Why not kindles instead of laptops?

[EmmanuelleMakro]

I see lots of clamour for laptops for schoolchildren, but honestly they would be better off reading rather than trying to replicate schoolwork st home. And given the risk if laptops being damaged/stolen:sold why not tap up Amazon fir kindles instead ?
Cheaper and much easier for working parents to supervise and obviously ebooks could be purchased by gvt on s license basis.
Children should be using this time to read and seems like this would solve a lot of lot practical issues as well as addressing the woeful literacy gap.

But then they would need a laptop anyway.

@EmmanuelleMakro

Missing the point! The point is not to do school work on a kindle -utterly absurd! But to read. There is s big literacy gap between homes with books and those without. Not many other distractions so a golden opportunity to promote reading and let children explore books. And the kindle has a built in dictionary to look up unfamiliar words. Much more robust (and less sellable) than a laptop which will probably be diverted for gaming anyway.

You are missing the point. Not the rest of us.

Are you working in kindle sales or something? I can't imagine anyone thinking abandoning all school work and reading in a kindle is remotely reasonable.

The point is not to do school work on a kindle -utterly absurd! But to read.

Like I said: how does that help with maths?

Not many other distractions so a golden opportunity to promote reading and let children explore books.

That's going to help with GCSE chemistry.

As important as reading is, it’s not a substitute for all their other learning. Plus if a child isn’t doing the school work from home as it is, what makes you think they will sit down and read for 4 hours instead if given a kindle? (4 hours worth of work per day is the amount the govt have asked schools to provide)

And for children who struggle with or detest reading?

Education is not about filling children with facts. It’s about teaching skills. Reading is important just reading alone is not enough and it isn’t going to help students through their GCSEs and A levels.

Giving kids who struggle with or dislike reading, just reading to do for hours, is the way to put those kids off reading and education in general.

I get the idea, and can see the benefits of rethinking how much lockdown-learning should mirror schools, but practically, really, it's just replacing one tech gadget for one that can do less and will suit fewer people.

The Kindle app can be downloaded free to a laptop, alongside programmes to read a wider range of files and have appropriate equipment for disabilities that are often not going to work on some types of Kindles.

If children were able to learn by just reading they wouldn’t need schools.

So when they've done their reading and now need to move on to maths, what then? They can write the answers on paper but where are the questions coming from?

Say you keep it that simple (without factoring in kids going GCSE's etc)

If you focus children on reading, which isn't a bad thing, you then have thousands of children who are very behind and struggling with maths, problem solving, writing, forming sentences, reading critically and evaluating what they've read.

Whilst reading is great for kids, I think trying to replicate homework is the only way to keep some form of across-the-board learning going.

If only educational was 'just reading'

1. Kindles are expensive
2. They'd need a laptop anyway for the rest of their work
3. The Kindle For PC, Kindle for Android and Kindle for Iphone apps are free.
4. Using a Kindle ties you to using .mobi files (Amazon books) and being at the mercy of their pricing structure.
5. LIBRARIES ARE FREE. Also they are allowed to be open. The fact you don't know that says to me that you don't care a hoot about children's literature/literacy.
6. Given point 5 isn't encouraging children to read why would a Kindle?
7. They break really easily and aren't designed to be robust enough for kids.
8. Most of the same free-on-Kindle (copyright expired) books are also free on Project Gutenberg website.
9. Kindles don't (as far as I know) have a content lock on them and Amazon sells a LOT of erotica that looks like it might be kids books.

Did I miss anything for why this is one of the most bloody stupid threads I've ever seen?

Yeah I'll suggest that to my Year 11 son's school shall I? "Sorry, DS can't do any work for his GCSEs this Summer as he'll be spending the next 3 months reading (that he already does anyway). I'm sure you'll understand why his Maths, Biology, Physics, Chemistry, and Technology results are bloody awful, in August"

Oh, and he's got a kindle already. Hardly ever reads on it as he likes books.

Kindles are shit. I bought one and thought it was faulty, but turns out it's normal to do that glitchy thing when turning a page. Wasn't a fan.

Amazon tablets are dire. My Mum bought my DC one once for Christmas, it had constant ads you couldn’t get rid of and it was so slow. The screen is also tiny, there’s no way you could do all of your school work on that.

The point is not to do school work on a kindle -utterly absurd!
But to read.
There is s big literacy gap between homes with books and those without.
Not many other distractions so a golden opportunity to promote reading and let children explore books
Giving children kindles won't make them read.

The vocabulary gap by the age of 3 is several million words I believe.

Do you honestly think that decades of educational inequality and poor parental literacy is going to be fixed by giving out kindles to households without a reading culture? If handing out devices solved the huge literacy issue facing some students then schools would have capitalised on it years ago

Libraries are cheaper than kindles, if you think reading is the answer to our educational woes, and most are putting book bundles together on request. Personally, I like my children to read lots and also to access the remote learning their schools are providing.

If only you could read on a laptop...

Much as I wish that my students would read more, the cold hard reality is that they need to join in my lessons and submit work for marking. They can't do that on a kindle.

If you are meaning an ereader... You are bonkers. It's not the same as lessons. My children read a lot, but that doesn't make them well rounded.

As for Fire tablets. They aren't IPads. But they are perfectly adequate for watching lesson videos and minor browsing. Zoom works fine. I've not tried Teams so can't comment. They are great as a support device, but you couldn't work on them.

I couldn’t do 10% of my job on a Kindle [Fire]. So why should a child have to?