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Amazon’s Whispercast makes it way easier to manage Kindles in schools

Posted by EdTech Times Staff on Oct 17, 2012

Amazon.com, Inc. today announced “Whispercast for Kindle,” which gives schools and business customers online tools for deploying Kindle devices and Kindle content. Whispercast provides a single access point to purchase and distribute Kindle books and documents for educational, marketing and employee incentive programs across Kindle devices and free Kindle reading applications for iPad, iPhone, Android phones and tablets, PCs and Macs.

In a nutshell, Whispercast aims to help schools and other organizations take control of content and content distribution on large amounts of Kindles.

In the coming months, Whispercast will support distribution of Kindle Fire applications. Whispercast works with Kindle e-readers and Kindle Fire tablets, including the recently announced $69 Kindle, Kindle Paperwhite, Kindle Paperwhite 3G, Kindle Fire, Kindle Fire HD, Kindle Fire HD 8.9” and Kindle Fire HD 8.9” 4G LTE. To learn more about Whispercast, visit

“Hundreds of thousands of students around the world are already reading on Kindle,” said Dave Limp, Vice President, Amazon Kindle. “Today, we are announcing Whispercast, a free, scalable solution for school and business administrators to centrally manage thousands of Kindles and wirelessly distribute Kindle books as well as their own documents to their users. Organizations can also design bring-your-own-device programs at school or work using personally-owned Kindles, Kindle Fires, and other tablets using the free Kindle reading applications for receiving content.”

“We have been using Kindles in our schools for two and half years, and our students are more enthusiastic than ever about reading and studying,” said Keith Mastroides, Principal at Clearwater High School. “We started with 2,000 Kindle e-readers at our school and the program has been so successful that we have expanded it beyond our school and now more than 122 schools in the district are using Kindles. Whispercast gives us the ability to better streamline the process to manage our Kindles and content, so we can continue to grow the program.”

Whispercast Features

Easily manage fleets of Kindle - With Whispercast, administrators can register and assign users to all of their organizations’ Kindle devices at once, creating personalized Kindle experiences for each student or employee.
Support for “bring your own device” - With support for personal devices, organizations can invite employees, students, customers and partners to receive content from the organization on their Kindles.
Create user groups - Whispercast gives administrators the ability to assign users into one or more groups, such as specific class, grade level or corporate department. User groups make it easier to purchase and distribute content for each group’s unique needs.
Control device settings, such as Wi-Fi and password protection - Schools and businesses can configure device settings across all their Kindles, including configuring wireless connectivity to private networks for a simple and secure user experience as well as restricting web access and purchases.
Wirelessly distribute Kindle books, documents and applications - Whispercast makes it easy for organizations to centrally distribute Kindle books as well as documents on an individual basis. In the coming months, Whispercast administrators will be able to purchase and send Kindle Fire applications. Additionally, during the purchase process organizations will be able to select which content should be assigned to specific user groups they have created.
Support for free Kindle reading apps on iOS, Android, and other devices - Schools and businesses can purchase and send Kindle books and distribute documents to devices using any of the free Kindle reading apps, including iPads, iPhones, Android phones and tablets, PCs and Macs.
Support for centralized procurement - Organizations can efficiently purchase Kindle devices and content through a single payment method, including purchase orders, as well as Amazon gift cards or credit cards.