Monday, December 13, 2010

Free Ebooks from Google

Google has released a Ebook store. Google Ebooks can be accessed online at the following website: http://books.google.com/ebooks.  The ebook store houses a large collection of ebooks that can be downloaded. The books are available in formats for the iPhone, iPad, iTouch,  Android, the general web, Nook and Kindle.

What is unique about Google Ebooks is that Google stores your books in the cloud. That means you can access your purchased or free books from any of the above mentioned devices. Once you purchase or download a free ebook it is stored in your online Google account. You can then read the book from your computer at school and then open the same book from your ipod touch at home.  Books can be downloaded directly to a device for when internet access is not available.

There are thousands of free public domain books available.  A complete listing of the free titles can be found here. Students may sign into Google Ebooks with their Google Apps for Education user name and password that we have created for them.

The accessibility of ebooks in the cloud offers many advantages for teachers and students.

  • For public domain books used in instruction (example: Great Expectations) teachers may only need to purchase a class set.

  • Students can access the book at home from their computers or mobile device. A student who forgets a book at school can access it at home.

  • Faculty members can easily differentiate classroom reading assignments with the availability of ebooks.

  • Faculty and staff can download professional development books and access them on-demand from any mobile device or computer.

  • Students with disabilities can utilize many of the assistive technology features available on electronic devices such as highlighting, text to speech, enlarging of text, and color options.

  • Students may publish reviews of the books they read on the site.


Enjoy!

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