With the holiday season upon us, and the
commercials and advertisements bombarding viewers, I can’t help but think about
E-readers for the classroom. I could remember, back in high school, in my class
of 20 plus students, five students would always be with out a book. My teacher
would have to scramble to get those five students a book before we were too
deep within said book and the poor students would be lost. So why not have
student’s get/be given e-readers?
With the tiny budgets school have, and the
lack of funding we are getting, should we scrap the books and give our students
e-readers instead? They e-readers would be packed with text books and language
arts books that wont have missing pages or ripped covered that they will not be
charged for, even though they weren’t the ones who ripped it. While this seems
like a good idea, I can’t imagine it would ever work out, without some kind of
system.
Students, especially in high school, are
clumsy, careless, and forgetful. So if their e-reader breaks, they should then
have to pay out of pocket to get another one. This would teach them to be
responsible with their work, grades, and their technology. Having e-readers
would allow students to always have the information at their finger tips, to
not flip back and fourth between the pages of heavy text books. To be able to
find that one quote that they need for an essay. While this would be extremely
beneficial, it would be a drastic change in the school system—to go from text
in every class, to a completely text less school. Also, the added benefit for
students would be the reduced backpack weight. Suddenly with out five heavy
textbooks and the two to three language arts books, the back pack would be extremely
lightweight!
Amanda, this post actually made me change a prior opinion of mine that I had about E-readers! I personally have never liked to read, however I always said that I think it is sad that E-readers are replacing old fashioned print books! It's sad to see bookstores not doing as well because of these E-readers where anyone can download a whole bunch of books on one device. Although I have had this opinion, after reading this post, I think that having E-readers in the classroom would actually be a great idea! With E-readers students will not only not have to worry about getting a book that is colored in, or having pages ripped out, but think about how in high school we were always forced to buy "book sox" for our books to keep them in perfect condition, With E-readers this wouldnt be necessary! I think that if schools have the budget to do so, this is a wonderful idea! They can have the E-readers come with a protective case that you would get for an iPad or iPod and then the students will have less to worry about then using an old fashioned book!
ReplyDeleteAs you were saying to provide students with an E-reader, I can relate to this because in my high school all students and faculty were given their own Mac Laptop for the school year. After a few years of adjusting to the change, the district and administration worked out all of the small issues and the overall change is very beneficial for the students. Students at my school are provided with cases that the laptops are to be carried in and used as protection against damage, there are restrictions on the internet to limit the use of the laptops to educational purposes, and there is a tracker on the computers which allows the laptop to be tracked if it was stolen. If any damages occur to a student’s laptop, the student is responsible for the paying for the cost of repairs after the insurance. The laptops in school were really a great experience and an amazing learning tool. Just like the laptop policies, a school can do a related agreement with an E-reader. It really enhanced my high school experience, and continues to effect students especially as technology continuously becomes such a large part of society.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great post.
ReplyDeleteI wrote about E-Readers earlier in the semester as well. I think they are truly wonderful tools. The newest ones have wonderful highlighting and note-taking abilities along with cheaper prices than most hardcopy books. However, you bring up a good point, they're expensive. In the school district I teach in, the schools hardly have enough money for computers in the classroom, let a lone E-readers. However, with the durability of E-Readers and the cheaper prices of text, I do think that one day the majority of classwork will happen on an E-reader or tablet of some sort. And while it's hard to replace a good old-fashioned book, E-readers would have a great impact on education.
Great article once again!
I really agree with this post. I also want to be an English teacher so I can totally relate. When I was in high school, they did not have enough books for every student, so the teachers could never teach the same books at the same time! E-readers definitely would have helped, but like you said, there would have to be some type of system for it to properly work.
ReplyDeleteI also have posted on this topic. I couldn't agree more with many of your points. E-readers allow for complete access to any and all canonical text read in school. My only fear is your statement of becoming completely paperless. I love the actual copy of a book. I love being able to hold the book. The act of turning the pages strikes my wanting to continue. I may go insane if an entire school system went paperless. I couldn't imagine a class without any copies of books, Though I strongly agree that E-readers are needed
ReplyDelete