How can e-books be used to help students learn, and what do school and public librarians need to know about e-books, current learning theory, and how children learn to read? How can librarians assist teachers and parents to use these exciting new tools for students? Learning is all about thinking and being actively engaged (Calkins 2001), and research has demonstrated that learning to read is a life-altering process (National Endowment for the Arts 2007). As we shift to more digital resources, it is important to consider how e-books can best support student learning and the life-altering processes of learning to read.
Just as it takes a village to raise a child, it takes the collaboration of many individuals to develop motivated learners with the necessary skills to be successful in the twenty-first century. Classroom teachers and intervention specialists are primarily responsible for student learning. This has always been a huge responsibility, but it has become much more stressful with the high-stakes testing and public accountability required by federal No Child Left Behind legislation. Teachers rely on other highly trained professionals to help support their efforts in a variety of ways. Librarians—those in schools and public libraries—are key players in the push to meet the needs of learners in increasingly diverse learning environments. The common goal is to entice diverse students to learn through the implementation of best practices. But how can professionals work together and what role does each play? First, everyone involved needs to build a common understanding of what the research says about best practices and to speak a cohesive language focused on learning theory as it relates to reading.
Students’ brains are indeed changing and gravitate to multimedia stimulus to engage them in learning (Caine et al. 2005). E-books are one of the emerging tools for learning that addresses this need for engagement of today’s students. Thus, classroom teachers will look to librarians to make connections between the classroom and this technology. In this chapter we review the information needed by librarians and classroom teachers to develop that common language, focusing on meeting student needs. We consider the impact of e-books on teaching reading skills and motivating reading as well as the use of e-reference books and e-textbooks for learning in the content areas.
Best practices for learning and specifically for reading instruction have been well established in the literature. One major contribution to learning theory literature has been Brian L. Cambourne’s (1988) eight principles of learning: immersion, demonstration, engagement, expectations, responsibility, approximations, employment, and response. Cambourne describes his theoretical framework for learning as being a “set of indispensable circumstances that co-occur and are synergistic in the sense that they both affect and are affected by each other” (1995, 184). These eight principles need to be present in best-practices instruction and seem a natural fit for the use of e-books.
E-books can be highly engaging when demonstrations with animation are provided, the use of approximations is promoted as learners try different responses, and feedback on the appropriateness of their responses is offered. As students work with vocabulary selection, puzzles, or even recall questions, they are able to think through their selection, and their approximation is either affirmed or the correct response is given. Thus, their own thinking is validated or corrected. For all levels of learners, these activities support Cambourne’s need for response. Learners take responsibility for their learning with e-books when choice is involved; they expect to be successful because they are given control of their responses as they employ problem-solving skills and see what works for them. For example, TumbleBooks, an e-book subscription service discussed later in this chapter, promotes choice and responsibility as students decide whether the book is read to them, the text format moves, or the pacing is altered. These features allow readers to determine how to take responsibility for their own needs as readers.
In the best-case scenario, the e-book can employ all eight of the conditions for learning. So how do teachers and librarians establish the best-case scenario for students’ reading needs? Understanding the findings of the National Reading Panel on scientifically based reading instruction is a strong beginning to addressing that question.
In 1997 the U.S. Congress convened a group of scholars to examine the research on best practices in reading instruction and to find the patterns of success in order to better inform educators. The result of this effort is known as the National Reading Panel Report (NRP 2000). The panel determined that there are five areas of emphasis and specific findings within the area of reading that should guide instructional decision making in the area of reading instruction. Their findings from the examination of the research provide a foundation for the teaching of reading termed “scientifically based reading instruction”; in other words, the methodologies are supported by the findings of the NRP.
The five areas of focus as determined by the NRP are phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. These five areas are now the organizational framework for reading instruction. Each of these areas has specific findings that support best practices in the teaching of reading at any developmental level. For librarians and classroom teachers seeking ways to promote literacy with students of all ages and all levels of development, these are important common threads of information. E-books can be used to promote these five areas of focus.
Phonemic awareness and phonics are about the sounds of our language and the letters representing those sounds. This is important because it provides the foundation for later reading and writing as students take their understandings to print. Read-aloud books or book pages that highlight text as it is being read, such as used in Scholastic’s BookFlix, help make the connection between oral and print language. Matching the picture to the beginning sound and the letter that represents that sound uses digital technology to support emergent readers. The panel found that this level of reading instruction is best delivered in small groups, at a variety of ages, and that student manipulation of letters and sounds is highly effective. Instructional tools, such as the range of e-books presented here, that promote student engagement in working with different sounds and their representations are positive examples of how the findings of the NRP can be supported.
