Trainers Talk Tech

I am so excited that the Kindle 2 has been released! I am completely in love with anything tech and anything new. I haven't ordered mine yet...something about the $359 price tag that is making me hold off. I did get to spend lots of time with the previous iteration as a colleague had one and he left me alone with it for a while.

I buy LOTS of books...they are all over my house. My wife calls them "droppings", as in "Thomas, you've got book droppings all over the bonus room." For me, the $359 price tag isn't worth it yet - even though I spend that much (and more) in books every year, most of my purchases are web based, tech books (ActionScript 3.0 guides and Michael Allen eLearning books). Kindle doesn't have any of those yet...and, do I want to have a reference guide on the Kindle?

So what does this have to do with eLearning? I starting thinking about the possibilities for this kind of tool in the training world. I would love to be able to use something like this to shoot course materials over to my learners, give them prep work or use this as a part of my hybrid solutions. Instead of "Download this PDF, print it out and use it as we work through the online program", it could be "Download this document to your Kindle and use it to work through the program."

I'm building lots of programs where the learner downloads and reads a PDF file and then answers questions in the eLearning so that they are stored in the LMS. Imagine being able to push this to a Kindle-like device and the learner doesn't have to print it out.

Of course, Amazon would need to do a few things to the device to make me really happy, so here is my wish list for Amazon:

1. Please Amazon, make me a Kindle that can connect to my network and allow me to push my content onto the device - more than just the PDFs you allow to come in from eMail
2. Please give me a color version...I understand the 16 shades of gray, and that the device is so thin because of the UFO inspired technology driving the screen, but please...16 bit color?
3. Please let me connect up to my network wirelessly and then download content to my computer
4. Please let me connect up to my network wirelessly and then upload content from my computer - you kind of do this already...but...
5. Come up with a cool, non Apple infringing version of iTunes for Kindle - let me sync up with my computer
6. Offer a deep discount for educators or people buying lots of them for their employees
7. My big one - please install a version of the Flash player on the Kindle - I know it isn't a multimedia device, but it could be...

That's my wish list for Amazon regarding the Kindle. Laptops and the new Netbooks offer our learners portable access to our online modules, but something as thin and sleek as the Kindle can really be a future eLearning device. Maybe the device isn't as good as the PDFs we are using now? Maybe I should be happy to view PDFs on the Kindle..Maybe Amazon doesn't ever want to open it up to users and developers and keep the books, the connection and the content locked down?

Am I asking too much? Is it designed to be a book replacement and that's it? I hope not. I think it would be very cool to deploy eLearning on a device as elegant as the Kindle. Once I get my hands on one (soon, oh yes...so very soon) I'll tell you what I really think!

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