home

SUNY-Buffalo Master's Project EDU690 Ruth Santiago Jenna Kubricht Jennifer Byrnes

= = **__ 1. Research idea and Rationale __**   Every school year, it has become more and more evident that the use of technology in the classroom is becoming a necessity. These digital natives that we deal with everyday in the classroom has evidently expressed an increased amount of anxiety to traditional methods of teaching. Reading fiction and non-fiction stories from conventional books, meaning a reading material made out of paper and cardboard, for example, has been a very challenging task. Often times, parents resort to buying the books online assigned as homework to their children, uploaded to their gadgets to encourage them to comply with the subject’s requirement.   Our group of students particularly came from a high socio-economic background where they have access to the latest gadgets upon request. At home, a significant amount of time is spent on video gaming, chatting online and listening to music from their mp4 players, or reading e-books. These students even communicate amongst their peers in a language based on what they’ve learned while being exposed to the activities mentioned earlier.   Considering this situation we would like to find out if reading e-books and using a program called “Voice Thread” to do quizzes and book reports compared to reading traditional books, answering worksheets and writing book reports will increase reading comprehension level and improve students’ attitude towards reading. We plan to allow our students to bring their electronic books in school and make a careful observation of how their level of enthusiasm would change when asked to read in the classroom.