Worldreader is a global non-profit organization, which is founded by McElwee and David Risher, headquartered in San Francisco, California. This organization is offering digital books to people in the developing counties on a mission to bring digital books to children and families in low-income countries. The organization provides readers e-readers, mobile phones and other digital technology. Till now, the organization reached in 69 countries, providing them over 28,500 book titles in 43 different languages ranging from Afrikaans to Swahili. It works with 180 publishers to acquire and digitize compelling and relevant content for readers. The organization also works with donors, organizations, communities and governments to develop and digitize …show more content…
He worked at Microsoft and Amazon over a decade. Rishe has two daughters and always reads to his daughters. In one family trip, he found that not all children around the world could access books and he felt that it would be wonderful if every child in the world could access to the books like his daughters, which could help them know more about the world, gain knowledge and skills, and realize their dreams. Based on his experience at work and private sector, he thought instead of distributing traditional books, distributing e-books to the people who need the most would be 100 better or more than that. So he came up with the idea that combining new technologies to provide immediate access to hundreds of local textbooks, storybooks and international literature.
Situation:
Today, illiteracy threatens over 785 million adults over the world and more than 250 million children of primary school age. Education remains an inaccessible right for them around the world and they don`t have the awareness of necessary to reach books, gain knowledge, improve their lives and realize their dreams. This would greatly impede the social and economic development of those countries where they live.
What does it do & how does it
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Structural & resource problem
Some problems Worldreader facing are not what they can solve. Decaying classroom conditions such as inadequate space, poor lighting, peeling paint and inoperative heating and cooling system are affecting the learning. Apart from that, educators and other resources are limited and stretched to the max.
3. Cost problem
E-readers have some advantages over other electric devices in terms of cost. But Kindles are still relatively expensive. So it is impossible to provide one child one device. Some of the devices are locked overnight for safekeeping. In this way, the devices are not used at its most. And as most of the people there are not quite familiar with high-tech products, due to incorrect usage, the percentage of breakage is quite high. The cost for replacement is also pretty challenging for this organization.
Conclusion:
After none-profit Worldreder gives Kindles to children and families, many of findings are promising: The students with access to Kindles showed significant improvement in reading time spending, comprehension other reading skills. Students and teachers had access to reading materials, which accelerated the learning process. It has potential to improve reading skills and reading performance, and more importantly it can increase enthusiasm for reading as a
To be literate is to have “the ability to read, write and speak English proficiently, to compute and solve problems, and to use technology in order to become a life-long learner and to be effective in the family, in the workplace and in the community” (Roman 81). Literacy is a foundation to almost everything in daily life, from the most basic information on food labels to the most important notice on bank accounts. Reading and writing is crucial to know and useful to have. It is surprising how illiteracy can be so common even though we are living far away from the period which the alphabetical order was first invented. There are many factors that cause illiteracy to keep in mind, for example; poverty, population growth, government corruption, and even gender-based has a part just to name a few. To place the blame solely on one party is not appropriate because each of these factors plays a role in illiteracy in society today.
Learning disabilities are very common among students in today’s society. Some students have specific needs that must be met in order for them to learn, while other students are not getting the help that they need to succeed in the classroom. Reading disabilities, related to the disability of dyslexia (National Center for Learning Disabilities, 2014), can be met with certain assistive technology that can make learning to read easier for the students. A type of assistive technology that helps reading disabilities is an audio book that allows students to hear the book read to them with the option of following along (Raskind & Stanberry, 2010). Audio books allow the students to focus on the purpose of the book; rather than struggling to read the book and focus on what the book is trying to explain. Since this type of assistive technology reads out loud to the students, it can guide them to learn how to read certain words correctly and how to grasp the concepts of the book easier. A specific type of an audio book source is Audible (Raskind & Stanberry, 2010), which allows the user to download and auto book on to a “smartphone, tablet, or desktop” (Audible Inc., 2014, p. 1). This source benefits students because they can listen to book in a classroom setting or they can listen to the book at home, especially when writing a book report.
McClanahan , B., Williams, K., & Tate , S. (2012). A breakthrough for josh: How use of an ipad facilitated reading improvement. TechTrends, 56(3), 20-28. doi: 10.1007/s11528-012-0572-6
Illiteracy is defined as, the inability to read or write. After reading Jonathan Kozol’s “The Human Cost of an Illiterate Society,” I have never felt so sympathetic towards any group of individuals. The essay has several examples of the challenging problems illiterate individuals experience, and the effects illiteracy has on society. Illiterate individuals experience shame and humility, while being used for others’ personal gain. Furthermore, many illiterates have trouble communicating and making a living. I have to agree with Kozol’s main point; Illiteracy is an issue that should be treated as a main threat by democracy in today’s society.
(“Why Books?” page 1) Last year, Books for Africa sent 10 sea containers to Africa. (“Got books” page 1) Each container can hold up to 22,000 books and each costs $9,800. (“Books from America” page 1) Books are like video games in Africa, kids love them. So, that is why this organization sends books. They don’t only send books to kids in Africa they send E books, which are electronic devices that allow you to download books to them and you read them off of there. (“E-books for Africa” page 1”) Which is great since they don't have many books and the books they have are usually...