A third area of NRP focus is fluency—that is, reading orally with speed, accuracy, and prosody (proper expression and timing). The research findings explain that guided oral reading and also repeated reading support building fluency. E-books promote reading fluency when they are so engaging that students want to revisit them, or when students are able to return easily to the text and repeatedly read a selection.
Vocabulary, with a long history of research on its relevance to successful reading, is the fourth area of NRP findings. The panel determined that both oral and print vocabulary are important to the success of good readers and should be a focus of instruction. The NRP found that students who read more have larger vocabularies and benefit from being exposed to words multiple times, in multiple settings, and in varying ways. Teachers can promote extensive reading by using tools such as those found in BookFlix’s Read the Book. This e-book format promotes both the oral and visual interaction with text and is highly engaging, so it supports student vocabulary growth.
The fifth area of focus for the NRP is comprehension—intentional thinking that leads to meaning as the reader interacts with the text. This vital part of the act of reading is a large area of concern for teachers. It is the meat to the bones of decoding and requires engagement and problem solving on the part of the reader. The NRP analysis found that several instructional methods worked well for teaching reading comprehension. Students must be asked questions and taught to self-monitor, to use aids such as graphic organizers, to determine text structures, and to summarize as they read.
Librarians and teachers must work together to determine how e-books can play a part in the implementation of NRP recommendations and best practices in learning theory. Librarians add value to the learning process by making classroom teachers aware of the availability of e-books and suggesting and modeling ways that they can be used in the classroom or at home. By explicitly pointing out ways in which e-books can be used to build phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension, librarians become credible instructional partners to the classroom teacher. They also become leaders in the school’s literacy and technology initiatives.
Four subscription services for beginning readers that librarians should investigate are BookFlix, TumbleBooks, Big Universe, and the International Children’s Digital Library. Though similar in some ways, each service has particular strengths that can support NRP scientifically based reading instruction (table 2.1). Librarians can review these and other services and work with classroom and intervention teachers as well as curriculum staff to select the best resources for their school. They can also provide staff development and support for teachers and promote home use through the library website and parent workshops. Often funding sources outside the regular library budget can be found to purchase e-books. When tied to NRP findings, textbook funds and grants become real possibilities.
Scholastic’s BookFlix is an innovative online literacy resource that pairs fiction books with nonfiction books for grades K–3. This is support for teachers who are working to help children understand how information is presented differently in different genres, supporting one of the findings for text comprehension of the NRP. The fiction titles are classic Weston Woods–produced video storybooks—many of these Caldecott winners are familiar to most librarians who work with children. The nonfiction titles are e-books with a variety of reading assistance options. The imaginative pairings include Harry the Dirty Dog (Zion)/Keeping Clean and Hansel and Gretel (Marshall)/We Need Directions! Twenty-one of these pairs are available in Spanish.
Children can choose to turn read-along on or off while watching the video of the fiction title. Words are highlighted as spoken by the narrator, building fluency and word knowledge. The NRP found that paired reading (reading along with someone to model pacing) and visual acuity (noticing the features of a word) both support the needs of developing readers. Students who need to develop both oral and visual word knowledge are supported, and so both visual and auditory vocabularies are strengthened. The video can be enlarged, which is a great option for teachers to use for whole-class viewing on interactive whiteboards, but it can also be a tool of individual differentiated learning with struggling or advanced readers, as students build independence and become comfortable with the use of the technology (Tomlinson 2004).
Table 2.1 Four E-book Resources for Beginning Readers
x = has this feature X = strength of this resource * = limited 
= Spanish only
Another option allows children to click on yellow highlighted words so they can read and hear definitions to build vocabulary, again supporting the NRP focus on visual awareness of words. When they select a read-along feature, the book is read aloud and words turn red as they are spoken, which also supports the paired reading that the NRP found successful. This feature encourages children to follow along, strengthening multiple skills while keeping them engaged. Audio level can be controlled but not speed. Students can first read the e-book with the read-along feature turned on, then go back and read independently. They can repeat the process to reinforce letter and word recognition (phonics), word usage (vocabulary), and flow of reading (fluency).
For each pair of books, additional activities and resources support individual or group needs. For children there are Puzzlers (interactive games to assess vocabulary, distinguish between fact or fiction, or practice sequencing), Meet the Author (with links to the author’s website), and Explore the Web (high-quality, annotated website links to extend the topic). For teachers there are lesson plans aligned to national standards—science or social studies as well as language arts.
