E-Reader Technology in the Classroom

Reading books is slowly becoming a thing of the past.  As a book lover, this saddens me, but you can't stop technology, so even as much as I love the feel (and smell) of books, I too own an e-reader (two, even).  We need kids to read.  We need them to be successful at taking tests.  We need kids to read and test successfully on the computer.  To me, this translates into needing kids to do significant amounts of reading on devices.

Empowering Students With Digital Reading explores the topic of students reading via technology.  The article discusses a district library where digital books were made available to students and were used a significant number of times.  I can understand that; convenience is key these days, and books that are available electronically are often also available instantaneously.  No wait time!  The article delves into a few different e-reading programs that can be used in the classroom and discusses them as options to be used with students.  While I agree that using this technology is important, the article also discusses each program's "assessment tools".  Quite frankly, I think this is less important for students who simply need to read; if we require students who are reading digitally to complete assessments, we are going to take the fun out of reading and defeated the purpose of digitally available texts.

Scholastic's Digital Reading Program

There are great reading apps for the ipad, and the Nook and Kindle are also very kid-friendly.  Even Scholastic has come out with an e-reader app that can be used on tablets (not the Nook or Kindle).  These are great ways to allow kids access to digital texts, but not in the way that I would like.  I would like to begin using e-readers in the classroom.  My teaching partners and I even began looking into the likelihood of being able to fund e-readers in our classrooms; unfortunately, the start-up cost is huge and purchasing digital books does not prove to be more cost effective in the classroom.  In fact, one would think that companies would have deals where a teacher could purchase one license for a book and use it on many devices, but when you use devices for education, each device is supposed to have its own copy of the book.  That's crazy when you consider that an individual can register up to six devices to one account!

Nook in Education

We need to get our kids reading digitally.  That's where they're doing the majority of their reading anyway, and reading on a screen seems to hold their attention better than paper books.  In terms of the classroom, paper books take up inordinate amounts of space and only last so long with little hands tearing at them.  Digital books make sense.  Companies need to make them more reasonably priced for educators.  They need to make them more convenient for educators.