ebooks and more

I cannot fathom all that I have learned on handhelds thus far. I will begin my blog with what I learned in a third grade classroom. Of course, I just so happened to be at Willowdale Elementary subbing, my favorite thing to do. I looked at the plans and saw that I was to be teaching sketchy with the kids on the subject of science and the earth and moon rotation. I have to admit that I freaked out at first. How was I supposed to do something that I have never done before. All it said was to get the handhelds from Tony and then hand them out in number order. Crazy, I definitely had my head in over my heals. However, after kindly talking to Tony all was good. I was to help Tony as he was there to help the class. This was a lot better. When it got time for the kids to do it, I was amazed at how much third graders knew about handhelds, as well as what a Sketchy could do. I guess that I was first under the impression that sketchy was just a way to make "sketches", but rather it was kind of like an animation and powerpoint on the computer. Therefore, if you want to make the moon rotate around the earth, you can just draw the different stages and play it in motion. It was a neat process. I went on this day to class to learn about the world of e-books. I am amazed about all of the e-books out there, but was surprised that textbooks haven't been published yet as e-books. I was wondering if they had too many pages to publish, or if there was a maximum amount that a handheld could hold? I think that e-books would be very benificial in a classroom or outside of a classroom, but what about the illustrations?