District 203 Turns To EBooks To Aid In Learning Amid Pandemic

NAPERVILLE, IL — As the new coronavirus pandemic continues, Naperville Community Unit School District 203 is turning to ebooks to give students access to reading materials for educational and recreational purposes.

The school uses Sora, an ebook app to give students access to thousands of titles, Cathy Gottlieb, Naperville Central High School Learning Commons director, told Patch. Gottlieb said students have access to about 2,400 titles via Sora, including library books and some required reading.

Gottlieb said the district relied heavily on Sora during the initial days of the pandemic, when the school's libraries were closed. Gottlieb said, "The convenience is really nice, especially since the library was closed.”

Gottlieb said the Sora system works a lot like a library's print book system. One student at a time can check out a library ebook to read on their phones or the district-issued Chromebook computers. The book checkouts expire after two or three weeks, but students can renew books if no one else has put a hold on them.

Gottlieb added that the district's English department also uses Sora to assign books. With Sora, students can highlight portions of the book and take notes, which the teachers can access if needed.

Gottlieb told Patch schools can also create recommended reading lists for students via Sora. Currently, the district has reading lists that focus on anti-racism, contemporary black authors, LGBTQ issues and poetry, Gottlieb said.

According to Gottlieb, the district started building its ebook collection six years ago. Whereas there are about 10,000 titles in the district's collection, students are still turning to the thousands of titles in the Sora collection for reading pleasure.

Gottlieb said the preference for ebooks is "generational" and that high school students still seem to prefer print books, whereas younger students prefer ebooks.

Nonetheless, the district is getting "several hundred" ebook checkouts a month. "Kids are finding [the books]," Gottlieb said, "They're reading them."