We bought a pair of Kindles Fire HD 8 tablets for the kids to use as a learning device. We were particularly motivated by Amazon Rapids, which my daughter loves and really has helped her reading ability. (We ever going to get new books? No new Rapids books since April of 2018!)
However my ability to control their experience wihtin the Kindle's primary usage environment, FreeTime, is way too limited for what I want. Here is how I'd like to see FreeTime ammended.
Today, there is simply way too much available in FreeTime. There are games, Movies, Videos, and way too much.
I'd like to be able to control which of these categories appears on each profile. The way the UI is rendered in Lists seems like this should be a possibility. Simply let me pick which categories of content appear. If I look at my daughter's I see:
- Games
- Movies
- Shows
- Popular Content
For my tastes, the Popular Content section is especially full of recommendations I don't ever want my kids to play. If I could configure for each profile what they're able to access, this would get me there.
Bonus points if I can also provide a different selection for the Weekend too, so I could allow games or silly categories on the weekend. If I can block some categories and then continute to use the 'Add Content to Profile' option, I'm like 85% to where I want to be.
I love the idea that the option 'Complete Educational Goals' seems to want to offer, and I think with some tweaks it can really shine.
I have installed a number of Scratch style programming apps. Yet these aren't considered Educational by whatever filter determines these things, so if I apply the Educational Goal mode, the programming apps don't appear.
Furthermore, I have a paid subscription to a reading trainer app--this is the literal reason I bought the Kindle in the first place, to be honest-- called Homer, but this doesn't count as Educational Either. ARGH!
Here's how this could be remedied though: there is already an option to let me Add Specific Apps to a Kindle FreeTime Profile. Take this and tweak it to also allow me to mark apps as Educational and I'm a Happy Camper.
The Kindle is a great device and I love reading things on it, especially graphic novels which have the cool full panel mode where it pans through the panels in full screen with interesting scrolling effects.
But even the highest end Kindle's today have a lot of room for improvement in specs, especially given the ultra powerful phones we carry around these days. My phone, for instance, scores nearly 10 times higher than the Kindle Fire HD 8. I understand the value proposition, but I think there's room for a more performant Kindle Fire, especially in the IPad Pro form factor.