e-Texts and the 'Potential'

SO! After a great deal of 'run-around' from the e-text publishers, we finally managed to acquire our e-texts for our intermediate students over the March Break (Woohoo!).

The texts themselves certainly open up new opportunities that we previously otherwise did not have, including:
- Ability to highlight specific points for students within readings
- leave 'notes' for them to augment what they are reading and essentially have a 'paper coversation' with them
- develop new strategies for information synthesis, by providing worksheets on Google Drive, which the students can then submitt electronically
- reduced stress as to 'where did ALL THE TEXTBOOKS go???'

We have also experienced some set backs which, although frustrating really aren't that 'BIG' of a deal:
- students struggling with the layout of the program: screen is too small, task bars take up too much space, simply being STUBBORN about having to use computers
- Some students have made points that they find reading from the computer hurts their eyes, and that they much prefer the paper copies of the text (we should note that 5 copies of each textbook were purchased as well, mainly for those students who do not have access to internet at home)


After having access now for several weeks it is interesting to note how quickly our students established a certain 'comfort' level with the e-texts. When given their tasks, they are quicker to get down to business, although the temptations of online games seem to be cropping up more and more...
In terms of the calibre of the completed work from an e-text vs. Paper text standpoint, there really doesn't seem to be much difference, other than the content itself is FAR more up to date than in our previous texts.

Our hope is that in the last months of the school year, we can really maximize the use of these e-texts and that our students start to become more comfortable with this medium of learning. For our SEA laptop students, the biggest set back has been that the text will NOT read back to them... so again, maybe some ground work for improvement needs to be done here, on behalf of the publishers!!

- MES e-Text team