Changes to Epic!                                                                               26 August

Thanks to those families who let us know their access to Epic online Reading resources had suddenly changed. Families have been receiving emails from Epic stating that their children have no access to Epic after 3 pm. 

As we know so many students love using Epic, thanks to Mandy Ryan for investigating the issue and exploring ways of trying to sort this out.

Epic is an American resource that provides access to a digital library for over one million teachers and their students. Access to the library has always been free for teachers and for students while at school. For students to have access to Epic outside school hours, a monthly subscription* was required for each child.

With COVID-19 and the implementation of remote learning, Epic generously allowed unlimited, free access to the library for all students out of school hours. We saw this as a great learning opportunity for the students at Laburnum Primary School during Learning from Home.

Now that schools in the U.S.A. are resuming onsite learning, Epic has made further changes to student access.

The changes are as follows:

• Epic School is where students can access the unlimited library during the hours 6 am – 3 pm each weekday. We recommend families schedule LFH tasks that use Epic within these hours.
• Epic Free is where students can access a limited library each weekday after 3 pm and over the weekend. Students are limited to 2 hours access a week and this time is reset each Monday.
  
  To access Epic Free:
  1. Parents will receive an email invitation from teachers, sent via Sentral/the student’s Epic page over the next few days. 
  2. If you want your child to access Epic Free, parents then create an account using a personal email address.
  3. Students access Epic via this email address and their current class code to use the limited library, outside school hours (after 3 pm weekdays and over the weekend).

More information on Epic Free is available here and this option, in addition to Epic School, should support your child's Epic Reading needs. Unfortunately, Epic do not offer school subscriptions at this stage, which is why the school had not been advised of any changes. 

Epic has been a useful and purposeful resource during Learning from Home. As feedback from families has been so positive, we will continue to use this resource during school hours, noting the changes that apply to use after hours.

Don't forget we also have other great online Reading resources, including:

• ActiveLearn (Bug Club/Rapid Readers)
• Storybox Library
• Sunshine Online
• Audible

and online community and library options are listed on our LFH for Parents page.

* What's the Epic subscription? Epic offers Epic Unlimited individual subscriptions at $7.99USD per month, if you’re interested in an individual subscription to the unlimited library.
The first 30 days is free and parents can access Epic Unlimited here. As we haven't used this at all, please understand that this is completely optional and is not necessary for LFH tasks.