Week 8 PLN

This week in my Principal Technologies class, we got to experience a live chat and learn about a teacher that incorporated Ebooks into his classroom. Mr. Smith decided to use this tactic of ebooks to motivate his students to learn different literacy skills while incorporating technology. As a society, we are in a global age of sharing our work through social media. Mr. Smith started this project called "The World Is My Audience" where he shared and sold the student's Ebooks. Multiple teachers are starting to use this tactic throughout their classrooms to reach and motivate their students. For example, Mrs. Gibbon's class created a Christmas book that helped them with their reading and writing skills. Her special education students also gained enough confidence by creating this story that they went to a preschool to read to the preschoolers.

Ebooks can be incorporated into special education classrooms by helping develop motivation and excitement for learning. A speech pathologist contacted Jon Smith about his success using Book Creator to help her reach her students. The autistic students were having difficulty with social skills, so by using book creator they created inactive books to help them with these skills. Overall, the results were priceless, her class became so engaged and always wanted more ways to learn more.

There are various resources out there to help educators and students incorporate Ebooks into their everyday learning through iPads and Androids. Ebooks allows teachers and students to share their work globally. This is really directing education into a virtual classroom. According to E-Books and TPACK article, "...using e-books, children tend to more naturally investigate words, images, and interactive, tap-to-hear word pronunciations, built-in dictionaries, definitions, games, and puzzles". Using TPACK with Ebooks allows an educator to incorporate all three of these aspects within Ebooks. Ebooks also have scaffolding throughout it to help develop new literacy skills for young children. Ebooks is a vast and exciting thing to incorporate into a classroom. Definitely a tool that I will be using to help go beyond the standard requirements of teaching with my future students!!