Alexis Marcionette, 5th grade student from Florida, has signed a deal with K-8 online learning company BigIQkids.com to release her first book “”UGH…You Again!” in eBook format complete with interactive graphics, “click to hear” word functionality and built in reading comprehension and vocabulary quizzes.

This is fantastic. Kids are not only reading online they are writing! This shows those stuffy old adults that reading from a worksheet and then answering question in short answer is not learning. Kids who take things outside the box, are learning. They are taking what they take in and out putting it into a format they see. If you did not catch that allow me to rephrase. Billy, a 5 year old in kindergarten hears a story about a knight and a castle; he then goes home and tells his mother what story they read today in class. She gives him a piece of paper and a crayon and he draw the images he heard about. Then he makes a story to go with those pictures. He took that information in and relayed it into something tangible that he can now share with others. He learned. In opposition, Susie who is 7 read a short story in class today about a man who discovered a technique for pasteurization. Susie was asked to then write 5 sentences about the story of Louis Pasture. She wrote 5 basic sentences and handed her appear in. When she got home she was asked about her day and what she did. She relayed the information of “some guy who made milk safe.” Because she was forced to regurgitate the information her imagination was blocked. 

This proves that information must be free when teaching children to learn. Not just read but learn. Miss Marcionette took advantage of speaking out in a an area she felt comfortable to explore and therefore share what she is learning. 

Giving children the book is not as important as giving them the knowledge to interpret and share the information inside it.

With these tough economic times everyone it seems is finding a way to utilize what resources they have to not only improve the bottle line but raise the bar for their customers. I can tell you that I love getting magazines, its like a little present in the mail just for me, but to be honest I am finding it a tough justification to pay the cost. Publishers are feeling the same way. With newspaper and magazine sales down 50% publishers are seeking new media to get their news into your hands. 

With the big time sales of E-ink readers such as the Amazon Kindle I & II and the Sony Reader, the man behind the pages of everything from Cosmopolitan to Esquire and the San Francisco Chronicle has put into action a large format wireless E-ink reader of his own. Kenneth Bronfin, exec at Hearst says:

 ”I can’t tell you the details of what we are doing, but I can say we are keenly interested in this, and expect these devices will be a big part of our future,” 

All this comes from the new technology, the money flow is not as flowing and business still want to maintain the integrity and following while cutting the cost of printing. The publishing industry is a $300 billion dollar industry, with most of the income going back into the printing of newspapers and periodicals. Within the year Hearst plans to release a black and white version of the new reader and a large format high resolution model that folds as well as allows for full page reading and ads to be seen. 

What Hearst and its partners plan to do is sell the e-readers to publishers and to take a cut of the revenue derived from selling magazines and newspapers on these devices. The company will, however, leave it to the publishers to develop their own branding and payment models. “That’s something you will never see Amazon do,” someone familiar with the Hearst project said. “They aren’t going to give up control of the devices.”

I love that they are not afraid to let go and allow others to embrace this idea, they know that they have a handle on the market and with this new technology things can only grow and become better . Love this idea. 

What do you think, are E-ink readers better than the paper (non-green) version? Which would you buy?

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