e-Books in Schools

[TechMonkey]

Interesting research. Funnily enough I was against e-Books until I found I was reading less and less due to my partner falling to sleep before me and me not wanting to disturb her. I still buy physical books for important reads or coffee table reads but have increased not only my reading but my breadth of reading too.

I agree with the Michael Rosen saying picture books are something that are harder to implement on an e-Reader, there will always be something about sitting with someone, or a group of people and looking at them. Something like Where's Wally or the Jolly Postman series.

 

The quote I find interesting though is

there are concerns the expansion of electronic devices in schools may undermine the position of traditional paper books

. I wonder if there were hold outs when paperbooks started replacing clay tablets or writing on the wall?

 

Surely it is more about the content and action then about the medium?

[RLR]

Interesting research. Funnily enough I was against e-Books until I found I was reading less and less due to my partner falling to sleep before me and me not wanting to disturb her. I still buy physical books for important reads or coffee table reads but have increased not only my reading but my breadth of reading too.

I agree with the Michael Rosen saying picture books are something that are harder to implement on an e-Reader, there will always be something about sitting with someone, or a group of people and looking at them. Something like Where's Wally or the Jolly Postman series.

 

The quote I find interesting though is . I wonder if there were hold outs when paperbooks started replacing clay tablets or writing on the wall?

 

Surely it is more about the content and action then about the medium?

 

 

Our School is currently using some eBooks for certain classes. I think it's going quite well as they can use the iPads for other things at the same time. We're also creating iBooks which have interactive content and animations. I think the iBooks are far better than picture books as the children can engage more with the content.

[Duranis]

Our School is currently using some eBooks for certain classes. I think it's going quite well as they can use the iPads for other things at the same time. We're also creating iBooks which have interactive content and animations. I think the iBooks are far better than picture books as the children can engage more with the content.

 

Is that not potentially part of the problem though. If children (and I'm talking younger children who are still in the learning to read phase) are spending most of the time with the interactive content how much time is being taken away from them actually reading? I'm all for making learning more engaging but I strongly think we should be encouraging the fact that sitting down and reading a story (without lots of additional distractions) is fun in itself.

 

That being said though I'm not an educator and for all I know kids might learn to read quicker when the reading itself isn't the main focus. I just know as a Dad that loves to read it has been incredible hard to get my very tech focused kids into the mindset that sitting and reading a book is as fun as youtube/consoles/etc.

 

Back on topic though I love my kindle and would love to see ebooks used in school more. The problem here would be how to implement it. Ideally what I would love to see would be super cheap e-ink readers that all the kids are given that get all their classroom textbooks automatically added to it and allow them to "borrow" reading books from the school library. Once you get into the "every kid needs to plug their e-reader in somewhere" area it gets messy and would go into the "too hard and too time consuming" box for most teachers. I haven't seen anything like this yet.

[southhamster]

We have been trialling RM books on learn pads which is interesting as the accounts can be managed like a proper library and books borrowed. Plus no danger of little Johnny downloading 50 shades of something or other.