The International Children’s Digital Library (ICDL) Foundation is targeted for students K-8. The main purpose of this website is to provide free books for students all around the world. Their mission is to support children in becoming members of society. They also want students to learn about and to respect diverse cultures, languages, and ideas. The ICDL’s focus is to build a collection of books where kids all around the world can enjoy. 

The ICDL wants to keep families and their native culture intact. When families move around, their first language often might get left behind. It then becomes impossible to find books written in that language. Many children grow up without the knowledge of their heritage because of this. The ICDL makes it possible for parents to pass down books from their youth to the next generation to keep their culture alive. 

Here is a video about navigating through the ICDL website!

I choose this tool to explore because I believe that having access to books in the classroom is very important. I found that being able to have access to books from different cultures will allow for the site to reach a huge global audience. Another great part about this foundation is that it is all free. This allows for more children to have access to reading books. In my future classroom I will find the ICDL to be a very helpful tool that I could use. I could let my students explore the website themselves so that they can learn all about different cultures and languages while also reading their favorite books digitally.