E-books in The Classroom

This week’s topic was about e-books. I'll be the first to admit that I usually am not the most engaged viewer of the weekly topic videos, but this one was truly awesome, for lack of a more accurate word. I’ll also be the first to admit I wasn’t sure how I felt about e-books in the classroom – the technology to make them could be expensive if you’re using iPads, younger students might have a hard time with the technology, etc. – but this week’s topic video make me do a complete 180. Jon Smith’s e-books he has made with his classes are phenomenal. He turned kids that hated school into the biggest fans of writing, which is so inspiring.

In the Topic video this week and in the two articles we read about Smith’s special education classroom, it was amazing to me how his students didn’t want anything to do with writing, and as soon as they started writing books, they couldn’t stop. I believe students publishing books for the world to read is definitely a great motivator, and could engage even the most unwilling of children once positive feedback starts coming their way from strangers in the form of downloads. You can involve them for every part of the writing process for anything like John did with his class – brainstorm some ideas, write a rough draft, edit, repeat until the book or whatever you’re writing is done and it’s published. This could be integrated for almost any subject type. Write a book about math like Smith’s school did, or a science book like the kindergarten class did about bats. It could be a game changer for exciting the students, and making them really loving their work.

Using e-books could be beneficial in any classroom. I definitely am seeing a place for it in my future classrooms. I’m going to be teaching early childhood, and have always struggled thinking about how to integrate technology into a classroom of such young children. This struggle was quelled by Smith’s website with all of his e-books, however. There were many books by young classes about things such as shapes, animals, and food. I don’t have a Mac or iPad (though this video about Book Creator for the iPad is tempting me to the thought of getting an iPad), so I was unable to access it, but one of the books description said they took pictures then wrote a sentence about that picture using capital letters and periods. Even with the youngest children I could use books to help with grasping concepts like that. The main consideration I’ll have to make is if what I’m doing is truly helpful to my students, or if I’m using technology just to use technology. I’ll have to ensure a healthy balance of different ways to teach things and not overdue the e-books that I’m currently so thrilled about the concept of. Another issue is just parents not being sure about their children being on the internet at such a young age, which is something that can hopefully be solved with internet safety talk and permission slips.

           

The most striking thing about Smith’s presentation to me was the fact that over the last two and a half years, his e-books had close to 25,000 downloads, and possibly exceeding that since the topic video was recorded. Those 25,000 downloads have been in al but three countries that iTunes sells to. I know that in this class that we constantly are talking about sharing worldwide, but hearing that figure made me realize it is truly worldwide. Almost every country that these books can be downloaded in has downloaded at least one. That’s incredible, and I’m sure young students would think so even more than I do. I’m thrilled about the possibilities that this presents.