One Kindle per child? Non-profit takes Amazon e-reader global |
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One Kindle per child? Non-profit takes Amazon e-reader global
Some U.S. universities are doing pilots with Kindle readers, testing them as a replacement for printouts and textbooks in the classroom. Now a non-profit organization is taking Kindle pilots global, looking to get the Amazon device "into the hands and minds of people in the developing world" to promote education and literacy. Kind of like One Laptop Per Child, but with Kindles.
The non-profit, Worldreader.org, has a strong Amazon connection. One of its co-founders is David Risher, a former Amazon senior vice president of product and platform development (and a Microsoft veteran). According to the Worldreader.org website, the organization is conducting the "world's first-ever e-reader test" in the West African nation of Ghana starting Monday.
"We believe that just as mobile phones have leapfrogged landlines across much of the developing world, e-readers will become the easiest, least expensive, and most reliable way to deliver books to underserved areas and underprivileged peoples," Worldreader.org says on its website.
Here's more from the organization's blog on preparations for the Kindle trial at OrphanAid Africa's District Assembly School in the village of Ayenyah, Ghana.
Why Kindle, when there are so many e-readers coming out these days? Worldreader.org says Kindle "is currently the best e-reader on the market for our needs, thanks to its ease of use, its access to over 400,000 books, and its global wireless capabilities," though it adds that, "we will continue to evaluate e-readers based on their suitability to our evolving needs."
Standard-version Kindles have a retail price of $259 — putting it out of reach of most developing world communities. The non-profit says Amazon has donated an unspecified number of Kindles for the project, and says its donors will "help subsidize the gap between the cost of the e-readers and the price local governments are willing to pay."
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