Librarian Brings Kindles into the Classroom

School librarian and Kindle fan Kathy Parker

"Basically, I was fascinated with the Kindles themselves," says Parker, who approached her principal in 2009 about purchasing the devices for school. "So we started a committee, bought six Kindles and downloaded some titles that summer." By the fall, seventh and eighth graders were sharing 18 devices and reading novels, ranging from Gary Schmidt's The Wednesday Wars (Clarion, 2007) to Lisa Graff's The Things About Georgie (HarperCollins, 2007), for class assignments. Within six months, older students were bringing the devices home.

The pilot program, which cost about $2,800, proved so successful that after a presentation to the Board of Education in December, Seneca CCSD 170 Superintendent Eric Misener helped secure funds to buy Kindles for every eighth-grade student, along with enough devices for one seventh-grade class to use this year.

Parker says she received a lot of support from her Twitter followers, especially Will DeLamater, who runs the Web site EduKindle. He helped alert others to Parker's program, including M-Edge Accessories, which is donating covers for all the Kindles. Parker herself will purchase titles out of her budget—which goes further as each book can be downloaded onto six devices for one fee. She says it's well worth the investment as she's seen firsthand how students respond to being able to change fonts, using the text-to-speech feature, and even having the devices display what percentage of the book they've completed.

"The bottom line for me is the Kindles have generated a love of reading among those students who would not have otherwise picked up a book," she says.—L. B.

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