Valentine’s Sale!!

Good News — Valentine’s Day Sale Going On Now!!

Beginning today, the School eBookstore is having a Valentine’s Sale!  Get 10% off your Entire Order from now until Valentine’s Day!  Just pick out all your favorite eBooks, add them to your shopping cart, and then simply type in the Coupon Code Feb2010 when you Check Out to receive your Discount.  Don’t miss it!!

Both Evan-Moor and Teacher Created Resources have added to their inventory at the School eStore.  Teacher Created added 11 new eBooks, while Evan-Moor did some extensive revisions and upgrades, with a total of 68 new products that are now available.  Be sure to check out all the new resources!

Instant Teaching Resources

Technology has reinvented so many things in our lives, and it is changing the teaching profession, too. But like the rest of the world, sometimes the changes happen so fast that it is hard to keep up with everything. Enter the world of educational eBooks. This is one of the newer advantages that technology has brought to teachers, but too many teachers simply don’t know what eBooks are and how these books can make their lives easier.

It used to be that every time teachers needed another teaching idea for their classroom, they had to either get in the car and drive to their local (or not so local) teachers supply store, or they could leaf through a teacher supply catalog, fill out the order form, send it in, pay the shipping charges, and wait for it to arrive. But things have certainly changed.

Teaching resources have become as easy to come by as simply clicking a few buttons and downloading them to a personal or school computer. This means no shipping fees, no waiting times, no clutter on your shelves when they do arrive, and no hassles. And these are the same books by the same publishers that you would find at the store or in the teaching supply catalogs.

Unfortunately, many teachers don’t even know what an ebook is, or that they are available just for them. These books are not only instant, all classroom activities can be printed right from the downloaded file. Let’s say a teacher needs an activity on multiplication—but he or she needs it today. With ebooks, that is not a problem. Download the book, print out the pages needed, and the problem is solved.

What makes ebooks even better is that they can be used with another new and amazing advantage in technology: the SMART board. SMART boards are interactive whiteboards, and they are also sold by other manufacturers and called by other names. These boards can use PDF files, and that’s where ebooks come in. The downloadable ebooks are PDF files.

As if all this isn’t enough, there’s more. Most ebooks now come in Enhanced versions. This means that the text in the books can be moved, allowing the teacher to rearrange the book’s content to suit individual needs. You just can’t do that with a printed, paper copy.

Teachers, like everyone else, will find that technology can be mind-blowingly fast, and it can be confusing. But the good news is that at the end of the day, if you take the time to learn just a few small, new things, the new technology can make your life a whole lot easier. The world of educational eBooks opens up a whole host of advantages for teachers.

60 New eBooks from Saddleback Publishing

The School eBookstore has 60 additional titles from Saddleback Publishing.  And now is the time to buy while our “Everything is on Sale” Sale is still in gear!

Teachers Books On Sale

Every Teacher Resource Book at School eBookstore is on sale!  The entire inventory is offered at reduced prices, with an even greater discount on the featured sale items.  This sale will continue through the end of September, so take advantage of it now.

What are Enhanced eBooks?

Educational publishers are offering more and more of their inventory in the Enhanced eBook format.  What is an Enhanced eBook?  The difference between a standard edition and an enhanced edition of an ebook lies in whether or not you are able to cut and paste content.  A normal PDF eBook from the School eBookstore allows you to print out  pages for your students, but does not allow copying and pasting of any content.    The enhanced eBook gives you the flexibility to copy a segment of TEXT, and paste it on another word processing page, allowing you to rearrange content to suit your needs.  However, images or illustrations are not included.  The only content that can be manipulated in the enhanced ebooks is the text.

Teachers Books

This blog consists of reviews of teaching books available at SchooleBookstore.com. These books offer creative ideas for classroom games & student enrichment worksheet & activities. Since the selection is so large, the blog exists to help you decide which book best meets your needs!

What is an eBook?

Although we live in a digital age surrounded by technology, I still have teachers ask, “What is an eBook?”. The e in eBook stands for electronic, just like the e in email.  These are simply digital books that are read from a digital device, like your computer. There are several different eBook reading devices and file formats, but for educational resources, we’ll stick with explaining PDF eBooks on the computer.

Before you begin shopping for teacher’s eBooks, you need to be sure you have a program on your computer that will allow you to read them. Most teacher’s ebooks are offered as PDF files, for which you will need Adobe Reader.  The good news is that it’s free, and it’s simple to download.  Just go to the Adobe website and click a few buttons. Without the Reader, your computer will not recognize an eBook’s PDF files, and will just send you error messages or messages that it does not know how to open the file. Trying to open a PDF file with Microsoft Word or some other word processing program just doesn’t work. It’s like trying to play a CD in a tape deck (if you remember what those are!).

Now that you have your Reader in place, you are ready to browse an educational ebookstore to look at samples and make some purchases.  You will be pleasantly surprised to see full lines of top educational publishers on the internet, since shelf space is really not a problem for eStores!  And saving space now translates to your own shelves.  Since these books are stored on your computer, they keep clutter away from your own desk.  To make things even better, they also let you do your part in saving the planet. No paper or ink is wasted, no fuel is burned to transport the book to you, and you don’t have to use your own fuel or human energy to drive anywhere and pick it up.

Although retail price may be similar, you never have to pay shipping charges for eBooks, and you can access your book instantly. Forget placing an order and then waiting a week (or more).  Have it now.  And once you do get it, searching for something in the book is as easy as the click of a button. You can adjust your page to be as big as you need it for comfortable viewing, and you can highlight and note on pages if your eBook allows it.

Printing is usually permitted for educational eBooks since so many of the activities are designed to be reproduced for the entire classroom. You can print out only those pages that you need and leave the rest. Also, many teacher’s eBooks are now offered in an “enhanced” format,  meaning you can rearrange the contents of the pages and make them exactly how you want them before you print them out.

If you’ve never experienced the world of eBooks, now is the time to start!