By Jennifer Baljko

We started this series last spring to spotlight authors who believed in the same thing we do: Reading has the power to transform lives. Since then, we’ve been engaging with many authors and are happily surprised by their generosity and support.

It’s great to see our author community expand, but often, too, we like to pause and think of our earliest fans. Kofi Okyere comes immediately to mind.

Kofi, a Ghanaian author living in Arizona, was one of the first authors to see the good in Worldreader’s “Books for all” goal. He made To Catch a Monkey (The Coconut Years) available to our kids, and recently donated a second title, his latest book Cabo Corso.

We caught up with Kofi a few weeks ago and chatted about his involvement with Worldreader, his perspective about Ghana’s development and emphasis on education, and, of course, the books that inspire him. Here are excerpts of that conversation.

WR: How did you get involved with Worldreader? How did that connection happen?

Kofi: There are Twitter chat groups — #kidlitchat and #fridayreads – where people in education and publishing meet and discuss projects. That is where Clare, my wife and manager, heard about Worldreader and first interacted with Elizabeth [Worldreader's director of digital publishing].

As the conversation continued, we found out Worldreader had just finished a test pilot in Spain and was heading to Ghana. Elizabeth asked if we would be interested in participating. We said, ‘Yes, of course. We would love to be a part of this.’ That’s something we’ve been trying to do on a smaller scale here in Phoenix, to get more kids reading. And, giving back to the kids at home has always been important to me.

Every once in a while I check the Worldreader website, and I’m just amazed at how much has been accomplished from last year to this year. It’s a brilliant idea, and it’s nice to see brilliant ideas moving forward so quickly.

WR: Tell us a little bit about your background and ties to Ghana.

Kofi: I was born in Kumasi, the capital of the Ashanti region, but my parents and family now live in Accra. I went to primary school in East Africa, in Ethiopia, because my parents worked for the United Nations and that was our home base for a while. We moved back to Ghana when I was 12 years old, and I went to secondary school in Cape Coast. I did my national service in Ghana, moved to Arizona for university, and have been here since. I try to go back to Ghana once or twice a year, and stay connected with the community there.

Every time I go back, there seems to be so much more advancement and development, which is really exciting. Over the last few years, we had so much brain drain and many people left Ghana to look for greener pastures. But, now with the way the country is developing, the amenities and services are increasing and improving, and more people want to stay there. That makes me happy because it means maybe the younger generation will want to stay and improve the country even more.

One day when my kids are older [he has two boys, ages 13 and 11], I’d like to relocate back to Ghana or spend a greater portion of my time there.

WR: What would you like to do there? How do see Ghana progressing?

Kofi: Clare and I have talked about how we could promote literacy in Ghana and get kids reading more. That’s part of why I was interested in Worldreader’s work.

It boils down to two things: your ability to read and to do math. That’s the foundation for everything. Reading can take you everywhere in the world. It opens your imagination, and when you read books set in different places, you learn about different cultures and ways of life. This is especially important for kids in rural areas who don’t have access to books or libraries.

One thing I love about Ghana is that, as a former British colony, education has always been emphasized. It’s very important for people there. But, it’s one thing to stress the importance of education and another thing to have the resources to support it. Even though the Ministry in Education is doing a lot, the rural areas simply don’t have enough funding or supplies to go further.

In many areas back home, you have to pay for school. It’s not government-funded. You often have families pooling their money so at least a few kids can go to school, get an education, and help support the family later on. Generally, though, people see education — and reading — as a way to better themselves and the country as a whole.

What Worldreader does for kids, especially the younger ones, is expose them to so much more by giving them resources to access information and books. This will encourage the kids to reach for the stars and make a difference.

WR: And, now for the big question of the day. What book made you fall in love with reading?

Kofi: My earliest memory when it comes to reading is linked to Bingham Academy in Ethiopia. The librarian would read to us every day, and one day she started The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. We were a rowdy bunch or third or fourth graders, and we all just sat there quietly and listened to her read. I loved the way she read and the intonation of her voice. She carried us to faraway places.

