Now it’s time to get serious about achieving one of my dreams: the classroom library mirroring project.
Have no clue what that is? Maybe I need a better name for it. Let me try to explain it.
Students walk into the classroom and see their beautiful classroom library. They browse the shelves; they look at book covers; they flip through pages; they sample first chapters; they find a book they like and want to check out. But instead of taking the book off the shelf and signing it out, students take out their Kindle and read the book there.
That’s because every title in the physical classroom library also has a Kindle version.
There are so many advantages to this mirroring project. The biggest one is that there are no physical books to check out. They never get lost. They never get worn out in backpacks. They don’t need replacement after multiple reads.
There are a few drawbacks. One is that some (but not too many) students prefer the feel of physical books. Another is that losing a book is less tragic than losing a Kindle. But I’ve found that students tend to lose or destroy Kindles (there has been one mishap since 2010) far less often than they lose or destroy books.
Now comes the hard work: bridging the gap between the 201 titles in my Kindle library and the 627 books in my physical library. It’s not going to be easy; after all, my hope is to build the physical library to more than 1,000 titles as soon as possible. That means the Kindle library will likely always be playing catch up. But that’s OK, I guess.
What are your thoughts about this mirroring project? Do you have a better name for it? Any ideas about how to make it happen?