As most of you probably know, I work IT part time at a school. It’s been a lot of fun for me to see some of the larger scale uses of technology. Until I started there, the most computers I had to manage was 12. The day I started, that number jumped into the hundreds. This summer alone, we had 145 new laptops that we leased that had to be imaged and setup for teachers and students. Needless to say, I have been learning a ton.
We’ve got some cool new classroom technology coming in this year, but we also have some tried and true technology that we are buying. The school has purchased a bunch of Kindles in the hopes of replacing some aging paperback books in a couple of classrooms. The upfront cost is a little more to buy the Kindles, but it should save the school money in the long run. I’m pretty excited to see what we need to do to roll out all the Kindles and get them ready for the students. After we paid for them and heard they have been shipped, we were talking to the representative that sold them to us. We were told that the Kindles we were getting were of the ad-supported variety, which isn’t a huge deal, but then were told that some of the ads might not be safe for school children.
Not safe for children?
It was very frustrating to me to learn that this great tool for the classrooms might not even be safe for the classroom. I know that we could have paid more money to get the ad-free versions of the Kindles, but I didn’t think we would have to worry about the ads that will be displayed. I was dismayed for a couple of minutes until I did a Google search like any good hacker would to see if there was a way to remove the ads from the Kindles. Sure enough I found a couple sites claiming to know how to do just that, and it seemed pretty simple, as well. Now I’m excited to be getting the Kindles again, and having the opportunity to stick it to Amazon a little bit and remove the ads from the Kindles. I understand that the ads are the way Amazon can afford to sell the Kindles at a cheaper cost, but we just can’t take the risk of a bad ad popping up on one of them while in the hands of a kid. What do you think?
Wish my school allowed kindles. Isn’t there a way to rent kindle books? If there is I could get one again. Had a kindle 3G and wifi but I sold it to get an iPad 2 since I didn’t read on it a lot.
There are some Kindle books that are available for rent. From what I can tell it is a limited number, and it seems like there are a lot of textbooks that you can rent for up to a year. It will say on the book page whether it can be rented or not.
I’d think you’d want to check on the legality of that. Wouldn’t want to get the school or yourself in trouble because of it. Have you checked with the Amazon representative to see if there’s a way you could make up the extra cost after the fact and “upgrade” the Kindles to the ad-free version?
I’m all about hacking my gadgets, but I’d be worried to do something like that on behalf of an institution, especially a school.
I understand what you are saying, but it’s just like a personal device, once it’s purchased there is no legal document saying what we can or can not do with it. We could throw them off the roof like frisbees for all the seller would care. Removing the ads could of course void the warranty, but only the software part will be changed, which means it can always be changed back.
So Brian, what kind of message are you sending to the kids that the school bought a bunch of Kindles and hacked them to save a couple of bucks?
Has anyone in the school system contacted Amazon to see if they can work some sort of school deal? Has anyone contacted Amazon about options for barring inappropriate ads? You might have an angle there to negotiating a reduced or no fee to turn off ads
Otherwise pay the fee to kill the advertising
The kids will never know what version of the Kindle’s we purchased. It’s not about sending a message whether hacking is good or bad, it’s about using the devices the way we need them to be used. The thing that most upset me was what Trenton says below. What’s with the sales rep that doesn’t mention this until the sale is complete?
Amazon should either sell Ad versions that are kid safe when selling to schools or offer the Ad free version to learning institutions for the same price as the Ad ones if they wont/can’t make kid safe ads. Plus what is wrong with the sales rep telling you this after the sale and they had been shipped?
Yes, I totally agree with you. It was basically an afterthought from the sales rep. They knew from the beginning we were a school, and after the sale is final and shipped they tell us that the ads might not be safe for children? If all they want is the money from the sale then they can take it and we will do whatever we want with the devices.