With all that in mind, here's the review:
1. A Good Internet Browser: As my younger daughter pointed out to me when she did her research on Greece, the Kindle Fire has a perfectly adequate Internet browser. While not the speed demon that was promised when the Fire was announced, it's on par with most other tablet devices in regards to speed, and the screen is large enough for reading most web pages. RESULT: CHECK!
2. A Browser Capable of Running Most Instructional Software. The Kindle Fire has a Flash-based browser that is capable of running most of the instructional software used in my district, including Fast ForWord, the online version of Accelerated Reader, and even Compass Odyssey (though it's a little slow with this program and probably not the ideal way to access the program). RESULT: CHECK!
3. A Microsoft Office Compatible Suite. As mentioned above, I'm assuming the purchase of a Microsoft Office app from the Amazon app store. There are a couple of good ones, and they both integrate nicely with Google Apps and Dropbox. RESULT: CHECK!
4. An Easy Way to Transfer Documents. The Kindle Fire falls a bit short here. There is no full sized USB port as on the Lenovo Thinkpad, and there's no Bluetooth. There IS a mini-USB port on the Fire, but the Fire doesn't come with a USB cable (just an AC recharger that fits in the mini port). Someone COULD purchase a USB to mini-USB cable, but considering that it's not that hard to just attach a document to an email and send the email, I'm willing to bet most people won't do that. With all that in mind, then, I'd score this: RESULT: HALF A CHECK!
5. A Digital Camera. There isn't one. RESULT: FAIL!
6. Sufficient Processing Power to Allow for Video: There's plenty of processing power for video. There's no YouTube app (no doubt a result of Amazon's intentional shunning in its app store of Google applications), but a user can navigate to YouTube via the built in web browser and access the videos there without problem. RESULT: CHECK!
7. A Robust e-reader program: I'm going to give this a "CHECK!" but I'm almost inclined to give it a half check. The reason: As slick as the Kindle application is that's built into the Fire, there's no ability to have the Fire read aloud to the user. This would have been a very helpful feature for students with language difficulties. I'm not sure why that was left out as the Fire certainly has the computing power for such an application. I'm hoping that the feature becomes available on the Fire in a future update or as for sale app in the app store. Still, all of the other features of the Kindle, including the ability to "dog ear" pages, look up the dictionary definitions of words, add notes and highlight, push me to give the Fire credit for this one. So let's to with RESULT: CHECK! (with reservations)
8. The Ability to Connect an External Keyboard: Without a full sized USB port nor a Bluetooth port, there's currently no way to do this. Someone may come up with some kind of keyboard with a mini-USB connector that's compatible, but for now the score is RESULT: FAIL!
9. Lots of High Quality Educational Apps: This is where the Fire falls WAY short compared to the iPad. As I mentioned in an earlier review, I don't mind that the Amazon app store is "curated" as it keeps some questionable apps out of the library, but I've yet to find any really good educational apps in the Amazon app store. Most are just tiny games with limited use. RESULT: FAIL!
10. Anti-virus software. There is some, and it SEEMS to be pretty good (It's hard to tell if something designed to keep problems out is working or just not being tested, but I'll give it the benefit of the doubt for now). RESULT: CHECK!
11. Easily Managed by Teachers: This is an issue with the Fire. A BIG issue. I hinted at it a little bit in the prior post, when I talked about my daughter downloading an Angry Birds game from the Kindle App store. As far as I can tell, the only way that a Kindle Fire works with full functionality is if it is linked to a user's Amazon account, including being linked to the user's credit card. This means that a student could pretty easily download an app that cost money and cost the user (most likely the school district) money in the process. There might be a way to turn off the one push downloading of apps, but if there is I haven't figured out how to do it. The only thing I can think to do would be to go into the Amazon account to which the Fire is registered and remove One Click purchasing. This would mean, though, that One Click purchasing would be disabled for ALL Kindle devices using that account. If a teacher wanted to download a book to a device, that teacher would have to go back to the website, re-enable One Click purchasing, download the book, and then go back and turn the One Click purchasing off again. That's a headache. RESULT: FAIL! (NOTE: See important update by CLICKING HERE!)
12. Enterprise Deployment: The last couple of sentences in number 11 above point out the issue here. There is no enterprise deployment on the Kindle Fire. It was designed for an individual to use at home. The idea that a teacher might have 30 of these in his/her classroom seems never to have entered the minds of Amazon, much less the idea of a school district with potentially thousands of the devices. As far as I can tell, installation of apps and books would have to happen manually. RESULT: FAIL!
13. Long Battery Life. I've been using my Fire for work and play and have found it to have sufficient battery life. I've spent several of the last few work days in what my school district calls "Central Office Site Visits." The heads of each of the departments at the Board of Education, along with the superintendent and assistant superintendent, have spent the entire day visiting schools and meeting with every teacher at the schools. During those visits I've used the Fire to take notes, check email, and Remote Desktop into servers or my office workstation if needed. I haven't used the Fire every moment of every day, but I used probably as much as a student would use the device during a regular day. By the end of the school day, the Fire still has about 30% of its battery life remaining. That--along with the fact that the Fires could be recharged during lunch period or some other time of the day--makes me feel pretty confident about the battery. RESULT: CHECK!
So of the thirteen criteria I was looking for, the Kindle Fire meets seven and a half of them. Using the rubric I created in the last blog entry, then, the Kindle would score a C. And I'd say that's a fair grade. There are some really nice things about the Kindle Fire, but there are some real deficiencies, too. For me, the biggest problem is the manageability for teachers. As much as I WANT to consider purchasing a classroom set of Kindle Fires for every student in my school district, I can't see how that would work. It just seems that managing the devices would be too big of a pain for both the classroom teacher and the technology department. I MAY consider purchasing a single classroom set for a willing teacher who understands there may be bumps along the way. A pilot of sorts. Doing so would allow my district's technology department to see how big the issues are going to be.
And in the long run, I think the solution for Amazon is pretty clear: They need to hire ME to head up an education division of their Kindle department. We'd be in charge of creating a special, education-version of the Kindle Fire, with special, educational pricing for books and textbooks. There are literally millions of sales Amazon is missing because of a few minor deficiencies in their product, and I know my team (once I had one) could remedy those and put out a product that schools would love!
Amazon, if you need me to send you a resume, let me know!
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