SAINT CLAIR - Trying to tailor the learning environment to the needs and interests of the students, the Saint Clair Area School District recently added an ebook program to allow its students to access books in the cloud.
"These kids are digital natives so they're not like us," said Superintendent Kendy Hinkel. "This is the easier way for them to acquire information. They're far more tapped into it and they don't remember a time when we didn't have digital print."
The program, an online reading environment from Capstone Publishers, is called myON reader and puts thousands of the books at the students' fingertips.
Capstone is one of the leading publishers of children's books and digital products and services, offering everything from nonfiction, fiction and picture books to interactive books, audio books and literacy programs.
The way the software works is that myON can be accessed from any computer in the classroom or at home, or on other devices such as Apple's iPhone or iPad, Amazon's Kindle or Barnes and Noble's Nook.
Capstone gave a presentation to the school district in January and its regional vice president of digital solutions, Haygood Poundstone, said that there were 2,012 books in the digital library with more content added every month.
According to Hinkle, the company is always making new partnerships with publishers to add more content and adds between 30 and 40 books a month.
The program costs Saint Clair about $6,500 per year per school and supplements the library.
The first time students log in with their personal username and password, they complete an interest inventory, which helps tailor the enhanced digital books to the students' interests.
"It recommends books to them based on their interests and they also do a quick reading comprehension and it levels them," Hinkle said.
An initial 35-question quiz identifies the students' reading level, then they are able to choose the books they want to read, while there are also options for teachers to pick books for them to read as part of their curricula.
Hinkle and teachers can track student progress at any time.
With Saint Clair Area Elementary/Middle School teaching students in grades kindergarten through eighth grade, all use the myON thanks to the school's mobile computer lab and the program's ability to read to those at lower reading levels.
The carts hold enough netbooks for about one for every three students in the school and with the carts changing classrooms throughout the day, there is enough for all the students in each class.
Hinkle said teachers just grab a cart that have either 18 or 32, depending on the cart, and all the computers on it are already charged and wireless internet ready.
"We have other programs as well with the netbooks, but this is just one of them," she said.
While not all of the students can read yet, myON is used in every class, from kindergarten to eighth grade.
"Those that can't read independently yet have headphones on," Hinkle said. "There's comprehension questions at the end so we are improving their listening comprehension, which is an early step to reading."
Most that use the listening tool are the kindergartners, while Hinkle said the children that are more advanced have the feature turned off.
When the students' comprehension scores go up, their reading level gets pushed up automatically in the system.
"The kids love it and it gets them reading a little bit more and gets them more interested in maybe reading a paperback book," said Eileen Tarconish, a third grade teacher at Saint Clair. "It's increasing their comprehension level and increases their interests, It helps us guide our instruction because we can also pull up the reports and see how well they're doing."
Hinkle said that while some teachers use the netbooks and do a reading session in the morning, others use it in the afternoon, then at the end of the day it's used by the seventh and eighth graders in study hall.
One other feature of myON that the older students use is a blogging feature.
Once students read the book, they can write a short blog pots about it, saying if they did or didn't like it and can recommend it to their friends.
Teachers check spelling and make sure the posts are appropriate, and then they get pushed to the school's intranet.
Although Hinkle said it's too soon to see changes in student reading levels, she noticed they are reading far more, even those who were readers before because they like the format.
Hinkle said that she thinks Saint Clair is the first school in the county to use the technology and for them, the advantage has been two fold.
With the school renovation project starting this summer, most of the print materials in the library are packed up, so although there are also classroom libraries, this provides more content in the short term.
"We have a print material problem because of the project, but this fills that gap for us," Hinkle said. "On top of that, it's a really powerful tool that's going to stay after the project."