There are additional support features for teachers, parents, and librarians. Most important is the ability to sort by reading level (lexiles 20–750) or Reading Counts (Scholastic’s reading/quiz software program similar to Accelerated Reader). In this way teachers can support the NRP finding that there must be a strong match between students and their use of instructional and independent levels of texts.
BookFlix is a terrific resource for building children’s background knowledge and helping them become fluent independent readers. It is clearly designed with instruction in mind, using key principles of what we know about early reading. Scholastic has online funding suggestions and alignment guides. School or library subscriptions come with off-site access.
Another online subscription service with specialized learning features is TumbleBooks, which includes animated audio e-books for K–3 students. The picture books are from a variety of mainstream publishers, with some popular titles but fewer award winners than BookFlix. Readers select a picture book from categories such as holidays, friends/family, school, numbers/letters, or health/safety. The first thing the user notices when reading a book on TumbleBooks is that the printed page is animated. Sometimes the page is simply panned (e.g., moving from the bottom of the page to the top). More often, elements on the page move or appear on the screen at different times. This is a good example of what Gralley (2006) described as taking advantage of features of the new digital medium when creating e-books rather than just transferring the printed page to the screen. The entertainment value certainly increases (and student engagement), but these features could be distracting for struggling readers and children with learning disabilities unless used wisely (perhaps as support with a para-professional). In their research on CD-ROM storybooks, DJong and Bus found that the “many attractive options of electronic books seem to divert children’s attention from text and number of readings of the text in favor of iconic and pictorial explorations” (2002, 154). Students with specific learning needs can use e-books successfully, but adaptations of how they are used should be considered.
The reader has several controls—including audio, auto, and manual—that can be used in combination. In auto mode with the audio turned on, the story is narrated aloud. Whole sentences (rather than word by word, as in BookFlix) turn red as they are read. This helps young readers or older readers with emerging skills hear a model of the prosody of fluent reading, highlighting appropriate expression and the continuity of words rather than the word calling associated with decoding alone. The NRP states that the purpose of reading is to understand a message, so anything that can move emergent readers away from word calling to comprehension of the message is valuable. The auto mode of TumbleBooks promotes such an understanding by allowing sentences and passages to be seen as a whole instead of a series of parts (words).
When the book is read in auto mode with the audio turned off, the pages still turn automatically, helping students experience appropriate pacing of the text. In manual mode, the reader controls the timing, but sentences still turn red, one at a time. For struggling readers this encourages fluency and a holistic view. Distractibility issues can be minimized if an adult or more mature reader works one-on-one with the student.
Some recently added books have a word help feature in which more difficult words are highlighted in yellow and have an audio icon. When a child clicks on it, the word is pronounced, sounded out syllable by syllable, then pronounced again. This feature supports the NRP findings on phonics awareness, for words are broken down into parts and vocabulary words are visually highlighted and pronounced. For the learner there is immediacy to the response, supporting Cambourne’s learning theory. Unlike BookFlix, TumbleBooks does not give a definition, which must be provided separately if needed.
Additional educational features include puzzles and games, some with more educational value than others. With the school subscription, students can write book reports using the book report tool by answering a series of generic questions. The NRP found that questioning is a key component of building text comprehension. The questions are valuable if they are generated by others (in the case of the questions about main characters or quizzes) but also if they are generated by the reader (such as a review-of-your-work feature). Quizzes for each book ask five multiple-choice questions at the knowledge and comprehension level. When the quiz is completed, the score is given (“your total score is 2/5”), which provides immediate feedback. Tools for teachers are limited, but the website can be viewed in French and Spanish, which is a teacher resource for English-language learners—a growing classroom concern.
TumbleBooks is an ambitious e-book subscription service. Along with its companions TumbleReadables (for older readers) and TumbleTalkingBooks (audiobooks), it is marketed exclusively to schools and libraries. A variety of subscription options are available, with home access as part of the deluxe school and library subscriptions. Nonfiction titles are being added. These are all great benefits, but they are strengthened by the support of an educationally sound rationale of how these electronic resources promote best practices.
A third online subscription service is Big Universe, with e-books from book publishers as well as a highly developed write-your-own-book feature. Some books are available in several languages; most titles are not well known or award winners. Besides fun picture books there are basic curriculum-based nonfiction works for younger readers and some illustrated classics, biography, and graphic titles (Saddleback Educational Publishing) for older readers.
