Hello! This is the first of our NT English Team Blogs, where hopefully we can keep you up to date with what we're doing - and of course you can comment and let us know what you think!
So, we've been beavering away for what seems like a Very Long Time preparing our new AQA GCSE English 2010 series, and it's all starting to pay off now that the books are coming out! The English & English Language Student and Teacher Books for Higher and Foundation are published and we're absolutely delighted with them. Ok we're a bit biassed but we love them and we hope you will too! That's not all, NT's speciality is blended learning and we've released evaluation batches of the associated online resources, along with our online-only Literature text support products, so you can have a play and see what you think. There's a link to the right of this page where you can find out more about exactly what we're publishing.
Meanwhile, we've been busy with other things too, I recently attended a forum on The Future of Reading run by the National Literacy Association at the Birmingham Education show - did anyone reading this go? I thought it was great, really engaging speakers and topics - I was particularly fascinated by David Whyley's account of how e-reading is taking off in Wolverhampton schools. Despite being an old-fashioned book-lover, I find the way students are able to consume literature now really inspiring and hope more children will engage more easily with reading if it's delivered in a more personal way. I happen to own an e-reader, and recently conducted an experiment to compare it with my beloved paperbacks by taking it on holiday (with no paper backups whatsoever). On the plus side it fitted in my handbag neatly and I was able to pack at least three more pairs of shoes in my suitcase instead of a stack of novels, the battery lasted the whole week and it wasn't a bad experience, on the whole. However, I think the edition I have needs more intuitive and flexible functionality (touch screen, colour, wifi, etc), so perhaps I would prefer one of the newer iterations of the device. Conclusion? Think I'd still pick up a paperback. Anyway, I hope the NLA manages to create a useful manifesto from the forum, looking forward to reading it. I'm also delighted to say I managed to meet David Crystal, who I think is brilliant and did an excellent job of chairing the day.
Well, that's about it for today, we'll keep you posted as the rest of the 2010 series publishes (won't be long!!!), please do feel free to comment and chat with us!
All the best,
Emma
I'm looking forward to seeing the GCSE resources for English :-)
ReplyDeleteE-readers are pretty smart looking (and I peered at the one being read by the person sitting next to me on the tube yesterday) but I like to get away from a screen every now and then.
I've yet to try an e-reader so it was Interesting to hear the result of your experiment, Emma. What was the verdict at the conference about the future of paperbacks? It reminds me of my dear mum and her love of CDs- she is fascinated by my iPod but swears she'd never give up the pleasure of getting a CD out and popping it in the CD player. I wonder whether in 10 years or so people will see my bookshelf of beautiful leather-bound hardbacks and think, 'how cute and retro!'
ReplyDeleteAt the conference it was very much the feeling that it wasn't either or - young readers may start off reading primarily on screens but once they're hooked in, you'd entice them with the smell of a paperback, rather than the other way around for us, the book generation. It may well encourage more readers - you can hide WHAT you're reading as well as that you're reading anything at all (if it's uncool to read, I never cared but lots of children do!) by reading it on a mobile device, also you can mark pages, annotate, highlight, and you get a clean copy rather than a dog-eared copy that's been through the hands of a hundred students before you... all good benefits!
ReplyDeleteCongrats on getting all the new resources out and on this fab blog!!
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