We were very interested in trying out a few of the unique, media-enhanced, digital books from Weigl Publishers!
WHAT IS IT?:
I received 3 e-books: Glaciers, A Lion’s World, and There Once Was a Cowpoke Who Swallowed an Ant from Weigl Publishers.
All of these books included a code that can be entered on a website in order to unlock media-enhanced digital content for the books. Basically, you can read the straight-forward e-book version, but you can also access the enhanced version. We much preferred the enhanced versions!
These are not subscriptions…once you purchase an e-book, the included access code will allow you to access the digital content for that book for an unlimited period of time.
There are many series of books to choose from that appeal to children in grades K-8. In fact, there are over 1,800 media-enhanced titles available!
Try out a live demo of the book I Am an Elephant to see what kinds of enhancements you can expect.
OUR EXPERIENCE:
The Glaciers book is from the Lightbox series on “Earth’s Water.” This book is for grades 3-6. I was surprised at the extent of information included in this book! There’s so much to learn that even I found it fascinating and learned some new facts!
Each turn of the enhanced digital page allowed us to unlock additional links. We could have the page contents read aloud with just a click of the mouse. That worked out great for both of us so we could concentrate on the illustrations and photographs on the pages while we listened to the text. The only thing I didn’t like about the audio was that it was a very computer-generated voice and not a natural speaking voice. But I got over that pretty quickly by focusing on the content instead.
Some pages included an additional internet link that took us to more information on the topic from another source. Some links opened up related videos that really added a lot to our understanding of the material. Some links gave us printable worksheets to complete to check on what we learned.
And at the end of the book, we had a quiz that we could even take online, and it was automatically graded. Holden surprised me by scoring 80%! That’s not bad for a kid with ADHD who has trouble sitting still for too long. And there was also a quiz on the vocabulary terms from the book. Both were an excellent way to check for student comprehension. And there were even instructions on the last page for an optional related experiment.
There was so much rich content in this book that I could honestly see using it as the basis for a unit study. You could easily split up the content over a period of days, perhaps completing a two-page spread with all of the included links and extras each day until the book was completed and then wrapping up your study with the quizzes and the experiment at the end of the book. If I were going to use more of these books at this level, I would definitely split it up over a school week so Holden could soak it up better and not have to sit for as long. We spent most of an hour on this book alone using all of the enhancements! We particularly enjoyed the videos. They were truly fascinating! One of them showed us the largest calving event ever captured on film. That’s where icebergs break away from a large glacier. It was awesome to watch the churning of the water as the ice chunks rolled and pitched into the water en masse!
Holden’s finishing up 4th grade, so the other two books that were for grades K-2 were definitely beneath his level, but we enjoyed them just the same.
The book A Lion’s World is from the “EyeDiscover” series. It was actually pretty cool! The e-book had beautiful full-color photographs, but the enhanced version was definitely a step up with video animations of each page. Instead of a photo of two lions nuzzling, for instance, you got a looped video clip of them nuzzling each other for several seconds as the story was being read aloud. The video clip of the male lion roaring was breathtaking! It’s hard to imagine how loud and imposing that must be from just a photograph, despite the story explaining that the lion’s roar can be heard from 5 miles away, but the audio of the roaring in the video clip makes it much more real!
The whimsical storybook There Once Was a Cowpoke Who Swallowed an Ant is from the fiction series, and it was actually very funny! We giggled together about how silly it was for the cowpoke to be able to ride his horse into his own mouth and into his stomach, much less to do so in order to retrieve an ant! The audio voice was of a woman reading the story with feeling. We enjoyed that a lot. It was like having a bedtime story read to you. With that book, you had the option of reading it on your own or having it read to you. If I had very young children, I can see where having a collection of these kinds of stories would be a wonderful addition to your bedtime story library. It would give your children the benefit of using the computer or tablet on their own, having the story read to them, and having the opportunity to follow along to assist them in their own emerging reader skills.
Overall, we enjoyed these stories very much. This is the first time I’ve seen books with so much media enhancements added to them. The variety of books available with such rich educational content means I could find just about anything I needed to enhance our school studies. I’m already eyeing a number of them for topics we plan to study in the coming school year! With content ranging from science, social studies, language arts, visual arts, sports, and biographies, there are plenty of opportunities to supplement our learning!
Take a look at what other Crew members have to say about these awesome media-enhanced books from Weigl Publishers by clicking the banner below.
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