Epic! - Digital Picture Book App

Epic! is an incredible digital picture book app available for free to educators and librarians. I've personally used this app with students and have found great success engaging students and getting them "hooked" on a digital title.

Some notable features of this app include:

• The service is completely free if you are a verified educator. It is relatively simple to sign up and as long as you work in a school as a teacher or librarian in the United States or Canada, you have full access to everything the app offers.
  
• The app provides unlimited access to thousands of books. Many of these titles are considered high-quality literature. A large percentage of them are well-known books or popular children's series. There are also a variety of titles published especially for the app that you would not be able to find elsewhere. This gives the app a unique variety within its titles that works to encourage students to read with diversity in mind.
   
• Epic! gives educators access to create unique profiles for each of their students. These profiles are helpful because they recommend titles to individual students based on what they've previously read or their self-reported interests. The profiles also track students' reading progress, which can help a teacher gauge a student's stamina and how quickly they move through books. 

Although there are considerable benefits to using this app, there are some drawbacks to consider when introducing this to your students. Primarily, like any digital picture book service, students must be taught how to use it and navigate from one book to another. Epic! has a rating system that students can engage with at the end of each of the books that have been read, so this is another element that can enhance the reading experience but requires some form front-loading. 

Additionally, students being introduced to a digital media for the first time tend to think of these kinds of apps as a game. In my experience, students I work with often try to get to the end of the book as quickly as possible because they enjoy swiping through the pages This is an obstacle that any teacher needs to help students overcome in order to successfully introduce digital texts. 

Overall, however, Epic! is a great application that allows access to its books on iPhones, tablets, and desktop computers. It is easily accessible and has a wide variety of high-quality, interactive titles that get students excited about reading.