Tuesday, 30 July 2013

My New Favourite Tool - Readlists

In my never ending quest to learn more I have been exploring the offerings at Modern Lessons and in their free course "5 Powerful But Little-Known Ways To Use Your Apple iPad" I discovered a real gem.  Welcome to Readlists...


For the uninitiated, Readlists is a free web tool which allows you to collate a list of URLs and then download them into a collated ebook (ePub\mobi) for offline reading in the app of your choice. As we have iPads for Years 8 and 9 at my school, it is a simple process to download the book to the iPad and use it with iBooks.

10 Reasons why I think using Readlists to create ePubs for iBooks is an excellent way to support learning:
  1. It's free.
  2. Students don't need the internet which for some is still an issue at home.
  3. Students can highlight key points.
  4. Students can make notes and stick them in a location which provides context for revisiting.
  5. It is possible to make the text larger for those students with vision and literacy challenges.
  6. For those students who struggle with organisation - they don't have to keep going back to the LMS to access links, the entire collection has already been downloaded to their device and is ready to go.
  7. iBooks makes it possible to change the background colour to black or sepia if the eyes need a rest.
  8. It's a free textbook which is more up to date than any you could buy.
  9. iBooks remembers where you are up to in a book and you can also bookmark your page.
  10. The "speak" function allows an audio reading of the book for those who require assistance.
Go on, give it a go - what do your students have to lose?


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