eBooks

Those teacher workshop days are monumentally important, even the days when the teachers want to be home on Winter Break. While Winter Break started for students on Thursday December 22, teachers came to school for various meetings, trainings, and work. One of our trainings was about two opportunities to connect students to eBooks.

This week, Mrs. Vickers was able to hook up our students to her app, Open eBooks. It is a library that allows students to check out (download) ten books at a time through a connection to the New York Public Library. There are so many titles that we have IN our libraries, new and old favorites.

Meanwhile, Ms. Leom, with the help of her new afternoon high school helper, Lauryn, helped set students in both classes up with Epic books. For educators, the access to the eBooks are free. Here students can access thousands of titles and topics. Again, all "real" books in electronic format. This e-book option, available on-line and in an app has audio opportunities, quizzes, and more. Ms. Leom or Mr. Grenigner can log on and see who is just "flipping pages" (the term used) or reading. It tells the number of books and amount of time spent reading. This is the eBooks that Ms. Leom is using most this week, so it is what she is most familiar with for the time being. There is a free 30-day trial for families who would like to visit Epic! and experience the magic. Please contact Ms. Leom if you are interested. She would need to input a parent email to link the account, so students could read the same book at school and home.

The BEST part of these new apps, all students want to do, is to sit around and read. Really. It is music to a reading teacher's ears.