$1,000 donation to The Kindle Classroom Project!

favicon Nope, that’s not a typo!

I am very happy to announce the largest-ever donation to The Kindle Classroom Project: a $1,000 Amazon gift card from DSW in Saratoga, Calif.

I’m still a little bit speechless.

After all, for the past two years, I’ve been plugging away, collecting used Kindles, getting the word out, encouraging ninth graders to read, and being extremely thankful for the generosity of friends, family, loyal Iserotope readers, and total strangers who care about young people and their reading lives.

But never did I think I’d open my email yesterday morning to see this:

Pretty neat, don’t you think? It’s sort of boggling my mind, as if I’ve won the lottery or something.

This kind of contribution forces me to think differently — and bigger — about The Kindle Classroom Project. Maybe there’s a possibility for more than one Kindle classroom? Or maybe every ninth grader at a school gets a Kindle? Or maybe something even bigger?

Right now, I’m doing my best to calm myself down, to be as strategic as possible with this contribution in figuring out next steps. Here are some of my initial thoughts:

1. The money could go toward more Kindles.
My short-term goal of a classroom set of Kindles is no longer a dream. With this donation, I could purchase 14 Kindles and be done. But I’m pleased with the progress of my DonorsChoose project, which I believe will deliver the 10 Kindles necessary to achieve my goal. (Tell your friends!)

2. The money could go toward building the Kindle ebook library.
It has been challenging to attain a class set of Kindles, but it’s been even harder to fundraise for ebooks.

I’d like two things to be true:

  • If a student has been reading on the Kindle and then finds out about a book that she really wants to read but it’s not on the Kindle, I’d like to make that title available to her and to everyone else in the class.
  • I’d like every single title in a physical classroom library to be mirrored on the Kindle. In other words, I’d like a student to be able to go up to the physical classroom library, do some browsing, touch the physical books, see how they feel, find one that appeals to him, and then find that book on his Kindle.

Right now, I’m leaning toward Option #2, but I need to do some more thinking. If you have questions or ideas, please leave a comment.

In the meantime, I’ll continue to be in my awestruck (and appreciative, and grateful, and thankful) state!

Know of someone who’d like to contribute to the festivities? Direct them to this pagefavicon

What do you think?