economics

[ Thanks to Jason Perlow for this link. ]

"Chris Dawson over at ZDNet Education wrote a great post about what it would take to get Kindle-type devices or paperless educational curricula to replace textbooks and reading lists in elementary school and high school, and some of the problems that would have to be addressed. Indeed, to get Kindles in the hand of 5th graders, we’re going to have to think about battle hardening the devices (think a companies like Motorola Symbol Technologies or Panasonic's Toughbook division stepping in to help) and having them owned by the schools, because unless the prices of these things drop to the point where the replacement costs are roughly equivalent to what it currently costs to outfit kids with textbooks and literature for a wear and tear lifetime of 3 to 5 years, it’s going to be a non-starter -- kids are going to lose these things and destroy them. This of course, is assuming your kids don’t go to a school district where textbooks are 30 years old because of budgetary issues."

Complete Story

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