Rationale for E-Readers in the classroom

E-Reader Pilot

Waunakee Community High School

2011-2012

Rationale—Why we are doing an e-reader pilot:

E-readers, along with applications that allow for reading books on other portable devices, are now commonplace in our society. Beyond individual consumers, e-readers have also become business and educational tools. Their portability, long battery life, large storage capacity, and ability to electronically search, highlight, and annotate text make compelling reasons for their use in high school classes.

It is an educational institution’s duty to promote reading and to help students read critically. In a world of one-line news feeds, brief blog entries, and witty Facebook banter—all important ways to communicate—students must maintain and develop their ability to read longer texts. The continual decline in how much society reads along with trends in how books are sold (including the recent, unfortunate demise of Borders Books) suggest we cannot miss the opportunity to reach students through electronic text. Furthermore, e-readers are equipped with tools that help readers critically engage with the text as never before.

With an e-reader, one can easily carry a year's worth or more of course readings in a lightweight device, can search for content, and can annotate, bookmark, or highlight readings. The e-reader pilot at Waunakee Community High School seeks to target the types of readings that will leverage these tools and facilitate deep, analytical thinking.

Goals—What we hope to achieve in the pilot:

• That there would be no sacrifice in the classroom experience owing to the intervention of technology. Readings must be delivered with the same clarity as those presented in other delivery formats, e.g. selections of books on shelf reserve, PDF files delivered through class websites, and photocopies readings presented to students in class.
•  That the use of e-readers improves students’ interaction with the text. E-readers can make an entire course's readings available for study, citation, and precept discussions. The contents of the e-reader can be searched, bookmarked, highlighted and annotated. The retrieval of information is extremely flexible.
• That the curiosity and desire to read increases. While the e-readers will be password-protected to prevent students from purchasing titles, the devises will still allow students to search the Barnes and Noble online store for most popular titles, titles by genre, suggested reading based on titles already loaded, etc. Furthermore, students may loan books to each other (even to others who are not a part of this pilot), borrow books from public libraries through Overdrive, and download endless free books from a variety of online sites such as Project Gutenberg.
• That both the unique strengths of current e-readers be explored and their weaknesses be identified. Current devices on the market have the ability to deliver daily periodicals, updates on RSS feeds, and almost instant access to hundreds of thousands of books. In addition to other features listed above, they allow notes and excerpts to be shared from device to device and access to Wikipedia and Google. Will the convenience of these features be more useful than the physical qualities of a print book? Will they be of any advantage to text analysis and critical thinking? Does our institutional set-up of these devices limit their effectiveness in any way? Those are questions we would like to investigate.

Devices—The type of e-readers we are using:

After teachers tested a Kindle and a Nook during Spring 2011, the Nook seemed to provide the most functionality considering the types of text to be included and how students tend to interact with portable electronic devices. As a result, WCSD purchased 25 Nook Simple Touches 5 Nook Colors.

Students involved in the pilot will each be assigned a Nook Simple Touch and expected to care for the devices in and out of the classroom. The Nook Colors will be for in-class use only, under care of the classroom teachers. Students will not be able to take Nook Colors out of the classroom.

Participants—Those who will pilot the devices

During the fall semester, 2011-2012, one section of Modern Literature students- will use the e-readers. Modern Literature is an elective English class for juniors and seniors and includes students with a range of academic ability. There will also be two other sections of Modern Literature without e-readers as a means of comparison. During the spring semester, 2012, one section of Advanced Placement Literature students will use the e-readers. This is also an elective English class, but is usually taken by college-bound, high achieving seniors. There will also be two other sections of Advanced Placement Literature without e-readers as a means of comparison.