eBook News

The every other year about how 6-17 year old students just came out based on the Fall 2014 data. http://www.scholastic.com/readingreport/Scholastic-KidsAndFamilyReadingReport-5thEdition.pdf   Here are their big points about their findings: Kids & Reading  Half of all children ages 6–17 (51%) are currently reading a book for fun and another one in five (20%) just finished one.  Both parents of children ages 6–17 (71%) and kids (54%) rank strong reading skills as the most important skill a child should have. Yet while 86% of parents say reading books for fun is extremely or very important, only 46% of kids say the same.  Three-quarters of parents with children ages 6–17 (75%) agree “I wish my child would read more books for fun,” and 71% agree “I wish my child would do more things that did not involve screen time.”  What Makes Frequent Readers   Frequent readers, defined as children who read books for fun 5–7 days a week, differ subs...

In a recent survey by LightSail Education of 475 educators about their school districts transition from paper to ebooks the following was found:  Concerning the migration to digital books embraced by school and district leaders: Fifty-two percent want students reading in digital books. Eight percent prefer paper books. Forty percent expressed no preference for digital or paper books. If you eliminate the no preference group, then for the two groups left ebooks are preferred 6.5 times more than print.  Of course this isn't addressing the issues of connectivity/access and prep. I do think that ebooks as textbooks are the way to go and I do so as much as possible in my own classes. But, many schools will subscribe to an etextbook service only to find out that the interactions and video are great, but when all the students try to access there isn't enough bandwidth to access, or they don't have enough computers or wireless connect...