When I started to read on my own, the books that captivated me were Treasure Island and King Solomon’s Mines. In fact, re-read King Solomon’s Mines a few months ago, and read it almost every year. I read different versions of it. It connects me to my childhood, and I enjoy that. I finally convinced my kids to read it too. I recommend lots of books to my kids, but they usually shrug me off and say ‘Oh Dad, that book is so old. I don’t want to read that.’ But, my older son finally read it and said, ‘You know what, Dad? That book was really good.’

Thanks for the chat, Kofi. Follow Kofi on Twitter at @2911ent.

***

People like Kofi, Chika Unigwe, Meshack Asare, Ellen Banda-Aaku, and other African and international authors are making a big difference in the lives of our kids. They enthusiastically support Worldreader by donating their books, short stories, and personal essays.

Worldreader fans, we hope you’ll give these authors some love. Check out Kofi’s books, To Catch a Monkey (The Coconut Years) and Cabo Corso, or browse our growing list of participating authors and publishers.

If you’re an author and would like to get involved, contact our Director of Digital Publishing Elizabeth Wood at publishing@worldreader.org. You’ll also find her on Twitter at @lizzywood.

By Jennifer Baljko

As a lean, nonprofit social enterprise, much of what we do is powered by the enthusiasm of our volunteers.

Now and again, Worldreader shines a light on their initiative, shares their on-the-ground experience with our broader community, and gives them a big public hug. You may remember, Sara Rhyne, for instance. She won our video contest last year, and was instrumental in helping with our Kenya launch in partnership with The Kilgoris Project.

This time, we want to say thanks to another star volunteer, Carl Hinrichsen (twitter: @carlhinrichsen). Carl comes to us via ESADE Business School and brings with him know-how from the mobile sector, as well as from working at Amazon’s European Kindle Team.  He volunteered to help us sort out some e-reader connectivity issues we’ve been having in the field, and without hesitation, he put himself on a plane to Ghana to see what’s going on first-hand. Besides getting down to technical details about why some e-readers sometimes behave differently, he’s fundraising to cover his expenses and sending up daily news via his blog and twitter stream.

Here are a few things that have us in awe with Carl back in our Barcelona office and excerpts from his blog:

1. His knack for trouble-shooting and encouraging kids to use built-in features on their Kindles:

“I suggested they tried out the ‘text to speech feature’ one day, a function of the Kindle Keyboard, which reads out a book’s content with a computer voice. Stephen’s [A Worldreader student] opinion: ‘The e-readers are great to read by yourself, but sharing and using them together with someone makes you enjoy them even more.’”

2. The connection he’s building with Worldreader’s students and families:

“We went on to visit Mabel and her family, a smaller but equally welcoming family, consisting of Mabel, her parents, her sister Millicent and her baby brother Abdel-Asis. Mabel’s father is a cab driver, while the mother stays at home to take care of the family. Both Mabel and Millicent have an e-reader, and they are often seen reading together outside of their house. Their mother had become a great supporter of Worldreader’s work and reported how both children had improved at school and in speaking English. They did indeed speak good English, particularly Millicent spoke great English for a primary school student, benefiting from the being in the e-reader class, and reading at home with her elder sister. Together with Diana [another Worldreader student], we read another of their favorite books on the e-reader: Ananse and the Pot of Wisdom.”

3. His keen observation and the questions he asks:

“Towards the end of our chat I asked if he had any suggestions for improvements. ‘Reading Lights,’ he suggested, ‘So students can read at night. And e-readers for all the other classes as well, so people don’t constantly come and want to borrow ours.’”

Carl, thanks for rolling up your sleeves and diving in.

Soon, we’ll be announcing other ways folks like you can get involved with Worldreader. In the meantime, follow Carl’s adventures in Ghana, give him hat-tip on Twitter, or help him help us bring “Books for all.”

