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Mostly Students need to be able to read well to function in society and their engagement as readers needs nurturing from the beginning. So, Digital library systems offer enormous opportunities to tap into children’s interests and enhance teachers’ skills as literacy mentors. Also, They can help teachers and children find relevant content, archive readers’ responses to individual books, and share them with others on a large scale. So, These systems can support reading for pleasure, acting as free book depositories- for instance- International Children’s Digital Library and it is providing tailored recommendations for new titles on a regular basis and offering children multimedia story experiences as in a virtual library. Now, Teachers’ resistance or openness to the sustained use of such technologies dictates their potential to make a difference in children’s learning as a whole. Besides, In our new paper in the Cambridge Journal of Education, one can explore the pedagogy behind many popular digital library systems in schools and outline how they could position teachers as informed listeners and mentors as well as co-readers. So, Currently, teachers using these systems are more like substitute librarians, curators, and monitors. Also, the roles assigned to teachers through specific technological features are important such as- influencing not only the ways these systems are used, though the impact they have on children is also important. So, Digital library systems can hold unprecedentedly large and diverse amounts of content. Also, Some integrate material such as social media, data gathering, and analysis. Thus, By combining information about individual readers and their engagement in the readers’ community and they carry the considerable potential for personalization. So, in analyzing the key features of some popular systems we found them misaligned with dialogic and networked theories of learning as well as noticed some patterns are as follows:--
Firstly, many of the features these systems offer could personalize the reading experience of individual children, and though, instead, they remain customized for groups rather than individuals’. For instance- giving readers a choice of titles based on crude categories of genres or difficulty levels etc
Secondly, the commercially viable and popular systems that address immediate and pressing constraints in schools are as follows--
They address curriculum constraints by re-positioning digital reading as a recreational activity not a technical or functional skill solely.
They address time constraints by giving children the individual attention that is difficult for teachers with large classes or limited knowledge solely.
They address professional constraints by holding a huge bank of titles beyond a human’s capacity altogether.
Thirdly, in terms of pedagogy, popular digital library systems currently position teachers as librarians, curators, and monitors respectively.
The Teachers as librarians, curators, and monitors:-
Numerous Teachers are offered an at-glance view of which books have been requested or returned by individual Students. So, They can curate the database by adding or removing titles and categorizing them according to children’s abilities. Also, they can request data and statistical comparisons of children’s engagement with the database and individual book titles as such. Moreover, we argue that in terms of the pedagogy envisioned by the current systems and the systems would benefit from being re-designed in order to position teachers as mentors, listeners and co-readers respectively.
The Teachers as mentors, listeners and co-readers:-
Additionally, giving teachers tools to monitor children’s engagement, effective systems could help teachers to act as mentors, facilitating discussion around texts etc. So, the Teachers as co-readers could model reading behaviors. So, instead of acting as a substitute librarian, teachers could be listeners, supported and empowered to co-create the online reading space with pupils and other teachers as well as enhance its personalization features through a community-oriented dialogue around books efficiently. It is recommended that for the future design of digital reading spaces for young children reflect research evidence that teachers, particularly those who position themselves as Reading Teachers and can provide effective support for emerging readers’ identities accordingly.
So, the 5 Reasons to Build an E-book Collection at School Library are as follows:--
Efficiently Engaging Students in Learning--
The Useful features commonly found in e-books can engage readers more thoroughly than traditional books. Readers can highlight, draw, annotate and write journals as well as cite sources using e-Books features solely. So, the Reluctant and struggling readers benefit the most from ebooks that involve the senses. Besides, ebooks can give students a full reading experience by emerging them into the text using animations and sound effects along with relevant imagery altogether.
Properly Creating a Love for Digital and Print--
The fact is that e-Book collections are not to replace physical books but to aid in the love of reading and learning respectively. So, Digital libraries give educators powerful tools to teach students how to find, evaluate and use digital content that is an essential skill for 21st-century learners altogether. Thus, Digital texts incorporate multimedia, like animations or sound, for practicing reading comprehension along with literacy skills Efficiently.
Efficiently Building Skills from Read-Alouds--
Knowing the benefits of listening to books read aloud is one of the single most important activities for reading success. So, Not only do children love being read aloud to, though it provides students with a demonstration of reading comprehension skills as well.
Besides, Accessing More Choices--
As far as e-books save time, money, and storage. It not only does a digital library make books more accessible to students and educators, though the convenience factors of downloading and returning ebooks are a significant advantage for students as well. So, Digital libraries cost far less than physical books, allowing librarians to stock up on a variety of titles accordingly.
Mainly Supporting Bilingual Speakers--
Basically, students with English as their second language can utilize tools like the built-in dictionary in ebooks. Thus, the Readers can quickly look up unfamiliar words and also while the recorded audio can provide auditory models of the correct syntax and grammar for the English language as well. - https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/1402/7/077044/pdf
