Dr. Linda Macias, Associate Superintendent, Curriculum and Instruction and Accountability for Cypress Fairbanks ISD, knew that students tended to be highly engaged when reading on a tablet. The question was, how do you get tablets and digital books into the hands of a large number of students easily and cost effectively?

Dr. Linda Macias, Associate Superintendent, Curriculum and Instruction and Accountability for Cypress Fairbanks ISD, knew that students tended to be highly engaged when reading on a tablet. To encourage this type of positive engagement, Dr. Macias wanted to provide students across the district access to tablets and digital books especially those students who didn’t necessarily have access to technology. Making the transition to a digital learning experience is a top priority. However, as Cypress Fairbanks ISD is the 3rd largest school district in Texas and the 22nd largest in the country–the question was, how do you get tablets and digital books into the hands of a large number of students easily and cost effectively?

Dr. Macias reached out to Becky Cook, CFISD’s Instructional Technology Director, and asked her to investigate options. Ultimately, they decided to purchase Amazon’s Fire tablets because they were powerful yet inexpensive. Cook’s team setup a loan program so Cypress Fairbanks' students could check out the tablets and take them home.

Amazon did it right—they made it manageable for a district the size of ours to transition to digital learning.

Dr. Macias also wanted an easy solution to purchase and distribute digital books and apps to the tablets—a process that could be repeatable and scalable. CFISD evaluated and tested several options for mobile device management, direct distribution and content management services. The one option that met all the needs was Amazon’s Whispercast tool. "Amazon did it right—they made it manageable for a district the size of ours to transition to digital learning," said Cook. "The Fire tablet deployment has been the only one that has gone smoothly—it was a piece of cake to get the devices out to students, distribute digital books and have students actually use them," said Cook.

Today, CFISD uses over 1,200 Fire tablets. Content procurement and distribution is efficient and easy for the designated in-school curriculum technologists, and students are more engaged with reading when using the tablets. Due to the success of the deployment, CFISD is planning to expand their device and digital content program in the coming years.

With such a large and physically distributed student body, the UT MBA program had a big logistics challenge: how to procure and distribute a diverse set of course materials to a highly distributed, mobile and digitally savvy student body.

Like many MBA programs around the country, the University of Texas MBA program in Austin offers not only a full-time MBA program but also offers courses to working professionals through their Executive MBA program located in Austin, Houston, Dallas and Mexico City. With such a large and physically distributed student body, the UT MBA program had a big logistics challenge: how to procure and distribute a diverse set of course materials to a highly distributed, mobile and digitally savvy student body.

To distribute course materials, they had to purchase and physically distribute (ship) printed textbooks, course materials and case studies. This meant ordering, storing, and distributing multiple textbooks and case studies to each remote classroom and then physically handing the materials out to each student. This process took hours and hours of cumbersome receiving, sorting, packing and delivering every quarter. Additionally, if the professor was using online course materials, an access code would need to be distributed and a tutorial session provided to all students on how to access each one of the different online course platforms—another time-consuming and, often, confusing process.

The staff of the UT MBA program knew there had to be a better way—that's when they came across Amazon's Whispercast, a free online tool for procurement and distribution of digital content. Adoption of Whispercast enabled the UT MBA program to quickly and effectively procure and distribute eTextbooks and digital course materials from a central location and deliver directly to their students' devices, including tablets, laptops, PCs and smartphones. Professors worked with UT administrators to purchase the digital content or convert their own original content for distribution.

Students have been thrilled with the Whispercast experience—course materials simply show up in their Kindle Reading App and can be read from most any device.

Students have been thrilled with the Whispercast experience—course materials simply show up in their Kindle Reading App and can be read from most any device. Their digital content is easy to find and accessible both online and offline. Plus, students are able to take advantage of study features included in the Kindle Reading App, such as Multi-Color Highlighting, Notebook, Flash Cards, X-Ray for Textbooks, Swift Navigation and Kindle's innovative text-to-speech technology. Professors love the large catalog of educational content available through Amazon, plus they can have their own materials (papers, articles, assignments and quizzes) distributed along with the eTextbooks.

Since its implementation of Whispercast, the UT MBA program has used the tool to cover its Evening, Executive, Dallas, Houston and Mexico City MBA programs.