eBooks for Students

Garfield School District will be working with Southwest Educational Development Center and five other school districts to apply for an eBooks grant.  The official title of the project is, “Engaging Students through Reading Innovatively Delivered eBooks” (eSTRIDEe).  If the grant is awarded by the State Library Commission the districts could receive $25,000 to start a regional eBooks system in which Garfield School District would be able to participate.  If the grant is awarded, it would deliver eBooks to over 12,000 9^th-12^th grade students in the region.  The eBooks would help develop a love of reading as they become more familiar with electronic books.  There are many benefits with this project for students in Garfield School District.  Students would be provided with copies of eBooks which could be shared across schools and would eliminate the need for multiple copies per school.  This ability to share copies between schools and districts will increase the accesses to thousands of books for students in our schools.  It would be impossible to provide this type of access to reading materials for the students in Garfield School District by purchasing hard copies of all these books. The eBooks will provide a very affordable solution to allow greater student access to books.  The grant application is due on July 15 and I will keep you informed of the progress of the project and let you know if we are awarded the funding to provide the eBooks to the students.

–Superintendent Ben Dalton