Ebooks, Collections, and School Libraries

This sounds similar to a project that I had been working on with my own school's library. I love the idea of handing a student not just a single book, but a whole collection. I once attended a presentation done by another school who had done a similar project used audio books on iPods, you didn't just get one book, but a whole set. For ebook devices school libraries could create themed collections of books mixing in with the new books a whole set of public domain texts to that as the student used the ebook device to read that one that they wanted, they could also be exposed to other literature that they may not have seen before or that the library doesn't' have as a hard copy. For example, you could purchase the new movie tie-in for the latest of Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean movie, and then add to the device other public domain ebooks such as Swiss Family Robinson, Treasure Island, and Captain Blood. Or think about having the whole collection of a series on a single device, so that when a student checked out the Wizard of Oz, Tarzan, or Dr. Doolittle, they wouldn't just get the first book, but they whole collection, along with others that could be themed. It would be like having the shelf that has the new book that reads "If you liked this than you might like...." The school could then also make themed skins to put on the checkable ebook device.

Schools, libraries aim to capitalize on students' interest in e-books
Schools and public libraries in Tennessee are hoping to promote reading by capitalizing on students' growing interest in e-books. One high school allows students to check out e-readers that are loaded with about 50 digital titles. Meanwhile, Nashville is working to develop policies and procedures for allowing students to use their own portable devices to access the school's digital resources in various electronic formats. The Tennessean (Nashville) (3/21

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Ebooks as Textbooks - Part 2 - Highlighting

Highlighting can be a very effective tool in reading and learning no matter the kind of text being read: from novels to textbooks. Most textbooks or other forms of information text will usually used text features along with graphics to help organize information presented in the text. These elements are done to help focus attention on important or key concepts and provide additional information. The text organization itself can include structural elements such as heading, subheading, index, glossary, paragraph spacing, bulleted or numbered lists, sidebars or side boxes, italics, underlines or bold for words or even sections. Graphic content can include the use of symbols, colors, illustrations, pictures, diagrams, charts, and graphs. Poor highlighting design - too much text has been highlighted. The act of highlighting is less time consuming and much easier than note-taking ( to be discussed in an upcoming posting). To be effective in highlighting it should be a kind of meta

Ebooks as Textbooks Part 8: Textbook structure

Textbooks usually have a structure, and it doesn't matter if it is an electronic textbook or a paper printed one, the people who put the textbook together usually make it have a structure to help you better understand what you are reading and learning. Textbooks are usually a type of text known as informational or expository text - this is text written to inform, and can be things like textbook chapters, newspaper and magazine articles, and other reference materials like encyclopedia items. The other kind of text that you usually encounter in school is narrative text, where a story is being told - which could be fictional or non-fiction. And while textbooks are informational text, many will also have narrative text, usually as stories to help you better understand the concept, although in an English or literature class the stories are often more the focus of the learning. Textbook Elements With an electronic textbook it might be hard to see the structure, because you cant riffle

Auto Summarization

In dealing with textbooks and students with disabilities, one of the most common things that we would do is to get the textbook in a digital format, as an ebook. By doing this we were able to use a number of tools based on the need of the student. I've had students who could not lift their physical printed textbook, but would be able to access though a laptop installed in their electronic wheelchair, for students with vision issues we could boost the font size or use a text-to-speech tool to have the book read aloud to them. One tool that I used with a number of my students who had issues was the Auto Summarize tool in Word. The tool works well with textbook, but wouldn't work for other texts, such as novels. I used this to reduce the amount of text that they had to read, the "cognitive load" of the text, but would still enable be able to get the information. Word did a great job, and depending on the student I would reduce the text to about 66% for facts and support

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