Students use Kindles for literature circles - Mexico, MO - Mexico Ledger: "Reading has a whole new look in the eighth grade English classes of Mrs. Stacey Ellison and Mrs. Julie Duncan. A generous grant from the A+ for Mexico Schools foundation provided 50 Kindle electronic readers, which has introduced a new approach to reading in the classroom."
'via Blog this'
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Kindles go to school in a big way this month | TeleRead: News and views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics
Kindles go to school in a big way this month | TeleRead: News and views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics: "ARTICLES IN THE LAST WEEK ABOUT KINDLES IN SCHOOLS"
'via Blog this'
'via Blog this'
10 Tips for Kindle in the Classroom | Getting Smart
10 Tips for Kindle in the Classroom | Getting Smart: "Give each Kindle a unique name or barcode so that you can catalog and identify it.
Have students practice using the dictionary feature to look up words.
Have students learn how to highlight important parts of the book that they can extract or share with others."
'via Blog this'
Have students practice using the dictionary feature to look up words.
Have students learn how to highlight important parts of the book that they can extract or share with others."
'via Blog this'
Monday, February 6, 2012
Positive feedback on Kindles in an 8th grade class
Kathy Parker isn't shy about embracing new technology. With 33 years' experience as a school librarian for Seneca (IL) Grade School, she's on Twitter (@MariansLibrary) and reads on a Kindle—an activity she now shares with many of her seventh and eighth graders who use the Amazon ereading devices in a language arts program that Parker helped launch last year. "Basically, I was fascinated with the Kindles themselves," says Parker, who approached her principal in 2009 about purchasing the devices for school. "So we started a committee, bought six Kindles and downloaded some titles that summer." By the fall, seventh and eighth graders were sharing 18 devices and reading novels, ranging from Gary Schmidt's The Wednesday Wars (Clarion, 2007) to Lisa Graff's The Things About Georgie (HarperCollins, 2007), for class assignments. Within six months, older students were bringing the devices home. The pilot program, which cost about $2,800, proved so successful that after a presentation to the Board of Education in December, Seneca CCSD 170 Superintendent Eric Misener helped secure funds to buy Kindles for every eighth-grade student, along with enough devices for one seventh-grade class to use this year. Parker says she received a lot of support from her Twitter followers, especially Will DeLamater, who runs the Web site EduKindle. He helped alert others to Parker's program, including M-Edge Accessories, which is donating covers for all the Kindles. Parker herself will purchase titles out of her budget—which goes further as each book can be downloaded onto six devices for one fee. She says it's well worth the investment as she's seen firsthand how students respond to being able to change fonts, using the text-to-speech feature, and even having the devices display what percentage of the book they've completed. "The bottom line for me is the Kindles have generated a love of reading among those students who would not have otherwise picked up a book," she says.—L. B.
Rekindling the fire: using Kindles for literacy in the classroom | Literacy Learning: The Middle Years | Find Articles
Rekindling the fire: using Kindles for literacy in the classroom | Literacy Learning: The Middle Years | Find Articles: The National Capital Centre for Literacy Research (NCCLR) works with disengaged and struggling readers enrolled in U-CAN READ: Literacy Intervention Years 3-10 to support them attain literacy success and become motivated, engaged readers. U-CAN READ: Literacy Intervention Years 3-10 is a joint project with the ACT Department of Education. It is a collaborative parent education program that assists parents/carers to support their children struggling with reading. The Centre is research-based and is focused on making use of technology to re-engage students in reading. Technology includes Kindles, iPads, computers, digital cameras and iPods. This paper outlines the features of the Kindle and promotes its use in the classroom as a motivator for literacy enhancement.
Good article about pitfalls of Kindle in Classrom
Kindling a Course - Brainstorm - The Chronicle of Higher Education
Kindling a Course
December 21, 2009, 10:51 am
By Stan Katz
As some readers of this blog will recall, my fall-term undergraduate course in the Woodrow Wilson School is one of a small number of Princeton University courses using the Amazon Kindle device for course reading assignments. Each of the 19 students enrolled in “Civil Society and Public Policy” was given a Kindle DX, the large-screen version of the e-book reader, and all of the books assigned were provided free of cost as Kindle files. The reading assigned in this course is probably somewhat unusual, since all of the assignments are either monographs or chapters from book-length collections of essays. This meant that each student was given 15 complete e-books, since the entire book was provided even if only one chapter was assigned reading. In the past, I have asked the students to purchase most of these books, while the separate essays were provided in either a course pack or (more recently) as e-reserve material.
Kindle in the Classroom - eBook Educators Group
Kindle in the Classroom - eBook Educators Group: CK12.org
Interesting site for people implementing a classroom Kindle program.
Interesting site for people implementing a classroom Kindle program.
9 problems with using kindle in the classroom - bighow news
9 problems with using kindle in the classroom - bighow news
A Princeton Univesity Professor is not satisfied with the Kindle. Undergraduate students for a course on "Civil Society and Public Policy" are using Kindle DX, with 15 e-books for the course preloaded on the device under a pilot project where the university wants to know whether the students take less printout of reading matter than before.. After the students had been using the Kidle for some while, the professor found the Kindle did not quite suit his seminar style of teaching. He nails the Kindle problem explicitly: text is hard to mark as students are used to with normal textbooks. A quick rundown of the problems with kindle in the classroom:
1. Klndle provides only two tones, making it difficlut to highlight the text.
2. The process to underline selected passages is complicated.
3. Annotation does not equal the ease of highlight text and reading later for emphasis.
4. Small keyboard makes annotaion, note making a task.
5. There are no page numbers in Kindle texts, having been replaced by “location numbers,” , demanding another change in one's usage behavior.
6. Transferring annotations to the PC version is hard.
7. Books are being marked up by textbook publishers.
8. New pages load slowly on the new Kindle - only one page loads at a time - unlike PDF which open full on our machines.
9. Students were not satisfied with sound-reading capabilities of the Kindle.
However, the Professor reports about the delight of having all your books in one place, which you can carry with you anywhere you go.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)