You are viewing your 1 free article this month. Login to read more articles.
Amazon has signed a contract to distribute textbooks to teachers across Brazil.
In a deal with the Brazil Ministry of Education, the online retailer will convert print books to digital and then “wirelessly distribute" them to teachers using its Whispercast technology.
More than 200 textbooks have already been distributed to hundreds of thousands of public high school teachers, via the Ministry of Education's National Fund for Education Development.
Teachers are able to access the books through the free Kindle reading app, and to date more than 40m e-textbooks have been delivered.
Whispercast "provides a single access point to easily purchase and distribute Kindle books and documents for educational programs" across devices including Kindle Fire tablets and, via Kindle Rading Apps, iPad, Android phones and more.
Alex Szapiro, country manager of Amazon.com.br, said: “We are very enthusiastic in helping to bring new technologies that will help the education segment in Brazil.”
The news about Amazon came shortly after Bertelsmann, Penguin Random House’s parent company, announced it was launching an education technology fund in Brazil. The BR Education Ventures fund will help Bertelsmann take the “next step in the education sector”, which it describes as a “global growth market”.