They're Heeerrreeee

Our new Kindles have arrived! I spent much of yesterday unboxing them and playing around setting them up for use. These are the new models, priced at £89, significantly cheaper than the old style keyboard Kindle we trialed over the summer.

The first thing that struck me was the size.  With teeny tiny hands, I can hold the old Kindle in one hand, but not without stretching my fingers uncomfortably wide.

Plastic buttons a-plenty

Whereas with the new Kindle, it's narrow enough that my fingers wrap around it in a secure hold and I can even turn the pages without it being too uncomfortable.  This is excellent news.  As a librariany type this enables me to drink gin coffee, play with cats and organise things while reading.

Hmmm...

What's interesting about this is that since there is less space taken up with the sides of the device, the screen looks larger.  It isn't (I checked, with a ruler) but still. All the things that bugged me about our original Kindle have gone.  The horrible feel of the black textured plastic has been replaced with a sleek metallic finish, which also give you sense that it can stand up to knocks and bumps more securely.  The grippy effect plastic on the back has been made more tactile, though I worry that this is a surface that fiddling students will be able to scrape off with a fingernail.  Feels lovely though and removed the fear that the device is going to slip from your fingers. 

The hideous clicky keyboard buttons have gone! Using the cursor and the keyboard button is a little fiddly, but not bad.  My one criticism of this is that the keyboard layout is now alphabetical.  Why Amazon, why?  Querty works for a reason, and is all the more important when you're using a cursor to move from letter to letter.  It's worth is, for the lack of crap buttons, but it wouldn't have taken a massive leap of logic to at least give an option of keyboard layouts in the settings. 

And the sceensavers are nicer!

The page turn is faster, removing the need to blink slowly every time you click.  And the page turn buttons themselves have retained the pleasant directionality that the old model had, which minimises accidental page turns, but has lost the cheap, wobbly feel those buttons had.  It's now a secure, affirmative action which is far preferable.  So, what's missing?  The battery life is shorter, but still a month, which is fantastic.  There's less storage space, but still plenty and the reading aloud function has been removed.  Though this is surely a harsh blow for those with severe eyesight problems, the few times I used it, I found the harsh American accents hard to stomach and disliked the way that it tended to ignore clear punctuation markers for pauses and effect.  Luckily within school, our students with eyesight problems manage fine with enlargements, so the Kindle will still be useful to them, but in terms of accessibly, I think this is a step backward. 

We have ordered cases, but they're out of stock at the moment.  I'm wondering what sort of fixing they will use.  The old style Kindle had slots positioned in the side where the case attached, but the new model has nothing like this.  I'm really hoping that they haven't copped out with an elastic at the corners style fixing.  Will let you know when they arrive.  

These Kindles will be available for student use, based on which books they would like to read, i.e., if we only have an ebook version of a book, they will be offered that, with a Kindle, once a parental agreement form has been completed.  We'll need this to ensure that parents will be happy to replace any Kindles that are damaged or lost. Our budget won't stretch to any more!  We'll also be offering ebook loans to student's own devices.  This will be possible with some registering and de-registering, thoguh students will need to return at the end of their loan to 'return' the ebook and have it deleted, as DRM allows.   With the budget restrictions that we have, this I feel will be the true test of whether ebooks take off here.  With Christmas coming, dozens of students have said that they're requesting Kindles. Hopefully we will be able to have enough eventually that those who can't afford them can still have access to the full range of resources. 

Bridging the digital divide*.  Oh yeah. 

*In a predominantly middle-class school in a wealthy area where the school has valued libraries enough to fund the staffing and resources to run one.  I know.  We're like a tiny tributary of the larger dividing river. 

Kindles

Over the summer I test drove a Kindle on behalf of the library (I know, sometimes you've gotta just take one for the team) with a view to buying a small set for the library.  To my surprise, I didn't hate it.  My only interraction with them previously was a quick, 'Ooh, can I have a look?' when my brother got one, and I confess I didn't like it then at all.  The plastic felt horribly plasticy, the buttons were clicky and it made my eyes hurt when it flashed up the next page in negative before it 'turned'.  But when it was my only readng option, I quickly found that I forgot about the device and concentrated on the words.  Within about a week, I found myself saying that I was going to read my book.  Then after three weeks travelling and not breaking my back lugging around all of A Song of Ice and Fire, I realised that I loved it.

The decision to purchase a set for the library though required more than that.  Three things happened within the space of a week that made up our minds.

1. Amazon joined up with Overdrive to offer Kindle lending through US libraries.
I think this will spread to the UK pretty quickly and Kindle's position as the dominant e-reader is a lot stronger.

2. A fellow school librarian recommended an e-book management app called Calibre, which means that it would not only possible, but also relatively easy to transfer single books to clean Kindles.   One concern was that if we were issuing full Kindles with our full collections on them, we'd have a) no way of noting down which books were being borrowed and b) no way of checking suitability.  Game of Thrones is not suitable for Year 7s, but Year 10 will LOVE it.

3. The new Kindles were released.  Smaller, simpler, with fewer clicky buttons and a lower price tag.

Sold.

So our first five Kindles are on the way.  We'll trial them, see how the students react and go from there.

Staff CPD

There has been increasing interest from staff about information literacy, research skills and use of the internet to promote and engage. An introductory lesson last year sparked a lot of attention, particularly from the Science department, who made great use of research skills in their coursework modules last year and noticed an increase in marks in this area, and also MFL, who launched a student blog.

This year we've been asked to expand on this and have designed a CPD course based on the Cambridge Librarians '23 Things' that I followed with great interest through Twitter and their blog posts. Staff are being asked to attend an initial introductory session, but following that, the course will be completed at their convenience, looking at one Thing per week and blogging their progress. If we can get a group of teachers and support staff who are committed to using these tools and passing on these skills, I think this stands a very good chance of making a significant difference. Having seen how much of an impact tools like blogging, Twitter and use of Google docs has had on my own work, the potential here is huge.

 If you'd like to follow along, the whole process will be blogged through the RPS 23 Things blog. Anyone working in a similar field would be more than welcome to join us.

Research Skills and Information Literacy

After the successful information literacy session run for Year 12 last year, we've been running similar and focusing much more on establishing and maintaining effective PLNs (Personal Learning Networks).  This was the area that really caught students' attention last year, and we saw a huge increase in the use of Twitter and also reported use of more Facebook study groups springing up, which was fantastic.

Research Skills and Information Literacy

View more presentations from rpslibrary

This is the presentation we've been giving.  If you'd like a copy of the notes that go with it, please email us at librarianATroundwoodparkDOThertsschDotuk

Guardian Young Critics

Today is the deadline for the Guardian Young Critics competition, which has kept our reviewers busy over the summer!  They've had a great time working their way through the longlist and discussing their opinions.  So far My Name is Mina and My Sister Lives on the Mantlepiece have emerged as the favourites, so they were surprised to find one of these off the shortlist.  The shortlist has caused quite a stir and some interesting discussions.  The conclusion that they came to was that a shortlist for children's fiction that is chosen by adults will fall short.  They were reminded that the Carnegie shortlist is chosen by adults too, but was shouted down when they recalled that the Carnegie shortlist is chosen by librarians, predominantly children's librarians, who they felt would have a must more accurate view of what young readers want.

So, what do you think?  Are we putting too much emphasis on prizes for children's fiction judged by adults?

Read our readers' fantastic reviews on their blog.