Ten Reasons to Use a Kindle in Your Homeschool {Part 2- The Kindle Fire}

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Last week I shared the Ten Reason to Use a Kindle in Your Homeschool Part 1. That was all about the Kindle eReader such as the Paperwhite. Part 2 is focused on the Kindle Fire tablet.

5 Compelling Reasons to Use a Kindle Fire in Your Homeschool

Video

• The Fire has an HD video capability which gives a great picture for things like You Tube
• and Netflix.
• I’m excited for the possibility of also viewing what’s on our satellite dish on the Kindle Fire. With Dish Anywhere we can do this- so our recorded school related shows we could see on the go if we needed to fill time.
• Record video and take pictures if you have the Kindle Fire HDX models.

Audio

• You can download all your favorite stories and mp3 files onto the Fire
• Listen to Audible books.
• Did you know that Whispersync is available for the Fire? If you own the Kindle book and the Aubible file, you can play the audio and follow the highlighted text as you go with the Kindle. This has a lot of possibilities for students with reading disabilities.
• Even better if you decide to listen only, the next time you open your Fire you can choose to start where the audio left off or where you stopped reading. Pretty clever.

Cost

• If you’d like to play in the world of tablets, the Kindle Fire is a very cost effective way to do so.
• There are different models of the Fire from a basic 8G wifi with no camera or mic all the way up to a 3G plus camera and mic and the works. There is a Kindle Fire to fit your needs and your budget.

eReader

• The Kindle Fire is primarily a Kindle after all, so the reading screen is lovely.
• Best yet, it reads PDF files nicely as well. In fact, it’s the best Kindle for viewing PDF ebooks if you have any of those.
• In addition, the Fire lets you easily view books which are graphic heavy.
• Our cK-12 textbooks look great on the Kindle Fire and make it easy for my high schooler to read and interact with the text (like following embedded video links) all while at a table to do written work at the same time. Win.

Games/Apps/Web Browsing

• The Silk web browser is very functional– fast and easy to use.
• We can access homeschooling blogs and tutorials and use them right at our work surface which is a lot less cumbersome than even a laptop.
• There are some popular games/apps for the Kindle Fire, but don’t expect the same selection as iTunes or Google Play.
• Follow news articles or links from email and other sources.

All in all, I love my new Kindle Fire. It’s been a great addition to our homeschool for all these reasons and more. I’ve only had it for about a month, but it’s already proven to be useful on many occasions. In fact, I’d love to have more of them for our students. From reading books in the public domain to using online texts and doing research, tablets are very handy homeschool tools.

Win a Kindle Fire for Your Homeschool

Fortuigence is giving away a Kindle Fire HD and you still have time to enter. The giveaway ends Friday, December 20, 2013. Sign up for the newsletter and be entered into a drawing for a Kindle Fire for you homeschool.