 

 

By Jennifer Baljko

 

Kids, regardless of where they live or what social or cultural background they come from, have a natural ability to pick up a device, fiddle around with the drop-down menus, and figure out how to make the technology work for them.

It was no different when students in Ghana and Clearwater, Fla. were handed an e-reader. Curious expressions soon faded as the kids bounded through the training and moved beyond uncertainty to mastery.

This week, we’ve painted a picture of how two of the world’s largest e-reader pilots — spearheaded by Worldreader and Clearwater High School (CHS)—have evolved in the last 12-18 months. We examined the technology issues and talked about the value of building meaning relationships with publishers and content providers.

But the true test of whether it would all come together and actually affect change depended on what happened in the classrooms. This is where we saw some striking similarities and differences.

In Ghana, the first hurdle we had to overcome was a language barrier, especially with the younger children. While English is the language used in the schools, the kids were less familiar with words like “Settings” and the differences between “Back” and “Previous Page.”

The older kids in both pilots, though, took to the Kindles relatively quickly and within a couple of weeks made them their own. In both cases, on opposite sides of the world, kids did what kids do. They figured out how to download music, deregister the pilot-controlled account, create a personal log-on, and find social media platforms.

School administrators reined in that activity, reminding student about promises they made when the devices were distributed. In Florida’s case, students signed an Internet use agreement, said Bonnie Kelley, Clearwater High School’s supervisor of library media technology. In Ghana, students and the broader community took a pledge to support the program and care for the devices.

Once the initial excitement of having a 3G and Wi-Fi enabled e-reader in their hands died down, kids and teachers settled into a more normal routine. Electronic books that had been pushed in the classrooms were being read, teachers found new ways to incorporate e-readers into lesson plans, and kids were getting into the habit of using digital materials.

Some other noteworthy things happened as well.

In Clearwater, the Kindles became an equalizer, something that leveled the playing field between higher-achieving students and those that have been traditionally seen as lower-achievers, said John Just, assistant superintendent of MIS for Pinellas County Schools.

“There were students who would see a textbook or a novel in printed form and didn’t connect with it. For whatever reason, they hadn’t been successful in using them,” he said. “This [pilot] created a new opportunity for them. Some of the most compelling feedback we got when we walked around the different classrooms came from those classrooms with students who were struggling and those lower-level reading classes. Kids were using the tools like the dictionary, highlighting sections of the text. Those tools were very helpful for them.”

John also pointed out an interesting contrast to this dynamic.

“In some of the higher-achieving classes, the kids shrugged and said ‘Ah, I kind of like my book,’” John said, adding that those students had previous successes and a comfort level with printed books. “For many of the struggling students who had never, in many cases, had the ability to acquire such a device, it offered a new lease on learning.”

The books the high school students choose to read and how they related to them also raised eyebrows, said Bonnie.

“I didn’t think they would take to highlighting text, making comments, and sharing that with their teachers. But they did,” Bonnie said. “The students connected to the text, and made connections to themselves.”

“The day we distributed the Kindles, I was standing behind a girl and overheard, ‘Oh, look! I have Pride and Prejudice on my Kindle. I can’t wait to read it!” added Bonnie. “I’m a former English and reading teacher, and I know how kids respond to certain books. That was a real shocker.”

Understanding the motivation behind what makes kids latch onto to reading and which books they choose to read is as important as tracking improvements in reading fluency and comprehension, said Colin McElwee, Worldreader’s managing director.

“For a program that’s based around a piece of technology, technology, in this case, is the least important piece. What’s much more important is the content being used in education and the human behavior around that,” Colin said.

Since the kids in Ghana have a much different starting point with books—something highlighted in this video— the way they use the device is slightly different, too. Because they have so little access to printed materials, they are using the Kindles to discover the world and learn about things that had not been readily available to them.

