Chapter 5: Sites and Selection Criteria for Ebooks

This weeks module is chapter 5 which discusses about the different types of digital books. For example, it mentions e-Books and websites where it offers students to enhance their reading skills. When students are being exposed to e-Books it can be beneficial because children can be engaged with the text in a fun and informative way.

In the chapter, there are two main specific categories that the book talks about. The first one is the online read-aloud and the second one is the interactive story books. In the book, the book shows an example of a online read-aloud website called Storyline Online. Once you go on the website, there are many different types of books for children. What is very interesting when using this website is that famous actors/actresses are reading to you and when looking at the video the illustrations of the book come to life in a way. I did an internship at a school 2 semesters ago and the teacher had used this website when the children were going "book shopping." Every Mondays, the children would come back from recess and the teacher would put a story on the projector and they would watch the video while getting read to while getting their new books. When I read this piece of the chapter, I knew about this website and it surprised me that I would see it again. The other piece that the book talks about is the interactive storybooks which allows the students to add graphics, sounds, videos, and other forms of animation to a reading instead of just holding the page and reading a standard printed text. I feel like both reading the story through a website and reading it in standard print has both pros and cons. For having the animation, children will have a better gist of the story since it is coming to life on the website then trying to imagine it in your head what is going on in the story.

When reading these chapters, I imagine myself using these techniques in my classroom. As I mentioned before with the Storyline Online, I planned to use this in my classroom and to use the standard print technique. I want students to understand both ways because I don't want students to loose interest in reading printed books.