Project Evaluation Blog Entry

Findings:

 Ultimately my project did not get implemented as planned.  As soon as I learned how few elementary school-level textbooks are offered for a Kindle I had to re-evaluate my project.  As the Kindle’s popularity grows and as people learn the many ways it can be used within an educational setting I am sure there will be publishers who will jump on the band-wagon.  Another part of my project that I did not initially think about was how difficult it would be to get my hands on a Kindle without buying one.  People who own Kindles are not very excited to hand over a $250 electronic device to be used in a third grade classroom by an actual third grader.  My hope was to have at least two Kindles to use which would have increased my study group to four, two with Kindles and two without.  Everything worked out fine in the end and I really do feel that the Kindle was an effective tool for struggling readers. 
 In looking back at the project as a whole I really do feel I could make a good argument for using Kindles, or similar e-readers in a classroom setting.  The kids in the school district I observed mostly come from low income homes.  Their technology experience is usually limited to video games at home and small amounts of computer use in the schools.  Weekly computer lab in the third grade classroom that I observed consists to Study Island and Power School.  The two students I worked with get a little extra time in the computer lab twice a week for twenty minutes working with Read Naturally.  So when it came to utilizing a Kindle for Social Studies Reading Time their comfort with the new technology came very easily.  The fact that both students used the dictionary function was very encouraging, since I would seriously question whether kids that are reading along with an actual book would take the time to look up an unfamiliar vocabulary word in the glossary.  Finally, I was very encouraged to watch the kids read along with the Kindle in a fashion very similar to the process they follow while practicing with Read Naturally.  It is always a bonus when you can take a procedure that a student is already comfortable with and supplement it in a classroom under different circumstances.  Both the students I observed were responding very positively to the practice sessions they participate in during Read Naturally according to their Resource Teacher.  I loved that by utilizing the Kindle I was simply expanding on their prior experience.  I think it would have been very interesting to continue this study and see what long term exposure to a Kindle would do for kids like Student A and Student B.

Implications:

 If I were to do this all over again I would definitely have been more prepared in terms of background research on the technology tool I chose.  With the Kindle’s immense popularity I simply assumed that textbook publishers would have adapted their products to this new device.  I was utterly shocked to find that most publishing companies have CDs or CD-ROMS to offer as audio options for their textbooks.  I really thought they were further along than that when it came to technology. 
 Another consideration I would keep in mind is the price of the technology tool I chose to study.  A $250 hand-held device is hard for anyone to swallow, let alone schools that are struggling daily to stay afloat.  The friends that I have who own Kindles really weren’t excited to lend them out.  Ultimately I only found one person who was willing to do so.  That was problem number one. The next problem I ran into was with the Technology Director at the school where I was observing.  I spoke with him about the possibilities the Kindle offered to struggling readers at his school and he literally laughed in my face.  His direct quote was, “Right now I am trying to figure out how to pay for the updates I need just to keep the school computers running.  A device like a Kindle in a classroom is not even a blip on my radar.”  In an article written for Scholastic Administrator Magazine an educator had this to say about the cost of the Kindles, “You’d be hard-pressed to convince a teacher who gets $125 per year for classroom resources to spend it on a Kindle”.(1)  Put into that context a Kindle does not seem like a viable tool for classrooms.
 The concept of utilizing Kindles in the classroom is truly innovative.  However, at least for the school I was in it is not at all realistic.  Even if a grant were awarded for such a purpose there are always side issues like maintenance, price of digital copies, and equity among students.  All of these factors are strong arguments against the use of Kindles as reading assistance tools.  For the mean time it was great to see the potential a Kindle has to help struggling readers.  Maybe someday when our schools recover a little bit there will be a newer and cheaper tool with the same features as the Kindle that will be a greater reality for our schools.
 In the meantime I can see reworking this project with a focus on publishing companies and the potential e-textbook applications within an elementary school setting.  There are already many colleges that are conducting studies using e-textbook applications to see whether there is a solid case in favor of using e-Readers like the Kindle.  Recently “Officials of six colleges -- Princeton University, Reed College, and the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business, in addition to Arizona State, Case Western and Pace discussed how they would all incorporate Kindle into their curriculums in pilot experiments designed to test how students use e-textbooks and whether using them improves learning (or not).”(2)  Since this article was published just about a year ago it would be interesting to see what the researchers have found.  Until then I am pretty happy with the results of my own little study.

1. Will the Kindle Change Education.  E-book reader advances are pushing printed textbooks closer to extinction.  Scholastic Administrator Magazine.  September/October 2009
2. Breakthrough, Bust, or Building Block?  Doug Lederman. Inside Higher Ed. Online New Source.
May 2009