Besides the e-books Worldreader delivered to them, kids are downloading international and regional newspapers and magazines, free samples, textbooks, other local content, and public domain books. They’re interested in sports, religion, fiction, and non-fiction. They are reading at the market, with their families, and teaching each other the Kindle’s ins and outs. Even when school is not in session, they show up, excited about flipping through more virtual ink.

“We’re trying to gauge what they’re interested in reading. We want to know what’s challenging them,” said Colin. “Over time we’ll get much better at knowing what their understanding is of particular passages or texts.”

While anecdotal evidence is nice, the real proof is in the pudding. We’re waiting for final numbers to come in, but our preliminary findings show improvements in reading fluency and reading comprehension. In one primary school, for instance, students improved on average 13% from their scores five months earlier. We’ll update you as we review the stacks of data coming in.

So where do CHS and Ghana go from here? Thankfully, both projects will continue.

In Florida, school administrators are increasing their e-book database, researching how teachers are adopting technology, and extending teacher training and coaching. School administrators are examining ways to pilot similar programs in other schools throughout the district, and will consider the trade-offs between e-readers and tablets, such as Apple’s iPad.

In Ghana, Worldreader is working with the same group of students as they move up a grade, and plans to expand the program to include other grade levels in the future. We’re talking to more publishers and authors as well. We’ve also expanded into Kenya and are looking at other opportunities in Africa and elsewhere, with the aim of reaching a million kids by 2015.

Have you heard of any other large-scale e-reader pilots? Tell us about it on our Facebook page or via Twitter at @worldreaders.

Photo credits: Ghana photos by Worldreader. Clearwater High School photos courtesy of the Pinellas County School’s Communication Office.

By Jennifer Baljko

About 18 months ago, before Worldreader even had office space, the team unpacked 20 Kindle 2s, and a handful of children’s books were uploaded onto the e-readers. With ambitious plans sketched out on paper and a lot hope in their suitcases, Worldreader’s Colin McElwee, David Risher, and Mike Sundermeyer flew from Barcelona to Ghana and started to test what would soon become our iRead pilot.

About the same time last year, using money from a four-year technology fund, Clearwater, Fla. High School (CHS) administrators purchased about 150 Kindle 2s, and handed them to teachers. They wanted to make sure the educators had plenty of time to get used to their new classroom tool. When the following school year started, e-readers would be in nearly all of the students’ hands, replacing the bulky textbooks they lugged around.

A few months later, the pilot programs were officially launched, and have since become the largest institutional e-reader rollouts anywhere in the world (so far, no one else has come forward to prove us wrong). Now that the initial pilots have come to a close and the next steps are already being phased in, we thought it was good time to reflect on how far both programs have come – and how they have evolved – since the early bright-idea days. Last week, we kicked off the three-part series with a look at the technology and networking capabilities. Today, we’ll talk about the publishing and content distribution side of the puzzle.

We all know content is king, and with increased global connectivity via the Internet and mobile phone networks, information is everywhere, coming in from many different sources at any given time. E-book sales are also growing hand over fist as more people transition from printed to digital materials. In fact, Publishers Weekly reported last month that e-book sales for the first half of calendar 2011 rose 161%, to $473.8 million for the 15 major publishing houses that feed data up to the Association of American Publishers.

Although e-books have gained popularity among individual consumers, getting publishing companies, media outlets, and other content providers to donate age-appropriate digital books that have educational value in a classroom setting, without being disruptive to lesson plans, and where hundreds or thousands of students would have easy access, well, let’s just say that takes some persuasion. Impressively, though, both Clearwater and Worldreader have made significant strides on this front, ensuring that their students have a mini-library of books in the palms of their hands. But there’s still work to be done, and many more opportunities stand to take root.

At CHS, the pilot’s main objectives were to start migrating away from printed textbooks and supplemental teaching materials and better utilize technology in the school. This is an issue that soon many school districts, at least in the United States, will confront. State legislators, including those in Florida, are passing laws that will require public school districts to spend some percentage of their book budgets on digital content within a few years time, or redefine the digital and print divide. E-readers, tablets, and perhaps some other device in an early-stage development stage will be finding their way into any number of classrooms in the near future.

