Group items tagged

About 65 percent of the participants in the pilot said they would not buy another e-reader now if theirs was broken. Almost all the participants said they were interested in following the technology to its next stages, because they think a device that works well in academia would be worth having.

"I found the device difficult to use and not conducive to academic purposes," he said, and added, "But I can see how it can be used for pleasure reading."

What they liked best about the devices was: the battery life, the wireless connection and the portability of the e-reader; the fact that all the course reading was on one device; the ability to search for content; and the legibility of the screen, including the fact it could be read in full sunlight. The top five suggestions students had for improving e-readers were: improving the ability to highlight and annotate PDF files; improving the annotation tools; providing a folder structure to keep similar readings together; improving the highlighting function; and improving the navigation within and between documents on the reader (including having more than one document open at the same time for comparison).

"The Kindle would be better for an academic setting if the PDF format worked more effectively,"

"There would be a greater benefit realized if the devices could develop a better way to deliver the ubiquitous PDF document, which is used by many journals and libraries to deliver documents, and is the common format in which dissertations and theses are published and read by faculty," Temos said. "Some students said they spent a considerable amount of time printing PDF documents during the semester, and hardly ever referred back to them once the semester was over. I don't expect that is unusual."

Parents or members of other partner institutions can log in for a virtual tour through a class project or contribute materials to the environment.

Connected teaching also enables our education system to augment the expertise and competencies of specialized and exceptional educators

One facet of our reading instruction that cannot be overlooked is the importance of teacher readers in building a classroom reading community. According to Morrison, Jacobs, and Swinyard (1999), "perhaps the most influential teacher behavior to influence students' literacy development is personal reading, both in and out of school."

If we don't read, why should our students?

Share your reading life with your students. Show your students what reading adds to your life. If you are reading a nonfiction book at the moment, tell them what you are learning. Pass the children's books you are reading to them when you are done. Describe the funny, sad, or interesting moments in the books you read. When you read something challenging, talk with your students about how you work through difficult text. It will surprise them that you find reading hard at times, too, but choose to read, anyway.

Many students in today's world do not read books outside of school. When they do read, it is text-messages, web pages or homework assignments. For students who did not grow up in homes with books, with adults who read and who read to them, this time to read in school is both necessary and pleasurable. Many of my students need catch-up time when it comes to "hours-in" reading. The 10 minutes at the beginning of each period that I allow my juniors each day equals hours of reading across the months of the school year. My most dedicated readers begin books in the classroom, finish them at home, and return to the classroom/school library to check out new books.