One of the English teachers, Ken Gourlay, has a Kindle (see right)
This is an electronic book (e-book) sold by Amazon.com
for about £200The main reason nowadays that most pupils don't do well in English is
that they don't read enough. There is too much competition from mobile phones, iPods,
video games, the world wide web etc. Ken is willing to demonstrate this e-book to parents
and/or students if you think that it will encourage the pupil to read more (whether or not
the student is being tutored by Ken). Believe it or not, he's not on commission with
Amazon.
The e-book has the following advantages over paper books:
It can hold ~ 1500 books
Amazon.com has a library of about 300,000 books
You can search this library for a book, read reviews of it, read a few pages, buy it, then
download it to the e-book
The books are cheaper than the paper version
The library is particularly strong on American literature
(for obvious reasons)
e.g. it has The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald (a popular choice for
prose at Higher level), reviews and related books of criticism
Once downloaded to your e-book you can:
Bring
up dictionary definitions of any word you don't understand (see right)
- good for expanding vocabulary
Search the book
e.g. for Gatsby, Nick, Daisy, Tom, Rich
girls don't marry poor boys
Copy quotes to your wordprocessor on your computer (ideal for essays)
Parents
may also be interested to know:
Newspapers and magazines can be downloaded
(useful if you're on holiday and can't find your usual newspaper)
You don't need a computer. Books can be downloaded wirelessly
i.e. using similar technology to mobile phones
The e-book can read a book aloud to you (useful on long car journeys)
There are 6 different font sizes (see right) |
 

|