NEWS: Academics

Ten students in the Fourth Form at South Kent School had a webinar training session with California-based e-reader company Subtext.

Subtext is a free iPad app that allows classroom groups to exchange ideas in the pages of digital texts. You can also layer in enrichment materials, assignments and quizzes—opening up almost limitless opportunities to engage students and foster analysis and writing skills. The students got to see unreleased upcoming features, including pdf compatibility and google docs integration.

“The beauty of Subtext is that I'm not restricted to bookstore offerings, I can import text from any web page or ePub document. Thanks to Google books and the Guggenheim project, there are thousands of free, excellent ePub versions of literary classics available, and I can convert almost any text document to ePub format,” said Matt Winkler, English teacher.

“The biggest benefit was the ability to "meet the boys where they are" in terms of social networking,” said Winkler. “Our discussion of the text was no longer limited to our class meeting times. Vibrant debates took shape within discussion threads spontaneously posted by students. This is a great example of how interactive ebooks and the iPad can enhance learning. In this case, by offering an educational environment that is second-nature to our students - namely, social networking,” he added.

Students also felt the benefits:
Connor Sundquist "It's a great tool for a class to interact with each other."
Joey Cipollone "Pretty good to read from and keeps you active while reading."
Zixiang Tang "It is actually much better to use those apps to read as a group other than read by myself."