EPIC!

Week of February 8^th- February 12th

This week I used the app called EPIC! with my students. From a teacher’s perspective, I really liked this app! Epic! provides an unlimited selection of E-books that can be read instantly. This app is one of the few apps that offers thousands of well-known and famous children’s books that students can easily access and read immediately. This website allows for teachers to create their own profile that creates a class where each student gets their own profile that is individualized just for them. This game-like app was created in order to get children to read instead of play video games with their electronics. It gives students a personal library that they can take anywhere with them. Truly a game changer app in the eyes of a teacher.

I used this app a lot throughout the day. On the first day, I helped show the students how to log in, create a profile, and answer the questions about the type of books that they liked. The students then had free access to this app whenever they wanted to read books from the app. I used the app during Daily Five time. They were allowed to read an E-book from the app during 'Read to Self' time. My students by day three were fighting over who got to read from an iPad, because they all wanted to. Students were also allowed to get an iPad and read from the app once they completed all their work. It gave them an incentive to finish their work and their reward was educational and fun!

As anyone can see from the surveys distributed to my students at the end of the week, my students absolutely loved this app. The average score for how much the students liked this app was a 4.45 out of 5. That is four and a half stars and for the score to be that high, the students must have really enjoyed it. When asked if this app makes the students want to read more, twenty-one students said yes and one student said no. This student was sick for two days so he only had three days with the app and one of those days consisted of filling out the interest survey. For question three, which asked the students how much this app motivated them to read, the average score was a 4.36 which is the highest average score yet! This made me excited and am going to find a way to use this app more in my classroom. For question four which asked if the app made them feel like a better reader, the average score was a 4.45, which means that they think the app helped them a lot! Last but not least, when the students were asked if they would read from this app again, twenty students said yes and two students said no. Overall, these scores rating this app were fantastic. One student even said to me, “Don’t make me stop reading! Actually don’t make me ever stop. I love this too much.” To me, that says it all.

There were a lot of positives with EPIC!. In my opinion, I absolutely loved this app and so did my students. I think the reason why is because this app creates a personal library just for you. First, it picks age appropriate books for each student. When you are creating a profile for each student, the students are asked to take a survey as they are making their profile. It allows them to pick out different genres and topics that they like to read about. Then the app creates a personal library that is just for that child. It recommends list of books that they think you might be interested in and list of books that go along with each genre or topic the student chose that they were interested in. Along, with all of these books, it gives the students titles of books that they can be chose to be read to. There are books that can be read to them, along with a list of audiobooks. Teachers can manage each child’s profile and see which books the student is reading. Once you click on a book to read, it tells you the title, author, how many pages, appropriate ages, a summary of the book, and the Lexile Measure. You can dim or brighten up the screen and you can track as you read. Each students’ profile will allow them to have different books and keep their place in the book they are reading. Once you begin to read, you tap the screen in a swiping motion, just as if you were turning the pages of a book. The app also will allow you to zoom in on the words, which is good for some of the struggling readers. A child can always change their preferences and search for certain books. This means that a class can all read one book together or read their own individually, picked out books. Another reason why this app was so successful was because the books on this app are great reads. They have well known books on this app, like The Boxcar Children series. Being a young and new teachers, I have a small supply of books in my classroom. This opens up a new and endless supply of books for my students. Lastly, I like this app because it rewards the students with badges on their profile. This was a hit with my class who is very competitive with one another. They were all trying to read to gain different badges. Overall, I would say EPIC! was a huge success with myself and my students.

There honestly were not that many negatives that my students or I noticed as we used this app. I do wish that the app was a little more interactive with the text. I wish that for each book the page could be read to you or that you could highlight the page as you go. Next, I wish they would provide some information on the authors of the books. I think this would be cool for the students to make those connections in their minds. The last negative of this app was that we had some difficulties setting it up. We had to set up our classroom multiple times and some students had to take the interest survey four or five times before it registered and worked on the iPads. Otherwise, besides these few hiccups along the way, I was very impressed with EPIC!.

This app will be used a lot in my classroom now. After seeing the students’ positive response with the app, I want to be able to continue using this app during Daily Five time. When students are finished early with their work, they are now allowed to grab an iPhone or an iPad and read from the EPIC! app. This motivates the students and they are getting to read a little more in school. I also sent out an email to my parents informing them of the app and their students’ profile. If they respond, I am giving them the information so they can download the app onto their child’s iPad or tablet at home so they can continue reading the books that they are starting to read in class from the app. I loved this app and cannot wait to continue to use it for the rest of the year!