Princeton University is leading the way as far as e-book technology goes. This semester the University is giving Kindles out to students to use for different courses. Their goal: to signifigantly reduce the cost and impact of the paper used at the school. Research found that that the campus printers spit out 15 million pages last year, costing the school 5 million dollars.
About 60 people in all, students, faculty, and staff, will receive the $489 devices, and the participants will be questioned throughout the semester to determine whether they're an acceptable alternative to paper.
Amazon chief executive Jeffrey Bezos, a Princeton alum, unveiled the new Kindle earlier this week, calling it a better fit for students. At 9.7 inches across, it's more textbook-friendly than the smaller Kindle 2. It also can read PDF files.
Perhaps most importantly, in Bezos's view, students can annotate text, marking up passages and writing in the margins as they would on paper (video).
If the Kindle is the solution to the problem of textbooks, Princeton will be the first to know and the first to adapt the techology to best fit their educational purposes. If Chapman University wants to be a leading University it must take these bold strides towards the future.
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