Librarian brings gift to Searingtown

Richard Tedesco

Karen Kliegman remembers her excitement when she first learned she had won a $10,000 technology grant from Optimum Lightpath to buy eReaders for students at the Searingtown School.

“I was shocked. I was jumping up and down. I figured I’d take a shot. I wasn’t expecting that I would win,” Kliegman recalled of the call from Optimum officials.

Thanks to the grant, the Searingtown School will sometime next month receive between 20 and 25 NOOKColor eReaders – valued at approximately $189 each – and e-books that go with the readers.

Kliegman said she filed an application after seeing an Optimum advertisement announcing that it would award $100,000 in technology grants to Long Island schools.

“It was an online application. So I decided to give it a try. I wrote up a grant and it got accepted,” said Kliegman, now in her 11th year as library media specialist at the Searingtown School.

Kliegman said she has written successful grant applications in the past, but this was by far the largest she had secured.

Kliegman said she proposed the eReaders because of the appeal the technology holds for younger readers.

“It’s a tactile experience, touching the screen and all that. It covers a lot of different needs. The kids are sop excited about this. This is what they’re growing up with,” Kliegman said. “It doesn’t replace the book on the shelf, but it is an exciting alternative.”

She said some students need to read books with options to take notes while reading or to have picture books read to them.

Kliegman’s submission, “iRead, uRead, weRead,” was selected as one of the winners in Optimum Lightpath’s Transforming Education with Technology grant for its approach to “leverage technology to improve instruction,” according to a press release issued by Optimum.

Searingtown was one of 11 Long Island schools that won grants of 157 schools that applied. A panel of experts in various technology fields reviewed the applications.

Initially, the eReaders will be stored in the library where they will available for fourth and fifth grade students to check out and take home. Kliegman said the eReaders will also be used by teachers to develop classroom lesson plans.

“Digital books are becoming more and more part of kids’ reading world. It’s just something that is very quickly becoming part of their world with iPads and everything else. It’s an alternate way to provide a reading experience for the students,” Kliegman said.

The NOOKcolor eReaders are produced by Barnes & Noble, according to Kliegman, who said they’ll typically be loaded with 20 to 40 books in each device.

“Especially in these times, it was a great Christmas gift,” Kliegman said.

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