None of the site’s books have enhanced features such as audio, dictionary, or bookmarking, although books can be searched by age, category, language, or keyword. Overall, Big Universe does not go much beyond merely placing print books online, and its offerings are not as grounded in learning best practices as BookFlix or TumbleBooks. The strength of Big Universe is its utility for students to create and publish their own books. Students can easily write and design a book that looks quite professional (with the added bonus of saving, printing, and sharing capabilities), so this option supports the connection between writing and reading. With proper support the e-book site can be used to transfer a learner’s oral vocabulary to a written vocabulary. Teachers or parents focusing on social or emotional issues can use this feature to create personalized books, including uploaded personal pictures. For example, intervention specialists can make social storybooks showing positive behaviors with scenes from the child’s school and classroom.
Although Big Universe e-books are not written and illustrated by well-known children’s authors and illustrators, the enhanced reading features along with the writing and publishing opportunities make it a very useful e-book resource. Future plans include adding reading levels (e.g., Fountas and Pinell), which supports the NRP finding that students should be reading text at their “just right” level. Additional new features are to include after-book activities, an improved book search, and the ability to order a bound print version of member-created books. It is also working to add publishers.
New subscription-based e-book sites continue to be developed. Named a “Top 10 Digital Resource” by School Library Journal in 2009, One More Story is an attractive and simple-to-use site featuring award-winning picture books with a read-aloud option. Books are professionally narrated with original music.
Not all web-based e-book sites are fee based. The International Children’s Digital Library (ICDL) is an ambitious research project with the goal of making more than ten thousand books in at least one hundred languages freely available over the Internet. At the core of this project is the belief that cross-cultural understanding is enhanced when children learn more about the similarities and differences of the world’s cultures. The Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory at the University of Maryland and the Internet Archive are building this library and investigating how children search, browse, read, and share books in electronic form. Using rotating teams of children ages six through eleven, the researchers have involved children in the development of the site’s design and technology. Research papers and videos explaining the project are available on the website, stimulating learners who have strong literacy skills and can benefit from high-end differentiation. These learners (at school and at home) require authentic purposes to engage and motivate them to use their advanced skills effectively.
The ICDL collection includes only books that have originally been published in print format and for which ICDL had obtained copyright permissions. Books are published in the original language. If they have been physically published in more than one language and ICDL has permission for other versions, then multiple language versions are made available. The website itself can be viewed in many different languages, with most translation being done by volunteers.
The site has many unusual and helpful features. For example, small collections of books have been assembled on themes that promote important aspects of multicultural understanding: celebrating differences, overcoming challenges, friendship, seasons, strong women, and water as an essential resource. This feature should be helpful for teachers integrating the language arts curriculum with science and social studies. Since children assist with the project, the site offers search criteria that use terms children would use in their everyday lives, such as “make believe” for fiction and “true” for nonfiction. Additionally, several of the books have an accompanying audio file, which is opened as a separate file as the reader is signaled to advance the page by a tone. In this way, young readers can support their fluency skills by having the reading modeled for them.
ICDL is an exciting site to use in the classroom to promote global understanding. One of its strongest uses is with students for whom English is not the first language. Where else can teachers find books in fifty languages from Afrikaans to Yiddish? Children will love being able to read a story in its original language. Perhaps they could share the story with their class, with the book projected on a large screen or interactive whiteboard. Foreign-language classes could read titles in the language they are studying and create podcasts reading the book aloud. They could also work in teams to translate the text into English.
The goal for older students is to motivate them to read often and widely. The digital generation values online activity and spends a great deal of time connected to the Internet and to each other. E-books give librarians another tool to motivate students to want to read. Some students may enjoy reading on their preferred device, whether it is a laptop, cell phone, or MP3 player. Fiction and nonfiction recreational reading of e-books offers new opportunities for social interaction. As library catalogs allow for reader’s comments and fans of genres and authors meet online, the digital generation has more opportunities to connect with each other and with reading. It is not hard to imagine electronic versions of blockbuster series like Twilight or Harry Potter being read on iPods with options for sharing comments, reactions, and speculation with other readers in real time. Teachers could use this type of feature for dialog and discussion of literary criticism, both ways to support comprehension according to the NRP. The concept of choosing alternative story paths as previously popularized in print series such as the Choose Your Own Adventure books can easily be used in e-books.
