Action Research Topic

Action Research Topic:

I decided to address the issue of literacy. Our campus has seen a decline of literacy amongst students for several reasons. One of the most obvious is that books and reading in general compete against a very powerful force known as the internet and what it has to offer. Many students prefer to play games on a computer or game console as opposed to read a book, like the old days. As a result of this decline, the TAKS scores on our campus are very low compared to national and state levels. I started to think about how adults keep up with books nowadays and noticed that many people including myself have switched to electronic text or electronic books. One product many people use to keep up with their favorite books is the Amazon Kindle. Sony has their own version called the E-Reader and other companies like Apple are including it for free on devices such as iPods, iPhones and iPads. Most books are available via electronic texts and are available for instant download. So, here it is...my research topic question: "Can new emerging technologies like the Amazon Kindle in the classroom help and interest students to read once again? What kind of effect would it have on campus TAKS scores and how else would the school and students benefit from using this technology?"

This research topic plan I believe is reasonable and feasible. The cost of the Amazon Kindle is about $139 not including bulk or education discount. We have 8 Reading teachers including ESL teachers. If they each had a class set of 35 @ $139, the total cost to purchase these e-readers would be about $38,920 (not including any type of educational discount, assuming that there is one). This is a relatively low price considering our campus just spent about $80,000 on TI calculators to help students with Math. The price does not include class sets of books to load on the device but after looking around online, many popular books are available for as low as $6. If the school would buy class sets of these im sure they would get them at a fraction of the price. In addition, according to Amazon, these are the following features of the kindle selected: High contrast screen, different fonts, weighs less than a paperback book, battery life up to one month on a single charge, stores up to 3500 on one device, built in wifi for instant download of books, fast page turns, dictionary built in, highlighter, lookup, big selection of books, FREE out-of-copy books (over 1.8 free), free books samples, and Read-to-Me (text-to-speech) feature. Source: Amazon

Just reading those features, you can clearly see how it pays for itself and addresses many issues such as ESL readers with the text-to-speech feature, larger font to address educational modifications for those who need it, you can make notes and highlight and even use a dictionary that is built in students don't know what the word means. Incredible, is the word I would choose to describe this product. My question is simply, why hasn't anyone at my campus thought of this before?

It is easy to see that the students will benefit from the study as well as teachers. Students may develop a renewed love for reading and maybe even some adults (teachers). This topic is future focused and there is a simple way to test it's effectiveness. Currently, we are not using these devices. Once they are purchased and used campus-wide for 3 years, we can look at teacher reflections, student input and surveys about the use of the device and lastly State exam scores to determine it's overall effectiveness.

Since we don't currently have this on our campus or district, please feel free to comment if your campus has had any experience with this technology in the classrooms. Any input would be appreciated!