Tablets and e-books in

education  

Dawn R. Nelson
Osseo Area Schools, MN

Rita H. Oates, Ph.D.

Vice President, Education, ePals, Inc.
 Basic principles
 For whom is the content being
developed?
 What should the learner be able to do
after interacting with the content?
 What methods, activities and resources
should you use?
 How will you know if you were
successful? Or that learning occurred?
Middle school for girls,
Miami
 Learner characteristics
 Academic background: previous academic
experience or exposure to the topic
 Personal or social characteristics: Age,
attitude, work experience, how the content
relates to one’s life.
 Characteristics of the non-conventional
learner: Culturally diverse learners, primary
language, learners with disabilities.
 Learning styles, the existing conditions
necessary for an individual to learn.
 Motivation of the learner: the student
seeking grades, credit, self-improvement,
salary or status advancement.
 Critical Success Factor
 Teacher attitude
 Single biggest predictor of
student learning in
multiple studies of
technology-enhanced
education
 Teachers who believe their
students will learn by using
something --have students
who do learn more than
other teachers using the
same materials
 Steps in the Instructional
Design Process
 Assess the situation:
 Normative needs (test scores, grades, prerequisites)
 Comparative needs (learning styles)
 Expressed needs (feedback of students and other peers)
 Performance Assessment (Feedback from previous students regarding
previous instruction. Answers the question: Are the goals of teaching being
met?) Choose a design model to follow or design your own using established
instructional principles.
 State the Goal: Think about why you are having students write
papers, discuss certain topics; reason why you are assigning certain
topics and tasks. Articulate this in some way to your students.
 Select Appropriate Delivery Medium: Is multimedia appropriate?
Why use this medium? How will it help enhance your efforts to meet
your learning objectives?
 Implementation: What help/support do I need? Do learners need?
 Evaluation and Revision

 ADDIE model: analysis, design, development,

implementation and evaluation
New Tools, New
Opportunities

Student engagement
Collaboration
Multiple tools
 Platform to engage
students
 http://heinle.epals.com
 Users of ELL textbook can practice
English with worldwide community of
learners through project-based
learning

Similar community: International

Baccalaureate http://ibo.epals.com
 User-created, digital
content
 Blogs
 Podcasts
 eBooks or e-books
 Wikis

 And what else?

 Authors….www.teachingbooks.net
 Self-publishing on the web
 New forms to combine all of the above
 Scholarly research on
ePublishing
 Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography (SEPB) is
available at:
http://www.digital-scholarship.org/sepb/sepb.html
 Published by the University of Houston Libraries from 1996
to 2006 by Charles W. Bailey, Jr.
 Presented selected English-language articles, books and
other printed and electronic sources useful in
understanding scholarly electronic publishing efforts
on the Internet.
 Most sources published between 1990 and 2006 plus a few
key sources published before 1990. Where possible, links
were provided to sources that were freely available on the
Internet. An archive of versions 1 to 64 of SEPB is available
at: http://epress.lib.uh.edu/sepb/sepb.html
 Resources: Devices to
read on
 Microsoft Reader
 Sony Reader
 Amazon’s Kindle
 iTouch
 Nook (B&N)
 Cell phones??
 More to come
 Children’s Literature
 Exposure to ebooks
 Online Children’s Classics
 Internet Public Library
 Shareware eBooks.com
 Read aloud using great picture books from many lands
 International Children's Digital Library
 Multicultural literature holdings
 Creation of an original children’s book,
with option to create an ebook
 DeskTop
Author - eBook Software, Brochure Software
 Tumblebooks www.tumblebooks.com
 Language Arts
 Literature Circles
 Access to classics and award-winning
books and less expensive new books
 Internet Public Library
 Shareware eBooks.com
 World Wide School Library
 Dramas and scripts
 Google books (PDF of 1,875 resource!)
 Audio Books
 www.audible.com
 mp3 books
 E-book Favorites
 Mighty Books
 Stories Written by Kids
 Story Place
 Tumblebooks (English, Spanish,
French)
 Raz Kids
 Hear the book
 Read it and record own voice
 Online stories
 Children's stories by category
 Children's Storybooks Online -
Stories for Kids of All Ages
 ESL Resources eBooks
 Hans Christian Andersen Fairy
Tales and Stories
 Ebook on YouTube presentation
 Books and student-
produced video
 Info on books and authors, book reports:
 SchoolTube
 TeacherTube

 Can be linked to your school website

 Retelling classic tales, make up own stories

 Post work on www.epals.com
 View work from around world
Book Reports in New
Formats
 Graduate Courses
 E texts vs. print textbooks
 Less expensive or free
 Computer based
 Greater flexibility re: curriculum development
 Students still tend to print out the e texts,
put them in a notebook, and bring them to
class
 Challenge when “page numbers” differ
depending on printing method (HTML, from
Word, etc.)
 Resources
 Online Copyright Handbook
 E-article on E books and young people
 Digital Book 2008
 Presentations at E books in Education Confere
 Using Electronic Texts as the Course Textbook
 Literature Circles Through Technology
by Terence Cavanaugh
 The Digital Reader: Using E books in
K-12 Education by Terence
Cavanaugh
 www.iste.org to purchase
 Podcasts
 Lit2Go from UCF; #1 at iTunes
University
 Foreign language practice
 Music and music history
 Drama (learn parts)
 Teacher training
 Listen to books, articles, news
 And….?
Audio books to download
 Librivox
 Goal: to make all public domain books
available as free audiobooks. (texts from
Project Gutenburg)
 Titles available: 100 books and 200+
shorter works, including poems, short
stories, speeches
 Founded in 2005; volunteer readers
 www.librivox.org
Audio books to download
 Literalsystems
 ''We endeavor to create a great listening
experience for our audience free of
charge, and with no commercial
advertising.''
 Titles available: 23 novels and short
stories, 19 poems, 9 nonfiction works;
founded 2003.
 www.literalsystems.org
Audio books to download
 The Spoken Alexandria Project
 ''To build an audiobook equivalent of
Project Gutenberg one text at a time.''
 Titles available: 5 novels, 15 nonfiction
works and 1 poem; founded 2004.
 www.spokenalex.org

 More recordings are available for 25

cents to $8 at a sister site:
www.telltaleweekly.org
 ePublishing and
Collaborating
 Social networking
 Self-publishing on the web
 Online photo sharing
 Social bookmarking
 New forms combining “all of the above”
 What are you doing with
ePublishing?
Audience invited to share ideas and
thoughts!
 Further information
 Dawn Nelson
 dawnn82@gmail.com
 Twitter: @dawnrnelson

 Dr. Rita Oates, ritaoates@aol.com

 roates@corp.epals.com
 Twitter: @ritaoates

 Additional information and examples posted at:

 www.scribd.com