Blog #6: Epic
Epic
Epic is a digital reading platform found on Dr. Wang’s PowerPoint slides where students can access thousands of books to read or listen to as an audiobook. Students have access to many different genres of books (fantasy to nonfiction), different reading levels, and various lengths of books. When students read each book, teachers and parents can see the progress of the students showing them the time they have spent reading, how far they are, and what books they have read so far. Once each child reads a book, Epic personalizes the choices of books they offer based on the interests they detect the student has. It also has extra tools where students can highlight what they are reading, look up definitions of words in a connected digital dictionary, and “read to me books” where students can listen to the book while simultaneously reading it.
The Use
This is a very easy tool to use for anyone who chooses to use it and is especially useful for teachers. Teachers can set up a class code for each student to log into. Teachers can set up an assigned reading, a certain amount of time students are supposed to read each week and tracks the reading for each student and the entire class. This is great for reading centers, research projects, read aloud, and independent reading.
My Experience
In my experience, from my placement in a 4th-grade classroom, my mentor teacher uses epic very regularly for one of the 4 reading centers. She assigns students all one story to read that connects with a subject that we are learning about. We also use Epic as a site students can go to for free time if they wish, where they can practice their reading. I can see how this “read to me” option would be very valuable for some ELL students where the guided reading could help them get familiar with the relationship between the spelling of words and the pronunciation.
Connections to the Course / Likelihood of Using in the Future
Epic is a great tool to use for the 5th section in the 7 Events of Instruction Framework, Eliciting the Desired Behavior/ Guided practice. Epic invites students to practice reading to learn more about new concepts, for comprehension, or for practicing the integration of new vocabulary words in their readings. In the future, I think I will use Epic as a tool possibly for reading centers like my placement because it works very well. I may also use it to help the students learn about a certain subject and practice reading throughout the week.
Hi Kylie,
ReplyDeleteYou did such a good job explaining this technology. I have never heard of the technology epic but after reading your blog I have a better understanding on how this is used for students and even teachers. I think that this is such a nice and easy way to read books or even listen to them. I like how you are able to access anywhere and not loose your books as you normally would with library books.