Besides e-books selected and purchased by libraries and distributed through library catalogs, there are online subscription services for fluent readers similar to those discussed above for emerging and developing readers. TumbleReadables includes text versions and read-alongs of early readers, chapter books, middle school titles, teen titles, children classics, and adult classics (including Shakespeare). Many but not all TumbleReadables titles are read-alongs. The audio component can be turned off and the book read manually if desired, so there is the option of scaffolding for the reader. There are some features for struggling readers. The text turns red, sentence by sentence, as it is read, so students can have support for word recognition skills (a foundational piece of vocabulary knowledge). Books that have no audio component do have the feature of controlling the timing of the page turns. This could be used to improve fluency if it is not confusing to the reader and can be turned off in manual mode. The audio is from well-produced audiobooks and includes music and sound effects. Teachers might bookmark passages and play them to the class to promote discussion, a teaching strategy promoted by the findings of the NRP. Additionally, text size can be increased for students with vision problems, and some books have quizzes in the same format as TumbleBooks.
School libraries, especially high schools, are having success using e-books for reference. High-quality reference sources are essential for learning in all content areas. Whether it is science, social studies, language arts, math, health, or the fine arts, there are e-reference books that provide credible, well-written, well-documented information in a format that often is preferred by students.
There are many advantages to using e-reference books, including improved access to the information in these books. With licensing agreements such as offered by the Gale Virtual Reference Library, several students can use the same e-book at the same time during class visits to the library. Students gain 24/7 use of titles that in print may be for library use only or overnight checkout. Ease of use in e-reference books is enhanced with topics listed on drop-down menus and keyword searching. Students can take notes by highlighting and copying and pasting text and graphics to word processing files. Of course, this advantage brings one of the greatest difficulties. Students tend to copy or print first and read and comprehend later. Teachers and librarians need to do a lot of work with students to ensure that original work and critical thinking take place.
Textbooks are traditionally a reading challenge for any student who struggles with decoding and or comprehension. Textbooks are frequently written at a text level that exceeds the independent reading level of students. As e-textbooks evolve and include more integrated learning enhancements, they have real potential for improving learning. Higher education has been the leader in the use of e-textbooks, though California just began a huge initiative to use more online learning materials including open-source textbooks in K–12. The driving factor has not been improving learning but rather reducing cost, as concern has been mounting over the high cost of textbooks. The typical college student spends up to $1,000 per year on textbooks, and e-textbooks can reduce this cost by half or even more (Rickman et al. 2009). Typically e-textbooks have been digital equivalents of print titles, so improved learning cannot be expected. Indeed, in a study of a campuswide textbook initiative at Northwest Missouri State University (Rickman et al. 2009), 60 percent of the students reported that they read more when using print textbooks than when reading e-textbooks. Students preferred e-textbooks only when cost savings was a factor.
A significant feature of any e-textbook is the capacity for text-to-speech, that is, having the textbook read aloud. This may be done through screen reader software already used on a computer or through software that is part of the e-textbook. This is a critical accommodation for students with limited vision or reading disabilities. Other techniques for improving readability for learners with specific reading needs include making the font larger, adding highlighting, or changing the contrast between the text and the background. Part of the screen can be blocked out to reduce distractions. Teachers can build accommodations to assist special needs students, including concept maps, notes, and increased spacing between words. Cavanaugh gives an excellent review of techniques for making a book more accessible to special needs learners in The Digital Reader: Using E-books in K-12 Education (2006).
The next generation of e-textbooks is likely to be much more than digital versions of print books. Some e-textbooks today already have some enhanced features that may improve learning, such as these:
These features support Cambourne’s eight principles of learning. Links to websites, primary sources, and recommended reading often are available on companion websites for print textbooks; these links may be used more when they are integrated into the electronic text. The biggest opportunities for increasing learning may be through integrated multimedia. Audio and video segments of experts speaking or demonstrating concepts can bring textbooks to life. Animated graphs or diagrams can make processes clearer by engaging a variety of learning modalities. Interactive learning activities including simulation games can bring the power of social networking to classroom learning. Assessment tools such as self-check quizzes may aid students with metacognition strategies, supporting the NRP’s finding for ongoing assessments and learning theory’s focus on approximation and feedback. Indeed, e-textbooks with these attributes blur the line between what has been called courseware and what has been called an e-textbook.