Illiteracy is detrimental to any society. First people must know what it is before the problem can be fixed. Illiteracy can be defined as the inability to read or write. Lately illiteracy has been moved up to the ability to comprehend what one reads or writes. There are 40 to 44 million adults alone in the United States that do not have the ability to comprehend words that they are reading. This is an enormous problem that can lead to even more devastating effects.
Lack of education and poverty often go hand in hand. Education begins at a young age and is an influential factor in determining ones financial status. Today, education remains an inaccessible right for millions of children around the world. More than seventy-two million children of primary education age are not in school and seven hundred and fifty-nine million adults are illiterate and do not have the awareness necessary to improve both their living conditions and those of their children.
Finally, parents are encouraged to read with their children at home which not only promotes literacy development with the children getting the adequate encouragement and support they need to read and learn from their parents, but also help in the children’s social and emotional development and achieve “more resilience to stress, greater life satisfaction, greater self-direction and self-control, greater social adjustment, greater mental health, more supportive relationships, greater social competence, more positive peer relations, more tolerance, more successful marriages, and fewer delinquent behaviors” (Desforges and Abouchaar, 2003).
I chose this topic because education is all around me. I am literally surrounded by illiteracy. From the moment I leave my door, to the moment I return, I am able to witness illiteracy in my society. Therefore, I could connect well to this particular topic in detail. So many children younger than me, of my age and also people elder to me do not have access to education. Even though 86.1% of the world is illiterate (CIA World Factbook), the other 14.9% have absolutely no access to education!
However, iIn spite of the current pre-eminence of e-books, it may be argued that they are not likely to replace print books anytime soon or possibly at all. Both formats have their advantages and drawbacks, which makes for one of them difficult to replace the other. Moreover, they serve differents needs and purposes. E-books are famous for their portability. Hundreds of e-books can be stored on a single device. Thus e-books don’t take shelving space and are convenient to take on travel, while even a few paper books are bulky and quite heavy to carry around. Numerous e-books are in open access, while paper books are not routinely available free of charge. E-books may be acquired and accessed immediately online, a feature I enjoy especially and treasure most: many a time I was able to buy and read an e-book at home within minutes of learning of its existence. Needless to say, e-books are considerably easier to cite and quote than print books, since the copy-paste feature spares us the trouble of retyping the quoted text. Another important advantage of digital books is their specialized software, which makes reading much easier: search and reference tools, changeable font size and day/night mode, dictionaries. Last but not least, e-books conserv...
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As more people began to access the Internet through smart phones and tablets rather than laptops and computers, it is not a surprise that they would also want to transform the American education system by bringing tablets into classrooms. In fact, a few schools around the country have already replaced textbooks with tablets and have seen improvements in students’ standardized test scores. Using tablets instead of textbooks is not only convenient and helpful, but it can also reduce the amount of paper wastes in school. However, it is not a good idea to completely transform textbooks with tablets with the current technology, for it can not only be damaging to the environment and costly to set up, but also might not be effective in improving K-12 education in the long run.
According to the most recent statistics in the World Education Report, a study released last year by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, almost one-quarter of the world’s population, or 905 million individuals between 15 years of age and adulthood cannot read. Women account for 65 percent of the globe’s illiterate population. That’s more than half! Many women become and are dependent because of this problem. Illiteracy rates among females in some South Asian and African countries reach 80 percent because of culture. In Nepal, 93 percent of women over 30 live without being able to read. The majority of women that have this problem are due to:
Reading print books not only improves speech but also helps gets a grasp of what reading books is all about. The TopTenReviews stated,” you 're never going to get that comforting smell of paper or the weight of a good book in your hands when reading an eBook” (1). Getting a brand new book, is ecstatic as the smell of paper or the turning of pages is part of tradition. Reading with a book is convenient because it does not have any battery power to operate. According to TopTenReviews, “Most of the time you have a good battery life but, there will be times when you forget to charge it” (2). Traveling with books helps when doing reading, it will be beneficial if the tablet dies. Reading with print books helps escape from technology that will be distracting towards the
This can be done by constructing buildings, for instance, schools which are going to decrease the percentage of illiteracy and this is the best solution. There is only one limitation for the solution which is the financial source, as if it was not huge amount there can be projects which will end, but it can be overcome by the satisfactory and trustworthy reputation and this can make people to trust the organization and donate more money. There are numerous pros for this solution that otherwise its cons. Education is one of the very powerful weapons that if used wisely is going to have a great influence not only for the educated person but even for the society. Firstly, education gives happiness as the child will be expecting a fruitful future because they are going to be self-dependent due to fixed salary which will raise the standard of living. According to an article called “Why is education important in life” they mentioned that because it gives the skills and tools for any person so they can explore the world, as without education it is difficult to communicate, read or even write. Furthermore, it will make the child more aware of the diseases which they may encounter due to bad nutrition or if they touch the blood of others or undergo sex with multiples, according to an article called “We