Friday, April 13, 2012

Parenting Articles | Kindles Fire Up Students’ Desire for Learning

Students at two Cheatham County elementary schools and one middle school are taking part in a pilot program designed to not only help improve their reading skills, but also radically change textbook distribution.

The myON reader from Capstone Digital engages students at all reading levels by providing a personalized reader-friendly environment that includes a list of over 2,000 enhanced digital books.

“It is wonderful to see these children so excited over learning,” said Dianne Williams, the district’s chief academic officer.

The program was initiated on March 19 for sixth-graders in Kristen Hagan’s language arts class at Sycamore Middle School and third-graders in Kelly Phillips’ class at East Cheatham Elementary School and Jonet Williams’ class at Ashland City Elementary School.

One of the features that drew interest was the online delivery and exchange of resources.
“In the near future all of our testing will be online, so we had to think of how we’re going to do that,” said Dianne Williams, noting the possibility of textbook delivery online in the near future.

Using funds from “First To The Top,” it took several months to get the program under way.
After learning about the myON reader, Williams said the county’s plan was revised to focus on language arts and to raise reading scores. There was a waiting period because state and federal approval on revisions to the plan was required before funds could be used for the investment.

One of the initial challenges was to find the right device for delivering the program to the students. The Kindle Fire was read more . . .

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