Amazon looks to get Kindle into schools


Whispercast will help Amazon reach the education market more efficiently, a Forrester Research analyst said.

Amazon.com Inc. has launched a service to help schools and workplaces manage Kindles used by students and employees—by sending out eBooks or blocking certain types of activities, for example.

Called Whispercast, the free service lets businesses and schools buy and distribute books and documents to Kindles over a wireless internet connection.

This means instructors can send out books to students in their class, and businesses can send out training materials, schedules, and other documents, Amazon said. Administrators also can prevent students from being able to make purchases on school-owned devices.

Amazon said the service lets administrators register students and employees to their organizations’ Kindle devices, assigning them into groups for classes, grade levels, or corporate departments. They can then distribute content to these groups or configure the settings on the devices from one location.

Whispercast will let Amazon penetrate educational institutions and businesses more efficiently, said Forrester Research analyst Sarah Rotman Epps. Many schools and individual workers already are using Kindles and Kindle Fires for schoolwork and office work. With Whispercast, she added, school officials and employers can “have more control and confidence” over how the gadgets are used.

Amazon is betting that Whispercast will be useful for businesses and schools that have “bring your own device” policies, which is a growing trend. Getting more Kindles into schools, meanwhile, will mean more teachers and students purchasing content from Amazon, whether that is textbooks or classic literature.

Jay Marine, vice president at Amazon Kindle, said student and teacher responses to the devices “reinforced our belief that in education everything will go digital, it’s just a matter of timing.”

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