Scoring points with Antolin
Kirson promotes the joy of reading

For many years now, Kirson GmbH has made it one of its priorities to do what it can to promote the joy of reading. As part of its 2009 Christmas Donation, Kirson agreed to sponsor an Antolin reading programme for six schools and two public libraries in the towns Neustadt an der Donau and Abensberg.   

Antolin is an initiative of Schroedel, the educational publisher. Pupils can answer questions in the internet about books they have read. Today, Antolin holds questions about the content of over 20,000 books for children and young people. For each book there are fifteen questions, each with a choice of three answers. To stop any attempts at cheating or simply guessing the answer, a point is deducted if the question is answered incorrectly.  

The pupils receive a user name and password from their teacher which they can then use to gain access to their own personal site in Antolin. In an overview, the pupils and their parents can read how many points they have scored thanks to their reading efforts. For example, they can display a diagram which shows how many books they read and answered questions on in a month. In particular for boys, who normally display more interest when they are compared with their peers, this is often an incentive to read more than would otherwise be the case.  

The teachers can view their pupils' results and use evaluation facilities to gain pointers on how to promote individual reading during lessons. The teacher can also send his/her pupils written praise and support using the internal mail feature.

The public libraries in Abensberg and Neustadt an der Donau are also supporting Antolin by applying labels bearing the Antolin crow to the spine of their books. This way, the participating pupils or, when it comes to the youngest children, their parents can select precisely those books for which they can later answer questions in the internet.  

For the time being, Kirson GmbH will be sponsoring the six schools and two libraries for a three year period. And to ensure that the interested pupils have enough reading material, the company also presented the public libraries and schools vouchers for purchasing new books. A total of 6,000 euros was donated for the entire project.

www.antolin.de

Kirson also places great importance on promoting and maintaining the reading skills of those people whose school days are now a thing of the past. For this reason, ever since the year 2006 the company has been holding an evening once a year in which an author reads from his/her book on the company premises. The last two evenings were each attended by approximately 250 guests.

The next reading will take place on 15th September 2010. The Austrian author Ursula Poznanski will be reading from her very successful youth thriller "Erebos" which deals with computer games and how young people can be easily manipulated. More information about this will soon be available on our website.

Report from the Mittelbayerische Zeitung as a PDF file

Link to the site for the Aventinus Grundschule Abensberg with information about Antolin and photo showing the donation being handed over

http://www.aventinus-gs-abensberg.de/antolin.htm