Hurry! Free eBooks from Kaplan

Kaplan Publishing is offering 100 free eBooks in the iBooks Store. To see what books are available, you first must download the free iBooks app (which requires an iPad or iOS 4).

Launch iBooks, tap Store, tap the Featured tab, and tap the ad for Kaplan's free books, or go to tonyv.me/kapfree in mobile Safari. You are taken to a page where you can see the free books in the categories of College, Graduate, Law, Medicine, Nursing and Education.

Free books include in the Education category include First Year Teacher, Sharp Vocabulary, Sharp Writing, Kaplan 101 Biology Practice Questions, and SOS: Stressed Out Student' Guide to Handling Peer Pressure.

The books are free until August 30, 2010.

If you'd like to be in the know for timely deals on eBooks and apps, follow me on Twitter (username tonyvincent) and/or search Twitter for the hashtag #edapp.

Free Poetry Resources for You to See

K12 Handhelds has made available several poetry curriculum resources for Palm handhelds, Pocket PCs, and desktop/laptop computers.

You can download Types of Poetry and Poetry Anthology eBooks. The eBooks are in Mobipocket format and have lots of examples with linked vocabulary words. Mobipocket is a cross-platform eBook reader and you can download it for free. Windows users can even download the free Mobilpocket Creator for making your own cross-platform eBooks. [There are not versions of Mobipocket for Mac and Linux computers--but you can use a Mac to install Mobipocket to a Palm handheld.]

Also available from K12 Handhelds is a Poetry Scavenger Hunt in Microsoft Word format. You can use Palm's Documents To Go or a Pocket PC's Word Mobile to view and complete the scavenger hunt.

Another freebie is a 10-question Poetry Types Quiz in Quizzler format. Quizzler is available for Palm handhelds, Pocket PCs, Macintosh, and Windows.

K12 Handhelds also points to additional resources teachers might use, including two great poetry podcasts. The podcasts are from Houghton Mifflin and School Library Journal.

Finally, K12 Handhelds offers a one-page PDF called Poetry Classroom Activities that gives simple and advanced ideas for using these resources. Activities include comparing poems, creating a poetry blog, and highlighting metaphors, similes, and other literary devices in Mobilpocket.

Thanks K12 Handhelds for making these resources freely available!

Note: Recall my tip in Soft Reset #19... If you are trying to download a file and only weird text shows up in your browser's screen, click your browser's Back button. Then right-click (Mac users can Control-click) and choose "Download Linked File" or "Save Link As..." from the context menu. The file is saved to the desktop. If the file is saved with a .txt extension, click the file name and remove the .txt. Then the downloaded file should have the correct icon and function properly.

Can eBooks Help Reluctant Readers?

Kathy Schrock wrote a two-page article about eBooks in the current issue of i.e. magazine from SMART Technologies. E-Readers: Can Electronic Books Help Reluctant Readers? starts on page 10. Certainly the answer to the title of the article is a resounding yes!

Kathy mentions Dr. Terry Cavanaugh's book, The Digital Reader: Using E-books in K-12 Education. The book is full of advice and resources for teachers. It offers a list of five strategies for high school teachers to support reluctant readers. Though, these strategies can surely be used for all readers. Kathy briefly explains the strategies:

• Offer a wide range of reading materials.
• Use pre-reading techniques.
• Incorporate large-print materials.
• Engage multiple modalities.
• Teach important vocabulary.

Kathy summaries why eBooks are great for students: "The use of electronic books and the myriad of features available, can be of help to all students. The ability to access reference material while they are reading, highlight text with a virtual highlighter for note-taking and studying, and create a side note within the e-book to come back to later, are all key factors that enhance student's reading ability."

You can download the Autumn 2006 edition of i.e. magazine in PDF format. You can have a paper edition mailed to you by subscribing for free here.