Enhancing Reading with e-books

I found the article “Teacher-Created Electronic Books: Integrating Technology to Support Readers With Disabilities” by Rhodes and Milby to be very enlightening. They discussed how to create and use an e-book to enhance vocabulary, text comprehension and reading fluency with children with physical and learning disabilities. I discovered that making an e-book is very easy and one major advantage is that the teacher has complete control over the design so that she can create e-books in step with the curriculum and the students’ needs. Another great thing about e-books is that children can be part of the creation which in itself is a great way to motivate them to read their own creation repeatedly.

Rhodes and Milby discussed the creation of e-books using the strategy of retelling. Thus the e-book enhanced with photographs, clip arts an animation effects is an electronic display of children’s retellings. This reminds me of the Language Experience Approach (LEA) – talk written down, where the children learn that what they say can be written down and read back to them. This is powerful for it gives them a working understanding of what reading is about and has the special appeal since it is their own creation. There is so much similarity between the LEA and Rhodes and Tammy’s use of the e-book with developmental readers that it supports my assumption that traditional strategies may be enhanced and become even more effective when transformed using web 2.0 technologies.