School Directory Project for eReader Use

[Will DeLamater]

On the premise that it would be useful to have a listing of all the schools using Kindles and other ereaders, I am starting this discussion so that you can leave a comment about your own implementation (even a single Kindle counts!) and to note any other school implementations you are aware of. Please make a comment to this discussion with the name of your school, the district, the state, the number of Kindles, and anything you'd like to share about your implementation. Thanks!

[Kathy M Burnette]

Discovery Middle School, Penn Harris Madison School Corporation, IN, 10 Nooks - I had teachers test the Nooks over summer and got their feedback via a survey on Google Docs. They loved them except for the fact that you couldn't print annotations like on the Kindle. All the teachers, except the principal, did not want to turn their Nooks in! They kept begging for more time. Now I have to clean the Nooks and decide how I want to check them out in the library.

[Marianna DeMott]

Peg DeMott
Lakeland School Corporation
LaGrange IN
I have a $5,000 e-reader grant, Nook owner (spouse has taken possession!) Have a committee. Trying to wade throught all the ins and outs, right now stumped on purchase of e-book titles. Business manager says state board of accounts "frowns" on gift cards but have talked to other people in our state who seem to use gift cards on a regular basis.
Very excited about implementing the grant but feel stuck right now.

[Kathy M Burnette]

I totally understand your frustration! It's the gift cards that are stumping me also. I've just put in an email to the BN Nook department asking if there's a way to use a purchase order to get ebooks placed on your Nook while in the store. I'll let you know what they say.

Marianna DeMott said:

Peg DeMott
Lakeland School Corporation
LaGrange IN
I have a $5,000 e-reader grant, Nook owner (spouse has taken possession!) Have a committee. Trying to wade throught all the ins and outs, right now stumped on purchase of e-book titles. Business manager says state board of accounts "frowns" on gift cards but have talked to other people in our state who seem to use gift cards on a regular basis.
Very excited about implementing the grant but feel stuck right now.

[Marianna DeMott]

So how did you load your first books? The ones that were on the Nooks you gave to your teachers. I'm still stalling on ordering since I don't know how to handle the purchase of books. Let me know what you learn.

[Julie Ahern]

Congratulations on your grant! Where did you receive it from?

[Julie Ahern]

Andrew Cooke Magnet School, Waukegan #60, Illinois. I have a Target grant for $2,000. I will be purchasing 6 to 9 Kindles, possibly at our local Target.

Anyone's thoughts on the extended warranties?? :-) How did you handle the cases?

I will come back to share how we intend to implement the units.

[Marianna DeMott]

It was a Dollar General Back to School Literacy Grant

Julie Ahern said:

Congratulations on your grant! Where did you receive it from?

[Julie Ahern]

Ahh!! That's wonderful. I'll check that out to see when the cycle opens up again.

[Linn McDonald]

Bloomington Jr. High School, Bloomington, IL. 1200 students in the school, 45% low income. We hope to get 20-36 Kindles with technology department funding. Our high school will receive the same # of Kindles. We were originally looking at Nooks or Sony Readers due to their ability to check out public library books, but our tech director loves Kindles and since he is footing the bill, we'll go along with this. We also feel that financially we're a few years away from offering eBooks for library checkout and also hope that the price for that service will come down.
Both the high school media specialist and myself plan to initially use these with our book clubs, as we feel that this is a manageable way to get our feet wet and see how this works with students. I am like others who have posted here in that I'm struggling with how to manage Amazon accounts and what to order (I really do not want to share with the high school; I feel it's preferable that we each have our own account). I am also very nervous about damage, loss or theft; I plan to require that a parent or guardian of each book club member attend a brief meeting with me and sign an agreement of responsibility before handing over a Kindle to a student. If anyone can offer advice concerning this, it would be appreciated.

