In the old days we blamed it on the dog, but today we can blame our gadgets. In this case, the Kindle. When Amazon pulled the novel 1984 from thousands of Kindles earlier this month, Justin Gawronski’s electronic notes for a summer assignment instantly became useless.
So now a class action lawsuit has been filed that seeks punitive damages for those affected by the deletion as well as an injunction that stops Amazon from improperly accessing Kindles in the future. Despite the fact that Bezos did apologize after the 1984 fiasco, most will likely agree that they had this coming.
[Gizmodo]
TAGS:
Amazon, homework, kindle, Student, sues 
Don’t know about the validity of this lawsuit, but there is an important issue re: the validity of homework, in general. I have an idea to share re: homework.
On back-to-school night last year, I made a deal with their parents: I said, “I won’t assign grammar or essay homework, if you will supervise your child’s reading-discussion homework.” Every parent made positive comments about this approach to homework. Few parents at the intermediate, middle, or high school levels want to or know how to supervise written work. Supervising their child’s reading is something that parents support and perceive as valuable.
Here, in a nutshell is the homework plan: Students read for thirty minutes, four times per week. Parents grade a three-minute discussion of each reading session. Students lead this discussion with reading comprehension strategy discussion prompts. I got a high degree of buy-in from parents and students. I flesh out this homework program much more on my blog at Homework That Makes Sense.