It's clear that Jeff Bezos learned something from Steve Jobs. Amazon rival Apple had a long history, well before the successes of the iPod, iPhone and iPad, of keeping its products in the conversation through partnerships with school systems across the U.S. Many Americans had their first computing experience in classrooms on an Apple or Mac.
In recent years, Amazon has been introducing Kindles into American classrooms from kindergarten through twelfth grade. The company, which recently confirmed it was selling Kindles at cost, makes the devices available to schools at a bulk discount and helps them provide e-books to students.
On Wednesday, Amazon announced that it was making Whispercast, a free self-service tool for supporting large purchases and distribution of e-books and documents for Kindle devices, available to schools.
"We want to make it as easy as possible for everyone to own a Kindle device. Any time we can make that easier, we do that," Jay Marine, vice president of Kindle product management, told Reuters. "And we have a particular mission to increase reading, especially among kids."
"We started with 2,000 Kindle e-readers at our school and the program has been so successful that we have expanded it beyond our school and now more than 122 schools in the district are using Kindles," said Keith Mastroides, principal at Clearwater High School, in an Amazon press release. "Whispercast gives us the ability to better streamline the process to manage our Kindles and content, so we can continue to grow the program."
- Amazon makes push to get Kindles into U.S. schools - Reuters/Chicago Tribune
- Announcing Whispercast for Kindle - A Free Self-Service Tool for Schools and Businesses to Manage Large Deployments of Kindles and Support Purchase and Distribution of Kindle Books and Documents Across Kindle E-Readers, Kindle Fires and Free Kindle Reading Apps - Amazon.com, Inc./Business Wire