With the tendency of most educators and learners to depend more and more on electronic technology, it seems that the use of printed educational materials is fast diminishing. Most of the time, a lot of educators and learners go to the internet for answers to their information needs. Reasons for this are increasing book prices, overcrowding of libraries, and scarcity of books.

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In a collegiate school library for instance, there could only be a maximum of  three books for a single title. This means only three students can borrow that particular book title at a certain time. A librarian's nightmare begins when another 30 or more students need to borrow that book title in order to fulfill their teacher's requirements either for an assignment, book review, or to do research.

 The National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) says that the targeted 1:1 ratio for the number of textbooks per pupil/student was achieved as early as SY 2004-2005, and that the government has successfully maintained a 1:1 textbook-pupil/student ratio as of school year 2009-10.

Some theorize, however, that books may soon become obsolete with the prolifersation of e-books, which can be read using electronic gadgets such as kindle.

A Kindle is a software and hardware platform developed by Amazon.com subsidiary Lab126 for rendering and displaying e-books and other digital  media. It was developed in November 2007 .  Its present international model is the Kindle Global Wireless, which costs $259 or PHP 13,000.(excludes customs duties, import taxes and other fees – would cost a total of $500!)  Its main function is to store e-books for reading through its high resolution 6-inch gray screen display.

Using 3G and EDGE/GPRS technology (which cellphones use), you can download Kindle- formatted e-books, newspapers and magazines from the Amazon website and some other Kindle content providers in the proprietary Kindle format (AZW), or load content in various formats from a computer. No internet connection is needed. Personal documents (pdf, HTML, DOC, JPEG, GIF, Mp3, etc.) can also be stored in the Kindle from a computer via USB cable.  You can even listen to music either through headphones or its built-in speakers.  Although blogs and experimental web browsing are not yet available here, free access to the Wikipedia site is allowed.

There are over 340,000 English-language books to choose from plus U.S. and international newspapers and magazines that are available. Because publishers give Amazon eBook rights on a country by country basis, available titles for the Philippines will vary from the current U.S titles selection.

About 1,500 e-books could be stored in a Kindle. It also has a built-in PDF reader and Text to speech feature, which reads aloud newspapers, magazines, blogs and most e-books.

A well known presidentiable is proposing to give each public school elementary pupil a free Kindle, hoping to boost pupil intellect. If he wins in the upcoming elections, he says, funding for this proposal would be from additional tax of fifty centavos for each text message sent. He estimates that 2 million text messages are sent everyday and that the funds generated here would be more than enough to buy the Kindle units and at the same time raise the teachers' basic salary to P40,000 pesos. To ensure that the process would be graft-free, he further proposes that he would appoint about five prominent school presidents to a proposed Health and Education Acceleration Program.

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This seems to be a very good proposal. IMHO, (In my own humble opinion) this could mean collecting additional taxes to go to specific targets. Very well thought of indeed since most people would approve of this proposal because you know where your taxes would go. And this also gives you ownership of the achievement because your text tax not only funded the proposed Kindle project but also raised the basic salary of teachers to the forty thousand peso level.

However, I see that it is too early to “Kindelize” our basic education pupils. The Kindle technology is only two years old. Its functions are still limited and too expensive for the price. You can't read when lighting conditions are poor and its Read Aloud function still sounds robotic. And while this “electronic textbook” can store 1,500 e-books, not all books are available for the Kindle-exclusive format.

John Biggs lists 10 reasons to buy a Kindle and 10 reasons why not to. He says it's not good for research, simply because you can't flip to a certain page at once (like a physical book), and it's horrible for reference, particularly in citing bibliography. While it may be good for English language students who need to read lots of English novels,as well as because of its Text to Speech function that teaches word pronunciation, it won't be for all.

The Kindle's lack of a web browser negates the basic need for nonlinear information gathering that the internet has to offer. While it contains large amounts of e-books, it still can't be considered a digital library, simply because you can't cross-search from one book to the other.

I think the more important need is to establish a triumvirate of better teaching strategies, upgraded information hubs such as internet-equipped libraries, and textbooks complemented with internet activities.

We must not rely heavily on technology to the point that we get crippled without it. And when we do adopt technology, we must not simply adopt it at once. We should patiently wait a little longer until it has been fully developed and its price has become cheaper.

Give the Kindle a few more years and I think better functions would have been added and almost anyone can buy it, just like the cellular phone, which was very expensive at first (with just a one liner text and black and white screen back then) and was later on fully developed into a mini-computer.

Back to the presidentiable's proposal, I would indeed support additional taxation if, and only if  taxes collected specifically go to an honest-to-goodness education sector upgrade. After all, education is still the vital key to a nation's progress.


References:
*   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Kindle
*   http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/02/25/10-reasons-to-buy-a-kindle-2-and-10...
*   http://www.elearningservice.com/blog/2009/02/25/to-buy-or-not-to-buy-the...
*   http://www.yugatech.com/blog/toys-gadgets/amazon-to-ship-kindle-to-the-p...
*   http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/chris-dannen/techwatch/kindle-2-wont-cha...
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*   http://www.nscb.gov.ph/stats/statdev/2009/Education/Chapter_Education.asp
*   http://client0.cellmaps.com/tabs.html#cellmaps_intl_tab - Philippines 3G and EDGE/GPRS Coverage
             Areas
*   http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Wireless-Reading-Display-Generation/dp/B001...
             5365185-4836244?ie=UTF8&s=digital-text&qid=1264733280&sr=8-1
*   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTe9gwcK2Rs - Senator Gordon's Kindle Proposal
*   http://www.flickr.com/photos/38314728@N08/4040927469/ - Kindle Creative Commons Attribution
             Licensed
*   http://www.flickr.com/photos/bike/3336040653/ - Kindle Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike
             Licensed