What are eBooks beyond PDFs?
I met with a pair of publishers and former database folks this week to talk about eBooks. Ben asked me, “What is an eBook supposed to be beyond a PDF?”
I thought this was a great (but hard to answer) question. In School LibraryLand, we’ve had lots of discussion about the value of audio books, but I haven’t had a single conversation on text-based eBooks and how they’re being used in elementary school libraries.
In our discussions, I brought up the International Children’s Digital Library as one example of high-quality digital books. Of course, there’s also TumbleBooks … but I keep feeling like there’s more out there that we haven’t talked about yet.
We also talked about the reality that print books remain a cost-effective, one-time investment that’s easily portable, comes in a full range of reading levels, doesn’t break the bank if lost or damaged, and easily shared.
Has anybody had this discussion about elementary eBooks yet? We’d love to know! (And anything else you’d like us to know about eBooks as well!)
February 19th, 2010 at 5:33 pm
Two elementary sites are wonderful “ebook” sites -
Scholastic’s BookFlix.com
and
PebbleGo.com (Capstone Publishing)
Both are subscription databases, more than e-books, but the most important thing to me is the audio text and the fact that the sites highlight words as they are spoken. This really increases student retention in my view.
Our district also subscribes to the Pearson Successnet science curriculum, and science leveled readers are provided along with that subscription. They are accessible on line through a teacher’s password, and the audio text is very helpful.
February 21st, 2010 at 2:19 pm
In my district we’re discussing purchasing a few titles that are frequently used by teachers to support their curriculum. Think of them as a digi-BigBook. Our library system now allows the patron to return it when finished using it making the e-book available multiple times in the same day. They are never lost or damaged as they are accessed from the vendor’s server not ours, can zoom in/out, be seen by many via a digi-projector, available when away from the school building, and the price typically is reasonable - between that of a hard cover and paperback. If cataloged at the district level, they can be checked out and used across the entire district at the moment of need rather than wait for a print copy to be delivered via our usual interloan process.
BTW - The new 7th edition of the MLA Handbook includes access to the Web edition of the handbook - an e-book for instructional use by teachers and librarians.