Students in Mr. Jarosz’s 8th Grade English class are using the free Stanza application to read free books on their iPod Touch. Since the students can bring the Touch home, they have on-demand access to their reading assignments.
The terms of our pilot limit us to free apps, so using a free book reader that can download a variety of free books online has many advantages. At the same time, these are the challenges:
1) Any book or story assigned must be previewed by the teacher. The challenge was to find a free book or story that was appropriate to the 8th grade curriculum and the student’s interests.
2) The Stanza application can download other books online, raising the next implementation policy question of whether we should allow students to download other books freely. Since any programs or content on the Touch should support instructional classroom goals, we required the students to ask teacher permission prior to downloading other books or stories. The criteria for defining what is acceptable reading material in a school library can provide guidelines as to what is appropriate.
The results so far have been positive.
To be continued….
