Saturday, March 25, 2017

Blog Entry VII: EBooks

Technology is always providing us with tons of new educational opportunities. When both education and technology are brought up together I think that the topic of ebooks is something that is thought of quite often. Implementing the usage or creation of ebooks into classroom instruction can prove to be beneficial. 
As a college student two questions come mind when I first think about textbooks: How much does the book cost? And How am I going to get my hands on the book? An option to get an ebook version makes things convenient. Due to being electronic the book can be cheaper and it is always available. Just this semester I had to wait 2 weeks before getting a textbook for one of my classes. By that experience you can tell that the option to not have to wait for a book is very appealing to me. Even in grades k-12 access to ebooks can help lower expenses. 
Ebooks can be used by teachers regardless of their area of curriculum. Not only can you use them for different subjects, but you can also use them in any grade level. Software that creates ebooks also provide a great opportunity to get students interested, promote creativity, and keep them engaged in classroom activities. Ebook creation can be used to create formative and summative assessment, project based learning. There are plenty of ideas that students can use when creating their own ebook. They can create "How to" books (how to build something, how to cook something, a step by step process to solve a problem), "About Me" books, poetry books, both fiction and non-fiction books. Ebooks also provide an opportunity for students to share their work outside of the classroom.  
Whether it's the possibility of including audio, videos, enhancing font size, saving trees, lightening backpacks, getting students more involved, or other unmentioned benefits, ebooks offer a ton of them without hardly any downsides (I personally can't think of any). I think that students would really enjoy getting the opportunity to use and create ebooks. Ebooks are definitely something that all teachers should consider researching and working with. 

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