Lunch at the EDUCAUSE SW regional yesterday was designed to have us sitting at tables with particular themes. I sat at "Innovation (or Lack Thereof) Keeps Me Up at Night!" I would have selected a different one, to be honest, but I was late to lunch and dropped in on the first available seat I spotted. Conversation was interesting, not surprisingly. One of the CIOs at the table mentioned that he is looking at different ways to provide e-books/e-texts to students as a way to off-set the enormous expenses associated with textbooks.
This morning I read another review of Kindle2. I'd missed that one of the new components is text-to-speech. The article described a read aloud feature using a computerized male or female voice and said Kindle2 can read whatever books or documents are stored on the device. That leads me to think that units like the UA's Disability Resource Center could explore providing these to blind and visually impaired students. Suppose their English class is reading Madam Bovary. They could load the Kindle edition on the Kindle2 and use it as an audio book.
A very interesting idea... Thanks for the information - I definitely think this is worth exploring. The students will like hearing that they have yet another option for accessing their electronic texts.
Have a good day!
Dawn