eBook News

 Good reading is always more than just putting the letters together to make words. You need to read for comprehension, fluency, learning, association, and more. One strategy that helps new or struggling readers is Reading While Listening, that is where the reader silently reads while someone else reads aloud. The research available consistently demonstrates its favorable contribution to improving reading fluency. Since improving fluency is an instructional goal of elementary schools, we should always be on the lookout for tools that can assist in improving reading fluency.  Children who are reluctant to read or who have low rates of fluency can benefit from hearing a text read aloud while they follow in a print version. When they are able to hear the words and phrases, they increase their speed and prosody (intonation) appropriate to the material being read, and are able to identify more words. In this case, though, I not thinking of reading silently. Fluency is defined a...

 Was just talking to a friend in China about how her classes were working out during COVID-19. One issue that she said that she was having dealt with the students' textbooks. When they were sent home before the next semester they didn't have their textbooks for their new classes, and what with Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT) there, all her students were online. The problem was that package delivery had been paused. Very different from here where Amazon broke sales records, and I saw their prime trucks everyday. To help her students she uploaded ebooks into their distance learning environment in order to help her students get their textbooks and keep up with the course instruction.  So if you are teaching ERT you might want to consider adding some public domain texts or ones that have been released under the Creative Commons license and get some books to your students.  I have three that you are welcome to use. I wrote a textbook titled Florida Science: The Science that ma...

 Perhaps there is only so much TV a person can stand or perhaps it is the restrictions that some put on themselves against going to stores for anything other than groceries, or perhaps some people know how printed books have been shown to be disease carriers  ( COVID can be found up to three days in printed books ), or maybe it is a mix, either way, libraries have seen a growth in ebook use.  The Northbrook library in Illinois published that they saw dramatic growth in their digital checkout, with a 308% increase in ebook checkouts and a 165% increase in digital audiobook downloads, compared to the same month in 2019.  The District of Columba Public Libraries saw a similar impact, with an increase in digital checkouts that was 37% higher as compared to the same month last year. In Ireland, the latest data on book patronage has shown that during the pandemic downloads of ebooks downloads have increased to 529,416 over the last nine months (2020), while the total for l...

Ok, this is a bit off-topic, but I was just presenting about ebook accommodations at a science teacher convention and they wanted to know about some good "science books" that would work well for the classroom collection. I'm a strong believer of having classroom collections (real or virtual). There are lots of great books out there that people just don't realize. Too many people think of science books and then immediately go to the science textbook or some kind of field book (although those are great to have in the classroom too. If you are building a classroom collection for your high or middle school science classroom make sure to include a variety of books, not just non-fiction, but also picture books (think coffee table books), and fiction (that would include science fiction too). So here are some non-fiction books that I think are great to have in a collection.  Some great books on science that are not textbooks: The Science of Sci-Fi: From Warp Speed to Interste...

AudioFile has just opened the SYNC: Audiobooks for Teens 2020 Summer season. Starting the week of April 30th, teens (and others) can download two titles that are paired each week for the next 14 weeks (till August). Each of the pairs will be available for free during their week. Readers can download the books using the Overdrive app, and once you have downloaded them they are yours for free. So if you know a teen introduce him or her to some new titles or format or allow yourself to try some young adult books. SYNC is available through Sora, the student reading app from OverDrive. Available on Apple Apps and Google Play stores. The books are available at  https://www.audiobooksync.com/ Titles this summer are: Week 1:    Week 2:  Week 3:  Week 4:  Week 5:  And nine more weeks after that.

Here is a principal doing a great activity with his students each week. Using video technology to read to students, allowing him to reach more students than just going to one room. Watch this week's book at:  https://sites.google.com/lpssonline.com/jwj/home School principal reads aloud via YouTube videos A librarian at a Louisiana elementary school records the school's principal reading a book aloud to students and uploads the video on YouTube. The videos -- said to engage students in reading -- are distributed via the principal's weekly newsletter. TheAdvertiser (Lafayette, La.)  (1/10/2020)