Conquering the Frankenbook
as an instructional technology integrator, I was eager to find meaningful ways to use a new
classroom set of iPads. Creating a
class e-book seemed like a good place
to start, so I approached a colleague
I knew would be willing to experi-
ment and put herself well outside
of her comfort zone. Not only was
Camela Giraud, our 10th grade liter-
ature teacher, enthusiastic, but with-
in days she responded by choosing
Frankenstein, a 10th grade honors text
readily available as a free electronic
file. Giraud prophetically dubbed
the project “Frankenbook.”
The planning began on a shared
Google Doc. We jotted down notes
about possible assignments and goals.
The document that evolved showed
that we had two clear sets of goals
reflecting our areas of expertise:
technology goals and content goals.
On the technology side, I wanted
to make sure students could actively
read on an electronic device. On the
content side, Giraud wanted to make
sure we could meet the objectives of
a literature unit using only digital devices. Embracing many unanswered
questions, we rolled in the iPads, and
the experiment began.
First up was introducing students
to the technology, including lessons
on e-book file types and the nuts and
bolts of downloading, storage, and
access. We looked at Project Guten-
berg ( www.gutenberg.org), a site that
offers free e-books. We compared the
content and indexes to the College
Board’s list of the 100 recommended
works of literature for high school
students. Students were amazed to
find that so many books on the list
were not only available, but available
for free. Project Gutenberg provided
the text of Frankenstein in multiple file
formats to accommodate the iPads,
Kindles, nooks, and assorted devices
our students would be using outside
the classroom. Our assumption was
that the book file would have the same
content across formats. This turned
out not to be the case. For example,
one version contained an index and
another did not. Beware! Not all files
in the public domain are created equal!
iPads are designed to be personal
devices, and many of the apps will
start back up again where the user
left off. That’s a problem if multiple
students are using the same device
and the same apps. Our solution was
to use an app, such as the Kindle app,
that allows users to log in to their accounts and sync through the cloud.
We also had obstacles on the literature side. The deeper into the text
the students got, the more difficult
it became to navigate because of the
complex nature of e-books, which
divide content into “locations” instead
of pages. But even if two students
are using the same file, the same device, and the same app, if one reader
changes the font size, it changes the
location of where that student is in the
book. Jo’s page 4 might be Jill’s page 6.
Dynamic locations are difficult to reference in the classroom, forcing students and teachers to search by words
or phrases.
Another challenge was citing
passages for student essays. With the
advent of locations instead of pages—
and a lack of publisher advice on the
proper way to cite—we were at a loss
regarding the proper format or style.
Giraud was additionally confounded in her attempts to teach from the
electronic note formats. She missed
her dog-eared, marked-up paper copy.
This led her to research and analyze
organic active reading and what it requires. She found that active reading
requires more than a list of notes that
apps provide. Rather, active reading
is “rounder, symbol filled, doodled,
arrowed, and colored,” Giraud said.
While the apps might provide highlighter colors, and newer notepad
apps offer handwritten annotations
to a PDF, the ability to engage in a