Textbook publishers’ plans certainly indicate that we can look forward to richer, more involved learning features. Six of the largest higher education textbook publishers formed an alliance in 2007 called CourseSmart to offer digital versions of their textbooks, greatly improving higher education e-textbook availability. An emerging standard for e-textbooks, Common Cartridge allows content to be moved more freely into and out of major course management systems (e.g., Blackboard, Desire2Learn). It goes beyond portability of text to include learning assessment tools, learning objects, and interactive capabilities (Nelson 2008). Full integration with course management systems is critical as colleges continue to develop online courses.
Open-access digital textbooks are an intriguing option (Polanka 2010). They are free—developed by authors and educators for educational purposes. Creative Commons licenses permit copying, sharing, and changing as long as the original author is credited. Instructors can select content, edit content, and make new content. Customized texts can be created and distributed electronically or printed. A great resource for K–12 schools is CK 12 Foundation, a nonprofit organization with the mission of reducing textbook costs. It uses a slick web-based collaborative model called FlexBooks. The initial focus is on science and math content.
Connexions, Flatworld Knowledge, and Merlot are higher education open-source textbook sources. Connexions, from Rice University, was founded in 1999 and includes thousands of “knowledge chunks”—modules of educational material covering multiple disciplines. It includes an authentication feature similar to peer review called “Lenses.” Some content is also appropriate for K–12 schools. Flatworld Knowledge textbooks also cover multiple disciplines. Faculty can select existing textbooks or remix content to create their own. Students can read free online or choose from various fee-based downloading options. A social networking option adds value, allowing students to interact with other students using the same text. Merlot contains much more than textbooks. Quizzes, tutorials, case studies, and assignments in many disciplines are included. Merlot was created in 1997 at California State University and features peer review by an editorial board.
School librarians have an opportunity to integrate library materials with open-source textbooks. In an editorial in School Library Journal, Brian Kenney suggests that the “digital textbook could be media specialists’ Trojan horse, stealthily moving materials from the library to the classroom” (2009, 9). He suggests that links to database articles, streaming media, and library books (both printed and e-books) can help address diverse learning styles and provide access to different viewpoints.
Although the potential for e-books to improve learning is great, there remain some serious questions and issues. Not all learners have up-to-date computers and high-speed Internet access at home. Neither do all schools. Public libraries can play an important role in providing access to equipment and subscribing to e-book services. School libraries may need to find ways to offer extended hours to supplement access for students who lack it at home.
E-books are still in a transitional state. There are still format issues to sort out. Not all books that young people want to read are available digitally. The hardware for using K–12 e-textbooks on a large scale is not in place. Electronic reference books are clearly preferred by young people, but many teens still prefer to read for pleasure on pages rather than screens. The time is probably coming when digital will replace print, but efforts like the one at a school in Massachusetts are clearly premature. Media reports indicate that this private academy is replacing a twenty-thousand-book library to go completely digital. Students can borrow eighteen digital readers (Kindles) to read titles purchased from Amazon.com, or they can read free books available on the Internet on their laptops. Unfortunately for the students, most of these free books are classics, scholarly tomes, or old out-of-copyright titles—not the latest books by popular authors teens want to read. Books that truly unite text and illustrations, such as many of the winners of the American Library Association’s Sibert Award for distinguished nonfiction, are not available electronically. Research on free voluntary reading conducted by Stephen Krashen (2004) and others clearly shows that students need books that they find so compelling that they want to read more. This means access to the widest possible variety of genres and formats. E-books are part of a library, not a complete solution.
A final concern requires consideration. Cognitive neuroscientists are beginning to look more deeply into what digital immersion will mean to learners, especially young children. This chapter focuses on the many ways e-books can enhance learning, but questions remain about how the new media affect child development. Will young children learn to go deeper into the text to really think about what they are reading, or will they be distracted by links, sidebars, and multimedia? Learning is not passive; learners must stop and think about what they have read, make connections to what they already know, and construct their own meaning.
E-books clearly offer new opportunities for improving student learning. For beginning readers, features unique to e-books support research-based best practices as identified by the NRP and Cambourne’s theory of learning. A variety of subscription services are available, each with its own strengths. Special learners, whether they are English-language learners, reluctant readers, at-risk readers, or special education students, can benefit from e-book features such as text to speech, multimedia, note taking, and highlighting. Digital resources also appeal to the digital generation by keeping them engaged, allowing them to try one response and get immediate feedback and take responsibility for their learning. Librarians can lead in the use of these new tools by collaborating with classroom teachers and connecting best practices to e-book use. They play a key role in helping learners prepare for successful lives in the twenty-first century by linking the human resources (supported by knowledge of scientifically based reading instruction) to new tools for the purpose of supporting student needs.
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