Keystone AEA has a few new options this year for Online Resources that you may want to check out. In this blog, I will do a quick explanation of one of the new options, epointplus.
Epointplus is an online ebook platform that has a variety of books at many different age levels (suggested grade range is 3-12). Most focus on science and social studies topics, but there are other areas represented as well.
Here is a link to the list of books currently offered, sorted by grade band.
The best feature of the site is that students in your classes can simultaneously access the same book at the same time! If you are looking for some supplementary literature for a whole-class discussion or activity, this feature would be very useful. Keep in mind, you will need students to have internet access to view the books. There is an epointplus ipad app that does allow books to be downloaded to access offline, but the computer version does not yet.
Epointplus offers multiple search options when you are trying to find a book. You can search by the title, series, keyword, or ISBN number, but you can also search by category and subcategory. You can even narrow your search further by adding filters such as reading level, publication date, number of pages, and a few others.
Once you have selected a book, you can click on the Navigation Tool (3 dots & 3 lines) to see the links to the Contents of the book. You can jump to any chapter or section by clicking on the appropriate link.
If you are having your students use the book as a resource that they will need to cite, epointplus makes it almost too easy for them by providing a Citations tab with MLA and APA citations ready to copy and paste into a works cited.
As you are reading the book, you will see that the default arrangement is as a 2 page spread that will automatically adjust to the size of your window.
If you prefer a one page spread, however, you can adjust your window smaller, and it will eventually switch to a single page spread.
As you are reading, you will notice at the top right corner, that there are 2 tools.
One is the Print icon which allows you to print either a page range or the whole book. The other tool is a Search Tool for the text. When you type in a word, it will search the entire book and show a snippet of text where the word is used and the page number where it was used. It is a pretty handy tool!
If you want to take your student text interaction up another level, you can also have them create their own Notebook on epointplus. You have to go back to the main screen and click on Create Notebook at the upper right hand of the page.
It will walk you through set-up which will create your Notebook. This allows you to favorite books to more easily access them, as well as gives you another tool option, the Annotation Tool, which shows up next to your Print and Search Tools when you are on a book page. You have several options to interact with the text with this tool.
The yellow is obviously and example of the Highlight tool, the pink is a Freehand circling of text, and the red is a Reminder which you can move around so it points at any section of text. It does have a 25 character limit. The black square with a text bubble in it is the Page Note which allows you to take notes about the page and save them to access later.
There are several other sites out there for ebooks, but the ability for students to all view the same text at one time is definitely the upside of this site. The annotation is also a valuable component if you are willing to take the time to have students set up their own Notebook account. There is not really a way built into the site for students to share their text annotation with you unless they would use a screenshot or something similar. It is definitely worth a look, though!
