“Electronic books, with their text-to-speech capabilities, animation, and interactivity can boost the confidence of students with disabilities, and encourage their fluency, comprehension, and language skills” (Rhodes & Milby, 2007).
This quote came from a journal article by Rhodes and Milby in the The Reading Teacher. I believe, just the idea of having to look at a screen peaks students’ interest – it comes with the technological age that we are in. It is why the use of e-books is having so much success in classrooms. This was the case of one Special Education Teacher, Brittany Dyer. Read her contribution on http://www.slideshare.net/lilbritbabe10/ebooks-335962559625
Because of the difficulty of getting students to read on their own, her classes often consisted of her reading aloud while the students “follow” in their books or a student may volunteer to read. She reached a point of frustration: “I was getting tired of telling kids to pick up their books!” Sounds familiar? I’m sure it does. She eventually, and quite accidentally, came across an electronic version of another novel she intended to read to her class. At the touch of a button she downloaded energy, excitement and interest into her class.
Several points came to the fore about the advantages of e-books, I’ll highlight a few:
- enhances student confidence
- interactive activities (Rhodes & Milby, 2007)
- brings lessons to life
- connects technology to learning
From our own ideas and readings on e-books do you think that e-books will become the future of reading? What say you?
The articles below give some useful and interesting information on e-books and the use of technology in the classroom that I think may be beneficial to us all.
Rhodes, J. A., & Milby, T. M. (2007). Teacher-created electronic books: integrating technology
to support readers with disabilities [Electronic version]. The Reading Teacher, 61, 255-259.
http://blog.weber.k12.ut.us/jreeve/some-articles-about-technology-in-education/
http://www.slideshare.net/lilbritbabe10/ebooks-3359625
Morrison, K. (2007). Implementation of assistive computer technology: A model for school
systems [Electronic version]. International Journal of Special Education, 22, 83-95.
It is inevitable. Ebooks would indeed become the future of reading because of the many advantages that you have listed above and I believe in the next few years many more advantages would be added to the list. Although there are some skeptics about the use of ebooks it cannot be denied that everything is becoming digital so why stop at books?
ReplyDeleteAs Caverly et al. stated in the article "Techtalk: Web 2.0, Blogs and Developmental Education", the students are comfortable with the technology. Angela, their interests are indeed peaked because they are on "home grounds". As I read the quote with which you began my mind immediately went to the struggling readers, and more precisely two struggling readers in my class. They are both boys and I believe that they would enjoy working with the ebooks. The future is bright because ebooks are lighting the way. Therefore "e" can also refer to enlightenment.
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