One of the last groups to adopt ebooks in a widespread and focused way is the K12 education sphere. While digital textbooks have been painfully slow to reach the public school market, ebooks have been an even slower format when it comes to kids and reading. OverDrive has made ebooks even more accessible, though, along with initiatives like Qlovi and Smashwords’ OverDrive partnership.
A webinar taking place this week from Data Conversion Laboratory will explore easy ways that school systems, teachers, and educational stakeholders can incorporate the shift to ebooks in the classroom, while exploring feasible strategies that let digital initiatives support student learning outcomes.
One of the chief obstacles for ebooks in the classroom is the hard data that demonstrates students not only prefer print books over ebooks when they have the power to self-select the texts, but also that demonstrate a possible drop in reading comprehension scores after consuming content in digital formats. This has been attributed to the understanding on the part of the students that the tablet contains far more interesting forms of entertainment than ebooks, and that rushing through to the end will afford the students the opportunity to play games or engage with social media. Overcoming that mindset is a chief concern of educators.
However, critics also argue that there’s no “need” for forcing students to overcome their aversion to ebooks, but that is unfortunately not the case. With more and more universities incorporating the advantages of digital textbooks and browser-based learning platforms, today’s K12 students are tomorrow’s digital university students, and therefore must strike a balance between the ease, convenience, and affordability of ebooks, while still optimizing for educational performance.
The webinar will be held Wednesday, July 16th, at 1:00pm ET. Registration for the free webinar is available from Data Conversion Laboratory’s website, found HERE.
Mercy Pilkington is a Senior Editor for Good e-Reader. She is also the CEO and founder of a hybrid publishing and consulting company.