Hello Hello! This week's discussion is on the topic of ebook use in the classroom. Prior to my research, I was skeptical of ebook's success in education. I have my students utilize computers and the internet all the time to research and learn about various topics. They view slide shows, videos and all sorts of multimedia presentations, but many of my students still have a difficult time engaging productively with the content I provide them. Jon Smith, a special educator from Alliance, OH, really changed my view on the potential of ebooks in the classroom with the video he posted on Presentain here. Being a special educator myself, I really connected with what Smith said about the negative attitude in his class in regards to writing. Any time my students are asked to write more than a sentence or two, they protest that I am asking them to do too much! Smith had many of the same issues that I have with my children, but explains that students in the digital age are used to producing content for a large audience via social media and the internet. These kids are used to receiving instant feedback and gratification from their peers online, so of course they balk at the idea of putting in effort to perform for an audience of one, you, the teacher!
Ebooks provide students with opportunities to collaborate creatively on work that they can easily share and take pride in, which is a unique opportunity for young people to have. By introducing students to ebook publishing, their audience has worldwide potential! Using technology to create unique work that can be shared with the world is motivating for many young people today, and I am encouraged to get to try ebook creation in my own classroom to see how my students respond to the possibilities.
There are many possibilities for integrating ebooks into the classroom effectively. I love that when Smith was confronted by his superior about covering standards in his class, he said that he had hi lighted over 70 standards that his ebook lesson covered in just two weeks! Ebooks seem to fit very well in the special educational settings, as Smith has shown. Children can create books to help them learn important social skills, or to pre-teach appropriate behavior for various settings. Ebooks can also be utilized to summarize a semester or a year of learning, an activity that I had reserved for poster creation in the past. I love how Smith used the book sales after the book was published to teach graphing in his special education class as well. During my children's literature class, I learned that picture books can be excellent learning tools when paired with more advanced topics. However, I would also propose that students might get something out of creating their own picture book to tell a story about a topic they are learning about in any subject! Say students are learning about the civil war. They could create a picture book using ebooks that illustrates the life of a child growing up during the civil war!
Going forward, I would love to integrate ebook creation into my own classroom, but I do have a few hurdles to cross before doing so. First of all, I do not have access to a lot of computers at my school, and I do not have access to any apple products, such as an iPad. iPads are excellent tools for creating ebooks. They can be used to organize ideas, take pictures, write and capture video. I think that it will be challenging to create engaging multimedia content without a creative tool like an iPad. That being said, I am not discouraged! I will find a way for my children to access this awesome technology in the classroom so that they can share their ideas and creations with a worldwide audience. It is just going to require some patience and creativity on my part!
No comments:
Post a Comment