[Marianna DeMott]

In theory I think I'm finally making some progress on purchasing my e-readers and e-books, at least on paper. I'll be buying Nook's partly because even though I love Amazon personally, I like dealing with real people at the bookstore. Even though the store is an hour away the manager said he would send someone to do a training for us. I was assured by our local B & N manager that with a Nook you can buy a single title and load it on as many Nook's as you own. I like that because it will make management easier. Sticking point number one, that pesky credit card that absolutely must be on each device will hopefully be solved by the purchase of a Wal-Mart secured credit card. The B & N manager called Wal-Mart and was told there are no fees for these cards. That number can be put on all e-readers. I'm donating that card myself. The purchase of books will be accomplished with gift cards. Our corp has made a special gift card policy, mostly for this project I think. One of the State Board of Accounts auditors is the brother of our staff and he was good enough to explain that we could use gift cards to buy our e-books because we weren't giving anything away. Th policy has to do mostly with keeping good records of what is purchased and exactly how to set up the accounts.
Now, before I actually go to the store can someone answer two questions that are bopping around in my head?
1.Has anyone purchased the extended warranties?
2. What kind of cases are you buying and does anyone have a style or brand they love?
I know someone had a donation from M-edge technologies and I really like the way their cases look but I doubt that they'll be willing to donate cases for everyone who gets an e-reader grant.

[Will DeLamater]

Linn, I believe Kathy Parker has a document for parents to sign already written and she is willing to share. She has been checking them out for a year or so. Just search for her here on the site.

Linn McDonald said:

Bloomington Jr. High School, Bloomington, IL. 1200 students in the school, 45% low income. We hope to get 20-36 Kindles with technology department funding. Our high school will receive the same # of Kindles. We were originally looking at Nooks or Sony Readers due to their ability to check out public library books, but our tech director loves Kindles and since he is footing the bill, we'll go along with this. We also feel that financially we're a few years away from offering eBooks for library checkout and also hope that the price for that service will come down.
Both the high school media specialist and myself plan to initially use these with our book clubs, as we feel that this is a manageable way to get our feet wet and see how this works with students. I am like others who have posted here in that I'm struggling with how to manage Amazon accounts and what to order (I really do not want to share with the high school; I feel it's preferable that we each have our own account). I am also very nervous about damage, loss or theft; I plan to require that a parent or guardian of each book club member attend a brief meeting with me and sign an agreement of responsibility before handing over a Kindle to a student. If anyone can offer advice concerning this, it would be appreciated.

[Will DeLamater]

Marianna, I would check with Kathy Burnette about the warranties and other details. You could send her a direct message. She has been working on these Nook issues for months. Excellent description of your credit card/gift card solution--that should come in handy for folks. Would you be willing to go ahead and start a Nook group so all Nook-ers could congregate a bit and share ideas?

Marianna DeMott said:

In theory I think I'm finally making some progress on purchasing my e-readers and e-books, at least on paper. I'll be buying Nook's partly because even though I love Amazon personally, I like dealing with real people at the bookstore. Even though the store is an hour away the manager said he would send someone to do a training for us. I was assured by our local B & N manager that with a Nook you can buy a single title and load it on as many Nook's as you own. I like that because it will make management easier. Sticking point number one, that pesky credit card that absolutely must be on each device will hopefully be solved by the purchase of a Wal-Mart secured credit card. The B & N manager called Wal-Mart and was told there are no fees for these cards. That number can be put on all e-readers. I'm donating that card myself. The purchase of books will be accomplished with gift cards. Our corp has made a special gift card policy, mostly for this project I think. One of the State Board of Accounts auditors is the brother of our staff and he was good enough to explain that we could use gift cards to buy our e-books because we weren't giving anything away. Th policy has to do mostly with keeping good records of what is purchased and exactly how to set up the accounts.
Now, before I actually go to the store can someone answer two questions that are bopping around in my head?
1.Has anyone purchased the extended warranties?
2. What kind of cases are you buying and does anyone have a style or brand they love?
I know someone had a donation from M-edge technologies and I really like the way their cases look but I doubt that they'll be willing to donate cases for everyone who gets an e-reader grant.