The Digital Reader

from the Charlottesville, VA News Leader:

A handful of third-grade students are sitting on the floor of a classroom at Burnley-Moran Elementary School, surrounded by bins of fantasy, fiction, adventure and Beverly Cleary books.

But that’s not what these students are reading as they huddle next to one another on the carpet and on cushions in this Charlottesville school. Instead, each of them is holding a Kindle, the popular electronic book reader manufactured by Amazon.com.

“It’s a little bit better than the books because you can do everything on it,” said student Stella Russell, who was reading a few chapters out of “Highway Cats” by Janet Taylor Lisle on her device.

Burnley-Moran’s third-graders are using Kindles to read as part of a program during the second half of the school year. Piloting the technology has been done in schools across the country, even as close as at the University of Virginia’s Darden Graduate School of Business Administration. But it could very well be the first time in the area that 8- and 9-year-olds are using them in class to read.