Students will receive large-screen Kindles with pre-loaded textbooks at six universities – Princeton University, Case Western, Pace University, Reed College, Darden School at the University of Virginia, and Arizona State University. This good fortune for students will start this fall, and at least one university (Case Western) plans to compare the experiences of students with Kindles with students using traditional textbooks.

Intriguingly, the new Kindle will feature a more functional web browser, according to Case Western’s CIO, Lev Gonick.

The new Kindle will also reportedly be compatible with PDF files – a very welcome feature that I hope is extended to the Kindle 1 and Kindle 2 models as well.

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The new Kindle supposedly sports a 9.7-inch screen (that’s 62% larger than the current Kindle readers), and is geared towards magazines, newspapers, and – perhaps – college textbooks.

Apart from the screen size, there appear to be few external changes from the Kindle 2. The blurry photo at right does, however, shows that the Home and Next page are now accompanied by an additional button. Any guesses what that is?

The 5-way controller looks similar, with the two buttons (presumably Menu and Back) above and below the joystick.

We’ll know more on Wednesday morning, or earlier if more spy photos get leaked. You can follow all of the latest on “Kindle 3″ in this KindleBoards thread.

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Our forums are, naturally, abuzz about this. Amazon has only held two previous press conferences: one to announce the original Kindle; and – you guessed it – the other to announce Kindle 2.

There are plenty of rumors about a larger-format Kindle, and a tie-in with the New York Times and other media outlets. The Times reports that “As early as this week, according to people briefed on the online retailer’s plans, Amazon will introduce a larger version of its Kindle wireless device tailored for displaying newspapers, magazines and perhaps textbooks.” That report has been confirmed by others, including Peter Kafka of the Wall Street Journal’s AllThingsDigital.

If this turns out to be true, Amazon will be first-to-market with a larger format device, with competing products rumored to be in the works from Apple, PlasticLogic, and others.

We’ll be providing minute-to-minute coverage on Wednesday, with a breaking-news thread to capture the details of the announcement as well as your reactions.

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