Photo Credits:ALYSSA FISHER
BY ALYSSA FISHER
Cooper City High School is going to be the first school in Broward County to create an eLibrary, giving students the option to check out books and textbooks on their smart phones, tablets and eReaders.
On Wednesday, April 11, Principal Wendy Doll, Media Specialist Brian Kelly and South Area Instructional Technology Specialist Michelle Megna sat down with Broward County School’s Media Specialist Lynne Oakvik and JMEC Management Inc. (Dunkin Doughnuts and Baskin Robbins) Franchisees Robin and Charles Cutler to discuss how to go about creating an eLibrary. The Cutlers, CCHS parents, brought up the idea, offering to underwrite the project to support the school.
“We saw how well our kids responded to reading on the Kindle, so we thought it could help motivate other students to read,” Robin Cutler said.
Oakvik works for the Learning Resources & Instructional Materials sector of Broward County Public Schools, meaning her department oversees textbooks, libraries and digital devices. Her role in the meeting was to provide support and expertise, explaining the pros and cons of working with Overdrive or Follett, two programs that would provide CCHS with the ability to check out and read books on digital devices.
“CCHS is the first school to do this, so there are a lot of details to work out,” Oakvik said. “I think Overdrive is the way to go, but we have to discuss it, especially because we don’t have a model right now.”
Overdrive, a global distributor of eBooks and audiobooks, is more advanced than Follett and is used by the Broward County Public Library. During the meeting, the group came to the conclusion to try Overdrive for a year, but there is the matter of cost. Overdrive requires $6000 a year to run, and that doesn’t include the cost of books. And because of the issue of Digital Rights Management, it seems, as of now, that a new set of textbooks and required novels might have to be bought every year. The Cutlers plan to stay involved and have their children create a fundraising committee, where they will continue to raise money throughout the year by donating doughnuts and other products to sell.
Media Specialist Brian Kelly
“We want to build it to where it supports itself,” Kelly said. “$6000 is a lot, and I don’t know if it’s possible to raise that every year. We will help; there is money budgeted for books, but the Media Center already pays for everything from VCRs to paper to cords. So we might have to change to Follett within the next few years once it becomes more advanced.”
Switching eBook distribution companies is not as simple as it seems. If the $6000 is not paid, CCHS will lose everything it paid for, including all the books. To make sure they are getting their money’s worth for a year but not losing too much in case of a change, Kelly will start a committee toward the end of summer, after he works with Oakvik on the contract. The committee, consisting of some student representatives from each grade and teachers, will receive an email link providing them with all the available titles. They will browse, determine their favorites and report back to Kelly. In August, he will firm up the titles and then they will go through beta testing.
By September 1, 2012, CCHS plans to go live with Overdrive, providing students with a 21st century way of reading. There will be popular books like the Hunger Games and Maze Runner trilogies to check out and Kelly predicts CCHS will end up renewing it for at least an extra year and adding more titles. Overdrive is simple and can be accessed at home from a link on CCHS’s website, which will take you to a site Overdrive will help design. There will be apps available for download based on the eReader being used. After putting in your student number, you browse and click the book you want. There will be an allotted amount of books that can be checked out, so not every student can read one title at the same time. There are no renewals, so after two weeks, the book will disappear from your eReader and appear back on the virtual shelves.
“Two years ago, I would tell you I wasn’t into it,” Kelly said. “It seemed the only people talking about eReaders were those selling them, and kids certainly weren’t using them. But now I like it; it’s changing. The technology has caught up with our needs.”
Watching his daughter interact with her Kindle Fire, Kelly knows these multifunctional systems are the future of the school libraries. While he likes reading on them for the big print, the students love the apps and entertainment features. To keep students reading, he reads and buys books based on his audience, trying to please both teenage boys and girls, something he hopes to continue when the eLibrary opens.
“We just really want to get the students reading,” Kelly said. “That’s our main focus.”
