eBook News

This may illustrate what could (and most likely will) be the darkside of opensource digital textbooks. Any individual or small group could create a textbook and make it digitally available, but it could either be slanted to a certain view or not include information that an author disagreed with. Yes, teachers should be able to supplement information provided by the textbook to provide a better picture of the actual situation, but that too has issues. For many teachers, the textbook is the curriculum. For example, i n science classrooms, teachers have been known to rely heavily on textbooks (Driscoll, Moallem, Dick, & Kirby, 1994).     The textbook, often a critical part of developing the curriculum for a school, and has relegated the teacher to occupy more of a passive role in the planning process.   Historically, published curriculum materials, such as textbooks, have been the main component for teaching in the US (Goodlad, 1984).  These textbooks provided a...

Ok, schools out and perhaps you were planning on spending some time relaxing with a best seller.   Perhaps you were thinking on catching up with those from last year, or the ones just coming out for that great beach read. In 2014 that would include: The Fault in Our Stars by John Green  Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul by Jeff Kinney  Divergent by Veronica Roth  Insurgent by Veronica Roth  Killing Patton by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard  Allegiant by Veronica Roth  Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn  Frozen by Victoria Saxon But instead of just catching up with last year's reading, you might go back even further and read the best sellers from 100 years ago, those from 1915, with the added bonus that you can read them for free online or on your device. The Best Sellers of 1915 The Turmoil by Booth Tarkington - https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1098 "The Turmoil", the first volume of Pulitzer Prize-winner Booth Tarkington's...

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...

I've always felt that anything that attracts kids to reading it a good thing. From getting them to read books about movies that they have seen, to using their own interests and experiences, and technology. I remember in many of my middle school classes that there were many more girls carrying books to read for themselves than boys. And the study reported here notes that same that: "twice as many boys as girls look at or read online stories for longer than they read traditional books (24 per cent compared to 12 per cent)." It also reminds me about the studies concerning video gaming, that more boys were attracted to those than girls (although there was controversy concerning the types of games created and who they appealed to). One thing that was found out from gaming was that even boys at the time were showing increased communication activity as they talked, wrote, and shared about how to play the game with others. Here is another tech experience that seems to be at...

The news today, as for the past weeks has big focus on ebola, and not to make light of such a deadly virus, but it does seem to be mostly news scaring and commentary, versus actual information. For most schools Flu is a more deadly situation as the CDC puts the average number of annual deaths in the United States somewhere between 3,000 and 49,000. But thinking about contagions and what I experienced as a middle and high school science teacher and certified school media specialist reminded me of a few more of the reasons that I do love ebooks. As an educator in a school you do see transfer, as the number of students sick with something grows and then declines (often effecting the teachers too) as the school is a microcosm of which I would see 150 a day (not counting lunch, hallway, and bus duty) out of a population of a few thousand .  A few years ago when I was a judge in a regional science fair I found a really interesting project done my a young girl. She had done a study of sc...

Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.  (Edgar Allan Poe) Just in case you need a little scary reading. I'm a strong believer in personal reading choice to encourage reading. I look back and see all the books that I read in Junior and Senior High School, and the ones that I remember most are the ones that I wanted to read. So if your students are looking for a little horror or scary reading now, then lets support them in their reading desires and guide them to some good books that they might not have noticed before. We could show them the classics that everyone may have heard of, seen the movie, but may never actually read (ie books such as  Dracula & Frankenstein), and then there are others from famous author but stories that they have never heard of  such as  Robert Louis Stevenson   "The Body Snatcher" or Robert E. Howard, who is famous for his Conan stories, but also wrote a number of...