amazon-feature-education._SL357_I am teaching an e-books module to my Grade 3/4 class. I wanted to do something for National Novel Writing Month, but I lacked time to do a whole novel with them. Then I got the brainstorm to look at e-books with them and write our own—on how to use e-books! Very meta.

We had our first lesson today. I began with a mind map on what an e-book is. They readily grasped the concept, but were a little fuzzy on some of the details For instance, the Cloud was a new concept for them. One of them thought that if my iPad were ever lost or broken, I would lose all my books. Thank goodness we no longer live in those days.

After lunch, I gave them each an iPad and turned them loose in iBooks. It’s not my first choice for a reader app, but it was already on the school iPads, and we have a few test books I had loaded that they could download from iCloud themselves. It saved me having to go in before the lesson and hand-load content for them!

Here are a few things they really liked about their first e-book experience:

  • The tech made reading fun. Many of them have ready access to iPads at home, and they love them. One of the more tentative readers in the bunch was eagerly poring over a graphic novel with her classmate. It was wonderful to see her so engaged with a book.
  • They loved the page turn animation. I let them discover on their own that you can flip the page slowly and see show-through from the other side. That was so neat! One student spend a good ten minutes flipping the pages back and forth to see. Did it still work in night mode? Yes. Did it still work when you made the font big or small or when you zoomed on a picture? Yup. And I was glad to see them explore so fearlessly. I was okay with a bot of monkeying around for the first day!
  • There were some questions about where to get other books and if there were more available. We briefly looked at the store. I cautioned them that the books cost real money, but one of them noted that there were a few which were only 99 cents and that wasn’t much. Smart kids!

And there were some things they didn’t like:

  • One of them had some technical difficulties. She tried to download a book which was graphics-heavy, and our slow server took some time to deliver it. She complained she was wasting all of her technology time, and huffed that with a real book, you could just open it and go. True enough!
  • A few of them also remarked that an e-book isn’t really fair because iPads are quite expensive, and if someone could not afford to get one, they wouldn’t be able to read the books. This is a fair point, especially in an education setting. I showed them some other, cheaper devices, including my Fire Tablet, which you can buy in a six-pack. There happens to be six of them in this class. They immediately suggested that the principal could sell off one of the iPads and get them each their own little tablet!
  • Their homeroom teacher also turned out to be one of those ‘smell of paper’ people, and unfortunately, her attitude was a bit catching. When I did an informal poll at the end of the class, two of them said they liked the iPad better than a book, two weren’t sure, and two said they liked it less, citing the reason that ‘real’ just feel ‘nicer.’ Thanks for that, homeroom teacher!

Next week, I am going to bring in some of my other devices for them to try. And then we are going to start putting together an outline for our e-book project. We will define what an e-book is, list some advantages and disadvantages, and tell our parent community what they need to get started and where they can get some books. The final product will be posted on our school blog for all to see.

It should be a fun month in my technology classes. I will keep you posted!

Image credit: Photo from Amazon site.

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"I’m a journalist, a teacher and an e-book fiend. I work as a French teacher at a K-3 private school. I use drama, music, puppets, props and all manner of tech in my job, and I love it. I enjoy moving between all the classes and having a relationship with each child in the school. Kids are hilarious, and I enjoy watching them grow and learn. My current device of choice for reading is my Amazon Kindle Touch, but I have owned or used devices by Sony, Kobo, Aluratek and others. I also read on my tablet devices using the Kindle app, and I enjoy synching between them, so that I’m always up to date no matter where I am or what I have with me."

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