Harford Students Testing Kindles, Nooks, iPads for Libraries

Slowly but surely, Harford County schools are getting rid of their books.

Well, sort of.

A pair of electronic reader pilot programs began this spring at Fallston Middle School and /. By the fall, Aberdeen High School will join the mix as students experiment with the Kindle, Nook and iPad 2.

By summer 2012, of Library Services Patricia O’Donnell hopes to know which electronic reader will be the best option for every secondary school in the county.

For many students, all three are more appealing—and convenient—than a traditional book.

“The Kindle—I like how you don’t have to flip the pages,” said Lauren Willats, a Fallston Middle School seventh-grader. “If you accidentally drop it or something you don’t lose your place.”

That’s the kind of feedback librarians at the pilot schools, like Fallston Middle’s Teresa Plumer, are collecting as part of the program.

“We have a lot of kids who look at a book and they can be intimidated,” Plumer said. “The fact they can look at it on a handheld screen; we’re waiting to see if it entices them to read.”

O’Donnell said she came up with the idea to test e-readers in select schools, and Associate Superintendent of Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment Bill Lawrence supported the idea.

“Instead of spending $300 for a [reference] collection, you spend less for the platform of the e-book and everyone has access to it,” O’Donnell said. “Kids are digital natives. We stress out about it—they don’t. They go in, they do what they need to do, and it’s not a problem for them. We have to keep up with them and one of the ways to do that is to do e-readers.”

Fallston sixth-grader Kaitlyn Trexler is proof of that.

“I feel like it’s a lot easier to read and you don’t have to worry about losing your page or anything like that and I feel like it’s a lot quicker to read,” Trexler said. “I just think that a lot of media centers should have the Kindles for students to be able to check out.”

O’Donnell said traditional books will be kept in the library, but money-saving, long-term investments will be made in e-readers. She is letting librarians decide which e-books to purchase for the devices. At the end of the 2011–2012 school year, the supervisor of library services will use the feedback to decide on one e-reader.

From there, a uniform device will be phased into all public middle and high schools throughout the county. The first wave of Nooks, Kindles and iPad 2 devices were purchased using $30,000 in grants that Lawrence’s office had received.

“We actually had one kid who liked it so much he had his parents go out and by him one,” Plumer said.

Soon, parents may be saving money, too.

Download the movie