Ahead of the curve, a CHS teacher, using the e-reader during the test phase, stumbled upon the availability of the CK-12 series of e-books, which led to the decision to purchase math and language arts textbooks and supplemental science and reading materials, said John Just, assistant superintendent of MIS for Pinellas County Schools.

At launch, roughly 100 books were available to the staff and students at Clearwater High, 60 of which were purchased, noted Jim Bence, the school district’s computer support analyst in the Office of Library Media/Technology. Within the last year, the high school uploaded other free and paid books, mostly classics like Gulliver’s Travels and Pride and Prejudice, and local newspapers, bringing the average up to about 15 to 20 books on each student’s e-reader, he said.

This year, additional textbooks and learning materials in other subject areas, including science and English, are on the e-readers, and future Kindle store purchases are being planned.  When kids and teachers returned to school this year, they had about 50 titles each, on average, added Jim.

“One of the biggest challenges is content. We are on conference call after conference call trying to convince publishers to give us material in the format that we need,” said John. “That is the biggest detriment at this point to making the program an even bigger success. They see this as a big affront to what they are trying to do. People sat across the table from us and said you’ll never be able to do that.”

Yet, they did. And so did Worldreader, which had a different starting point than CHS but ended up with many similar outcomes.

Although Worldreader’s goal is to give people the world over access to books by leveraging existing technology, building a culture of reading has to begin at the school level. Going that route in a developing country often involves forging deep relationships with government organizations and international and regional publishers.

From go, Worldreader teamed up with USAID to fund the program’s measurement and evaluation portion, and has worked closely with Ghana’s Ministry of Education to get the pilot off the ground last November with about 500 students across different grade levels. Conversations about how to expand it  in the next few years are currently underway, said Worldreader’s Managing Director Colin McElwee.

On the content side, while it was clear that we would have access to the same literary classics as CHS and we could find textbooks that would meet the curriculum requirements, we would have to go beyond that if we wanted reading to stick. The handful of children’s books we initially delivered, which included Fairy Tales Every Child Should Know, Folks Tales From Ghana, and a Curious George and Magic Tree House volume, had only whetted the kids’ appetite.

We began having discussions with big-name publishing companies,  including Random House and Penguin, and authors such as Mary Pope Osborne, Holly Black, Cory Doctorow, Keith Thomas, Janet Wong, and Daniel Pinkwater (other notable writers will be announced in the coming quarters).

Early on, too, the team chose to loop in African authors, such as Meshack Asare, Ellen Banda-Aaku, and Chika Unigwe, and publishers like Smartline, Afram, and Sub-Saharan. We wanted to offer a breadth of content that not only had international appeal, but also would give the local market access to their own regional literary icons. More importantly, we realized almost immediately that stories had to relate to the students’ cultural context, which is lacking in most Western literature. Later this week, we’ll look at why that was relevant and what happened when kids got the e-readers in their hands.

Between our launch with just a few books and today, you’ll find 352 international and African titles in our Worldreader database. On average, each student and teacher now has 99 Worldreader-delivered books on his e-reader plus whatever samples and free, public domain books they downloaded individually.

To make donating their books more appealing to publishers and to encourage the idea of building a long-term relationship, Worldreader is providing publishers with market research about which books are being read, Colin added.

“With our publishers in Ghana, we share with them insights about which books the kids are reading and why. We package that information and report it back to the publishers,” Colin said. “Although the publishers are giving us their books for free for the pilot program, they are getting feedback from the market and from a new digital platform. That’s incredibly valuable for them.”

How publishers will continue to adapt to programs like those being pioneered in Clearwater and Ghana will surely be a topic of conversation at the upcoming Frankfurt Book Fair, one of the industry’s marquee events. Our Director of Digital Publishing Elizabeth Wood will be there, and will certainly have lots to share when she returns.

