Epic! - Free Books for Kids #ipaded #reading #freebooks @EpicKidsBooks

A colleague of mine told me about the site Epic! today and after looking at it I was impressed.  It's a reading site geared toward K-5 classrooms that gives free online reading materials and books, with many popular titles and authors.  It's very similar to Zing which we use in our district too.

Educators can create free accounts and add up to 36 students, who can read for free while they're at school on school devices.  If they put the app on their devices at home it costs $4.99/month to access their profile and read the same books.  Right now the site claims to have over 10,000 books along with an iOS and Android app.  When a teacher creates an account he/she can add students and give them a unique four-digit code to login.  As long as the teacher signs in once on each device then students can read from that device with their own personalized choices, avatar and more.

The site includes personalized recommendations, the ability for teachers to track students' progress and the option to have books read to them, for some titles.  Pretend like you're in a real library and check it out!