As schools exist in an ever-changing school environment this year moving from face-to-face, hybrid, and remote learning, it is more important than ever to provide our students with books that will spark their interest and keep them engaged in reading, no matter where they are learning.
This is particularly difficult because as Margaret Merga (2014) points out “digital books are still very expensive to license. It can be more expensive to license an eBook than to own a paperback version of the same book” (p. 25). Being responsible for purchasing all of the content for our library has opened my eyes to the discrepancies in the costs between the two. While our students are learning from home, we want to be able to provide them books that will address their pedagogical and content needs. Due to budget constraints, it has been difficult to provide enough content for all students to access.
Taking this into account, I decided to take some cues from my preschooler and stepped back to look at the big picture and ask “why?” As Berger (2014) points out, preschoolers are simply trying to “get to the bottom of things” (p. 42). I wanted to be just as inquisitive as my son while exploring this problem.
My “why,” lead me to “get to the bottom” of my wicked problem of how we can offer eBooks to students in a more cost-effective manner so that students have access to books that will spark their interests and encourage them to read while learning from home. Check out what I found out in the exploration of my problem:
In the end, I found that if publishers were more willing to offer popular middle grade and young adult books with a lending model that would allow more than one user to read the book at a time, it would help to increase student engagement with the texts and continue to encourage students to read no matter where they are learning.
Resources:
Berger, W. (2014). A more beautiful question: The power of inquiry to spark breakthrough ideas. Bloomsbury Publishing USA.
Bridges, M. (2020). Sparking an Interest in Reading. [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/Hb4HBSU9Gk0.
Merga, M. K. (2014). Are teenagers really keen digital readers? : Adolescent engagement in ebook reading and the relevance of paper books today. Australian Association for the Teaching of English.
Simplychic. (2019). Simplychic sticker. [Gif]. Giphy. https://gph.is/st/EpJjD7Y.
Spratt, A. Child reading a book. [Image]. Unsplash. https://unsplash.com/photos/hDcAjjkM-PU.