Until then, we’ll wrap up this series on Friday with a post about the in-classroom e-reader experience and some surprising results coming out of Clearwater and Ghana.

 

 

 Photo credits :

Ghana photos by Worldreader.

Clearwater High School photos courtesy of the Pinellas County School’s Communication Office.

 

By Jennifer Baljko

In Ghana, books were hard to come by when children’s author Meshack Asare was young.

The nearest library was 24 miles away, and a mobile book unit visited his town every six months or so. While he managed to get his hands on the few school textbooks, Royal primers, Oxford English readers, and the occasional classic like Treasure Island (which Worldreader students also can access), Meshack mostly made do with his father’s collection.

“They were mostly history books, books about the fall of Rome, the British empire and things like that. My father also had some Western magazines and a few National Geographic copies,” Meshack told Worldreader.

Later, at university, he experienced a turning point that changed his reading and writing life.  A friend had gone to Brazil and returned with a story he wanted Meshack, an art student at the time, to illustrate.

“I knew about Brazil from my geography lessons, but I hadn’t seen photos of what Brazil really looked like, or what the animals or people looked like,” he said. “I had to go to the library in Accra to do research. It was the first time I saw real children’s books, from Europe mainly, and some from the United States, Russia, and China. It was only then I had a clear idea what a children’s book really should look like.”

“After I did the illustrations for this book, I realized I didn’t have [these kinds of books] as a child,” Meshack continued, recalling how many of the elementary learn-to-read materials left him wanting more. “These books had little stories and poems, Jack and Jill fetching water and that sort of thing. They were influential in the sense that they showed me what other children did, how they lived, and what kinds of things were around them. But I could not connect them to my own environment or experience. I thought it would be great to have a book about things that I, too, could recognize.”

Many books later, Meshack has developed a somewhat pragmatic, Zen ideology about reading.

“Reading underlies everything. It’s something I like to compare to religion,” he said. “If you think of religion as something that offers a picture of something more grand than us, reading does the same thing. Reading enables us to lift ourselves from our current situation to something higher – and better. It expands one’s own imagination.”

“It is essential for children, especially children in developing countries, to be helped by every means possible to be able to read, to have books to read, and to have books that tell them about themselves,” he explained.  “It’s also important to make a ritual out of reading …and to have the ability to look at symbols and words and form meaning from them. It is as important and necessary as eating and as brushing one’s teeth.”

It makes sense, too, that electronic media and ebooks could play a key role in bridging literacy gaps in the developing world, he added. In this vein, Meshack has donated two of his books to Worldreader, The Canoe’s Story and The Cross Drums.

Worldreader has digitized these two gems and included them in our growing list books that includes classics like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Kidnapped, international best-sellers, and regional favorites.  In a few weeks, our iRead students will have Meshack’s books on their Kindles as well. And, like Meshack, we’re looking forward to bringing great African literature to kids in Africa, and to help expand the rest of the world’s imagination.

Thanks for the chat, Meshack!

For more information about how Worldreader is bringing books to all in the developing world using e-readers, visit us at Worldreader.org.

 

 

By Jennifer Baljko

Today, April 23, is a special day for book lovers, aspiring readers, and just about anyone else who has ever felt a jolt of excitement after running their fingers down a hard-covered spine or flipping through e-reader pages of their favorite tome.

It’s World Book and Copyright Day, as coined by UNESCO and the United Nations.

Historically, today honors writers Miguel de Cervantes, William Shakespeare, and Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, who are said to have died on this day in 1616. In Barcelona – where Worldreader is based – the festivities are more romantic. Hundreds of stalls line streets downtown, and women and men traditionally exchange books and roses to mark what they also call Sant Jordi’s Day.

Hovering over the tables, carefully deciding which book may offer the greatest promise, I’m reminded of conversations I’ve had recently with authors who have donated books to our program and Worldreader stories I’ve heard coming out of Ghana.

