Stacey Hughes, an Oxford teacher trainer with 20 years teaching experience, looks at how using e-books can enhance the learning experience for your students.
As e-books become more popular, you may find yourself asking what all the hype is about. After all, an e-book is just a book on a screen, right?
Not anymore. While early e-books just replicated the print book, today’s e-books have enhanced features. Video and audio plays straight from the page, and some e-books let students slow down the audio, record their own version, and compare to the original. Students can answer questions, and then check if they’ve got the answers right straight away with automatic marking. They can create written or voice recorded notes, draw on the page, and highlight words they might be struggling to pronounce so they can go back later to practice them. And if you set your students a page to complete for homework, once they’ve finished the student can email the page to you for marking.
All these interactive features are great, but pose a challenge for teachers who are new to e-books. How do you teach with an e-book? How do you manage the class? How do you balance the activities in class to include pair and group work alongside the e-book?
In my webinar I talk about different types of e-book and how you can start using them. I highlight common interactive features and tools and give practical ideas on how to exploit these for learning. I also give tips for how to effectively manage the use of e-books in a class.
e-Books have been shown to increase student motivation and their popularity is on the rise, so now is a great time to see what they’re all about and whether they’re right for you and your classes.
Watch my webinar recording entitled ‘Using e-books in class: practical tips and ideas’.
I think that it is the right thing to do . Our students nowadays ,because of the social networks and students access to the internet ,it is an absolute to use e-books in our teaching and you know that image has a great impact on our learning abilities more than the traditional learning.besides, this generation has not that patience to wait for us writing on the board they become lost and confused. To facilitate for learners, i believe that it is our first step to a new way of teaching in order to help students to acquire competencies and providing opportunities to learners to be part of their learning and their responsibilities. It is like you say to your students : you have every thing there .be prepared for learning .