eBook News

Here is a new ebook site with a twist. MeeGenius has a collection of books that can be read online, about six for free. The books are displayed on the screen and there is a read aloud option, that when it reads also does synchronized highlighting of the text (phonic support). As a bonus feature the user can adapt the book and change the names of the characters, so that if you wanted you could personalize the text to display the name of a student, creating a personal feature for the student with the book. MeeGenius: http://www.meegenius.com/store/books/free/

A good amount of news today that I'm catching up with. My thoughts about the following. I do wonder about the 26 time for a library book loan for Harper Collins, this returns to the concept of who owns a bought book. If I own the book how many times can I read it? They mention in their article about the checkout shelf life of a book for a year, but as a physical book collector, I have mass market paperbacks from the 1950's that are still readable and that I do read every now and then (although I've never actually counted how many times). I think that schools using Kindles and iPads as book tools are an excellent start on the process, yes there will be problems, but I feel that the possibilities that are offered with electronic text do make it worthwhile. And having been a middle and high school teacher for 17 years, I can also say that printed copies of books had their issues too. I know that many of my fellow teachers may have some issues as they start to use digital text