iBooks and iTunes

iBooks comes on your iPhone or other Apple product and is very easy to use. You can buy books through your Apple ID account. You can easily search for top recommendations or by price. Once you select the book you'd like to purchase it will instantly download to your device. If you have more than one Apple device that are connected your purchase will download to all of your devices so long as they are connected to the internet. As you read your devices will update where you are at when they are connected to the internet. When you purchase books they can be found in your library which is easily customizable. You can sort your books by author, title, or other subjects you set up. iBooks uses bookmarks to keep your place. You can also zoom in and change your font size for easier reading. At the bottom of the page it keep tracks of how far you are in the book - tells you how many pages you've read, how many are total, and how many you have left to read. There are also links to the table of contents and back to the library at the top of each page.

You can also purchase audiobooks through iTunes. These download to your Apple device the same way music does. You can listen to your book on an Apple device or through stereo systems that you can plug your device into. Make sure you don't have your device on shuffle! Itunes will keep track of where you are and start back where you left off when you pause.

Our school is not using ebooks yet, but we do offer some audiobooks. I can definitely see the benefit of providing ebooks for check out as more and more students acquire ways to read them. It could also be nice to have ereaders available for students or staff to check out. I could see providing five or so that way teachers could use them for reading groups. Starting with offering ebooks and then moving into checking out ereaders would be a good way to start. Audiobooks are always good to have especially for students who are not proficient readers yet. Many of our elementary classrooms have listening stations where students can listen to audiobooks and practice their fluency. As a classroom teacher it would be beneficial to have more audiobooks in the library so I can switch out the ones I have in my room. Older students are often very busy with extra curricular activities and audiobooks might help them get school work done while they do other activities like work out or during long bus rides.