Kindles help multiple students read the same book at the same time

 English teacher Angela’s 10th graders at City Arts and Technology High School in San Francisco like to read books with their friends and talk about them.

For example:

• 4 students are reading The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie,
• 4 students are reading Speak, by Louise Halse Anderson,
• 7 students are reading Boxers and Saints, by Gene Luen Yang.

      

This is where Kindles shine.

With physical books, these 15 titles would cost about $250. With Kindles, following Amazon’s terms and conditions, these books cost about $40.

Better yet: The Kindle e-books never get lost or worn. Their pages and covers stay intact. There’s no need for contact paper or library binding. Angela doesn’t need to beg her students to return the books. They’re all safe up in the Amazon cloud.

This also means that Angela can spend more time talking with her students about what they’re reading, rather than worrying about raising funds to replace lost or worn books. She can push her students to more challenging books. Her students, in turn, can spend more time enjoying reading and discussing their books instead of waiting for the most-popular titles to become available.

Sure, Kindles don’t let you flip pages and curl up in a sun-lit reading nook. There’s no book smell or dogeared corners.

But Kindles get books in the hands of students, fast and en masse. As Kathleen says to her juniors at Leadership High School in San Francisco, a Kindle is like “a book store in your backpack, except you don’t have to pay.”

That’s because of the many generous donors who contribute to the Kindle Classroom Project. Thank you, donors!

If you have not yet donated to the KCP, I challenge you to do so. We all know the power of reading. It’s self-discovery, it’s mindfulness, it’s connection, it’s empathy.

[stripe name=”Kindle Classroom Project” description=”Help students love reading again.” amount=”1000″ payment_button_label=”I want to donate $10 to buy a book.” image_url=”http://www.iserotope.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/13-Stack-of-Kindles-e1421308500362.jpg” checkout_button_label=”Donate” enable_remember=”false”]As you can see, I’m hoping that new donors to the KCP consider a $10 contribution so that a book is added to the KCP Library for the program’s 253 students. (To donate, you need a credit card, $10, and less than 2 minutes.)

If this is not the right time for you, please do your part to get the word out. There is a small reading movement happening among young people in the Bay Area, and it’s about time that people find out about it!