Your e-reading and e-writing suggestions?
Wednesday, January 7, 2009 at 11:25AM
From my inbox....
I’m a teacher-librarian at a 9-12 school of 1500 students. We are in a brand new building and are moderately rich in new technology. For example, every classroom is equipped with an integrated AV bundle that includes an LCD projector, a document camera, a DVD/VCR and enhanced sound. Our entire building has wireless access, and we have 5 roving carts of laptops (30 each) available for use in classrooms and 2 computer labs in the library. So there are a lot of computers, but not one-to-one, daily access.
I’m working with one of our teachers who is applying for a $10,000 technology grant in order to set up a “digital reading/writing workshop” for her 9th-grade Language Arts class. I’ve been talking to her about your presentation and the info you shared about e-books, mini computers, Kindles, etc. We are envisioning some sort of personal technology that would motivate and engage students as well as impact their reading and writing skills. But, although $10,000 is nothing to sniff at, it won’t go a long way when it comes to technology spending.
So, the question is: If you had $10,000 to spend on a single classroom, and you wanted to use it to get students more engaged in their reading and writing, how would you spend the money?
My off-the-cuff response is below, but I promised to share this writers question with Blue Skunk readers for their advice to the writer.
If this were just a reading project, I’d be tempted to suggest iPods as a major part of the grant. The e-book readers are quite good and the availability of e-books (through Project Gutenberg and other free sources) is actually better than that for the Kindle. But iPods are not much as a writing device – at least in my experience.
Since this is also a writing project, for hardware I would investigate a NetBook of some type <http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/columnists/johnson/johnson031.shtml>. Good e-book readers are available for them and you'd have a better machine for writing/composing.
In your grant, please do not neglect any costs associated with the teacher’s own personal need to learn and explore this sort of writing environment, any necessary network connectivity (additional wireless access, another network switch, etc.), and any subscription to commercial e-books or a shared writing space (although both can be found that are free).
Good luck and let me know what you wind up doing!
OK, readers. How would YOU spend $10K to improve reading and writing in a classroom?
Reader Comments (6)
Make sure you need portability before you pay for it. Otherwise you can put in either thin clients or inexpensive commodity PC's (ideally running Linux) with good screens. In particular, the thin clients have no moving parts, low power consumption, essentially no marginal support costs (beyond the server), and should last more or less forever (in technology terms). Look at the Indiana inACCESS model in Indiana. It has been very successful with low-cost 1-to-1 English classroom deployments statewide.
Also, how many hours a week does it take you to maintain five laptop carts?
Oh, also, in the English classrooms the drawbacks of thin clients, like tricky support for Flash video and sound should be relatively unimportant.
Here's a thought, and I hope it's not misinterpreted as snide.
If you're outfitting a single room, make it comfortable. Decent furniture lasts longer than an iPod, and decent lighting is not cheap either.
Buy real desks and real sofas and incandescent lamps (yeah, I know, no longer acceptable, but at least there's no mercury to worry about).
I'd also spend a few bucks on magazines, graphic novels, stamps (postage and otherwise), pens, pencils, and some whimsical stuff.
Not sure if any of that qualifies as digital, but I'm not sure what digital means.
We're testing iPod Touches in a 5th grade classroom right now. Students are writing using our web based email and the drafts folder. When finished, they copy/paste the draft into word to finish.
I would look at the Touches over a netbook. They're cheaper, more portable, and should last the whole day (depending on how much wifi you're using). Twenty five touches will cost less than $5,750.
My students and I were talking about Kindles the other day after reaching Asimov's The Fun They Had. I'd love to have 25 Kindles and the money to download the books we read. We generally need "new" books, parents usually have to buy them. I don't know what I'd spend the writing money on, I'd have to think about that. I've been really happy with how blogging has increased authentic writing---but that doesn't cost $10,000.
How about money for writers' visits. Kate DiCamillo was in one of our district's 6th grade classrooms yesterday. That would sure inspire me!!
HI Tom,
All good points. I jumped to the conclusion that she wanted portable solutions. I don’t see reading at computer terminals as being very desirable.
Thanks for commenting,
Doug
Hi Michael,
Certainly seems to be the Barnes & Noble approach to increasing interest in reading. I am guessing your ideas would increasing reading more than most technologies!
Thanks for the comment,
Doug
Thanks, Ryan. Good luck with your experiment. I know I love my Touch – just not for writing!
Doug
Hi Nancy,
Like Michael’s suggestion above, your idea for an author visit might get better results than all the plastic and silicon around!
I like my Kindle, but just can’t figure out a good way to economically use it in a school setting. My understanding is that only 6 Kindles can be tied to a single account. So if the school buys a book, only six devices will have access to it. I am hoping we will see a Kindle-like device that can be used with multiple ebook formats that don’t have DRM schemes as a part of them.
All the best,
Doug