2012 VoyagerSopris Blog Contest Winner

By Michelle George

    I was visiting my mom not long ago when I had a compelling conversation with an old friend of hers. This woman, I’ll call her Ellen, is a formidable lady. She is smart, successful, experienced, the ruler of all she surveys. Growing up I always had a healthy measure of fear and intimidation whenever I was in her presence. It’s interesting that now that I am an adult, that really hasn’t changed much. What also hasn’t changed is my complete respect for Ellen as an intelligent and thoughtful person. I guess that’s why our recent conversation took me aback.

    I mentioned that we were considering getting my mom an e-reader or tablet of some sort. My mom is 79 and a bit technophobic, but she was intrigued by the opportunities that the new technology seemed to offer. Not only would she be able to communicate easily with her family overseas, but all sorts of books would be at her fingertips. When I mentioned this, Ellen was immediately on the offense. It was clear that she had been thinking about the subject for some time, and this was just the trigger to let her well-honed ammo fly. Ellen explained with vehemence that e-books, and the tablets that delivered them, would be the death of public libraries as we know them.

    I was so surprised by this sage woman’s reaction that I only muttered a few weak statements about how “cool” the technology available can be for avid readers. Since that day I’ve thought several times about Ellen’s lament, and I can confidently say that I respectfully disagree. Here is why. Ellen and my mom live in a relatively large suburban community. They have large, well-supplied libraries that carry tremendous holdings of fiction and nonfiction, along with a complete computer lab and all of the latest digital tools. I live in a small, rural community. My school library has about 8,500 books on its shelves. Before we acquired Internet and the state provided a research database, we had nine periodicals available in our library. Nine. I’m sure some of you remember teaching the use of the Reader’s Guide. Imagine doing it with nine possible resources. The two sets of encyclopedias were our best and most current sources of information.  

    The local library couldn’t provide much more. Many of my students live out of town, so a trip to the local library really isn’t feasible. If they do make it to town, that library doesn’t have many more titles than our school. For our small town, digital resources have increased the texts available to my students exponentially.

    Not only do my students have more research resources, but digital readers and e-books also help engage my less motivated and less able readers. Last spring we purchased a classroom set of e-readers. When I have the text on these readers, most of my student can’t wait to get reading. Our budget is small, but there are literally thousands of high-quality digital books available for free. I’ve also found a large number of PDFs that can be transferred to the e-readers. One of the best aspects of these digital tools is the interactive capabilities. My classes have been really working on deep reading strategies this year. With an e-reader, students can highlight and take notes all over the text. If they encounter an unknown word, they can look it up immediately. All those great reading strategies that we’ve used for years—utilizing sticky notes, dots, highlighters, and such—have been replaced by this one highly functional tool. Readers with vision problems can change the font or increase the size of the text. Best of all, when a student finishes a book he or she has several more to choose from.

    So next time I see Ellen I’m going to marshal my courage and share with her my passion for e-book readers. I hope that I can help her see that these digital doodads are not the harbinger of doom for public libraries and print books. In fact, perhaps these readers will reconnect the young learners of today with the delight of the written word. 

    Modern libraries will no doubt look a bit different than they did when Carnegie began his great endowments, but I am hopeful that they will continue to provide both information and entertainment for generations to come.

    Michelle S. George is a language arts middle school teacher in Orofino, Idaho. She has a B.A. in English and secondary certification in English, reading, and journalism. Michelle has been teaching seventh and eighth grade for 20 years, and still loves going to school—as a teacher and a student. She has published a variety of lesson plans and written several award-winning grants.