Continue Reading →

Yesterday evening, after an amazing show of drive and tenacity, Colin and Elizabeth walked out of Kenya’s Ministry of Education with the attached letter in hand.  Now we have the official backing of the Kenyan Government who want to follow our work at The Kilgoris Project’s Intimigom School to evaluate if it can be scaled up across the country.  As we often yell in our office: Yeeeeee-Haw!

For us, this is a really big deal.  Almost exactly one year ago today, we received authorization from Ghana’s Minstry of Education to expand our work there; now we’re working with 500 students and teachers there, and we expect to expand that dramatically next school year. Now Kenya is on the same track, building on our success in Ghana and permitting us to work in partnership with both private organizations and forward-thinking governments. That’s a wonderful recipe for success.

We hope that someday every child in Kenya and every child in Ghana will be carrying around a library in his or her hands, and be just as inspired as Deborah and Gideon. It all starts with breakthroughs… like a single letter.

by Zev Lowe

Over the last two days, the Worldreader team has gathered in an empty classroom at ESADE Business School to prepare our e-readers for classroom trials in Ghana. In less than a week, we will begin working with the teachers and students of the OrphanAid District School in Ayenyah. David, Colin and Mike are leaving for Accra this Friday, March 12. They will have 18 Kindles in tow, thanks to the kind folks at Amazon.

But it wouldn’t do to just show up with brand-new e-readers fresh out of the box. We had to register them and load them up with some starter content. In our earlier classroom trials in Barcelona, the students in David Pover’s 12th grade classroom read Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, which was a free book. But our Ghana trials will involve younger children, with about a 4th grade English language reading level. Our search for free and/or open-source age-appropriate content didn’t yield much. While our long-term is to encourage the use of local content, in the interest of getting on the ground as soon as possible we paid for content off Amazon’s Kindle store.

We decided that we would start with four books and a magazine. As soon as we get to Ghana, we will confer with the teacher and modify our selection of content as necessary, but it seemed important to show up with something so we could demonstrate the potential of the e-reader to contain a veritable library in one slim package. Also, Ghana doesn’t yet have wireless Kindle coverage, so we thought it best to download some content while we can do it conveniently.

We underestimated the complexity of the Kindle ecosystem. In pricing their e-books, Amazon has had to balance publisher demands to control rights to their books on a market-to-market basis, the cost of wireless delivery worldwide, and the need to keep things relatively simple for the average customer. The result? Customers can register an unlimited number of Kindles to one account, but each time you purchase a book license, it is usually valid for only 6 devices.

It was great that we could register all 18 Kindles to one account, and we were prepared to buy 3 copies of each book. But we encountered some problems along the way. The system kept track of how many downloads we made of a single book (good), but didn’t make it easy to buy more than one copy of a book (bad for us), and occasionally seemed to get a little jumbled about whether we’d downloaded 5 or 6 books, particularly if we did some wirelessly and others over the internet (confused yet?).

Furthermore, the market-by-market pricing posed an interesting question: Should we use a U.S. or Spanish credit card? If we used a U.S. credit card, then the books would be cheaper. But because we are physically in Spain, we would have to pay when wirelessly downloading content. Of course we could just use a Spanish credit card, but then we’d have less content to choose from — for example, we found out that Curious George Plants A Tree wouldn’t be available to us then.

	U.S. credit card	Spanish credit card
Content availability	Extensive	Limited
Book price	Cheaper	More expensive
Surcharge per wireless download (outside U.S.)	$1.99	Free (included)

Based on the various obstacles and minor setbacks we ran into while setting up all 18 Kindles, we’ve drawn up best practices that will scale for future, larger trials. The real learning will come in Ghana, but we’re amazed at how much we’ve learned before even leaving home.

The Kindle is making inroads among college students in the United States. It’ll be great to see how kids in Ghana will react to having the device in their classrooms. What will they think about the books we’ve chosen? Will they use them more in class or for leisure reading? How will their teachers react? We look forward to learning and adapting, and keeping all of you posted.