Obama: Every student should use e-textbooks by 2017
President Barack Obama’s administration is expected to recommend today that public money — once reserved for paper textbooks — be allowed to purchase iPad tablet computers, Kindles and related software. Obama’s goal is that every student use electronic textbooks by 2017, officials say. Part of the push stems from the expected cost-savings that comes from e-textbooks, rather than purchasing updated paper textbooks.
Read the full story in the USA TODAY, CLICK HERE
We got the idea for smories.com during an extremely long journey in a very dirty Land Rover from the Kalahari desert in Botswana to Cape Town in South Africa in February last year.
Our daughter (8) had the idea to film herself with our ipod reading Enid Blyton short stories, and then play them back to her younger sister (6). This kept them entertained for hours.
Our kids have always loved reading to each other and are transfixed when other children read them stories. They are also obsessed with the internet and will make their way to youtube any time they get their hands on a computer.
We thought a website that had a continuous flow of new stories, read aloud by kids, would make a healthier destination than so much of the stuff out there. Imagine you’re stuck in traffic and need to keep a miniature person entertained in the back. Access a playlist of smories stories from your i-phone and voila…
Once we had the idea for a site that publishes stories for kids read by kids, we also thought it would be a great unthreatening forum for showcasing unpublished stories. This allows writers to test their work in a straightforward and transparent way, hopefully giving them exposure which they might otherwise not have received.
- Lisa Swerling & Ralph Lazar
Book-it and Suessville have teamed up to do a live read-aloud story time with Tim Tebow. Tim Tebow will be live in a webcast reading Dr. Seuss classic, Green Eggs and Ham On February 15, 2012,. I am sure for Colorado kids this will be huge since Tim Tebow plays for the Broncos. Tons of cool printables like coloring pages, bookmarks, graphing activities, green activities, games and more. So take a look and to get your students excited for Feb. 15th.
iPad Textbooks: Reality Less Revolutionary Than Hardware
Apple’s launch on Jan. 19 of new digital-textbook software has educators and experts considering whether students will learn more and better using these and other tablet-based resources. Measuring the effect of these tools may prove complicated, and experts, including Ron Owston of Canada’s York University, say teacher effectiveness and the environment in which the technology is used are important factors. “Kids need some structure. They need guidance. They need feedback. They’re not going to get that from electronic books alone,” Owston said.
Take a quick look at iBooks Author, the new tool from Apple that lets you create textbooks for the iPad. You can design and layout pages like in iWork Pages. You can also add special elements like photo galleries, quizzes, 3D objects and interactive images.
http://macmost.com/ibooks-author-overview.html
http://www.apple.com/ibooks-author/
Available free on the Mac App store, iBooks Author is an amazing new app that allows anyone to create beautiful Multi-Touch textbooks — and just about any other kind of book — for iPad. With galleries, video, interactive diagrams, 3D objects, and more, these books bring content to life in ways the printed page never could.
