Higher ed Archives - Page 4 of 7

Published April 25, 2012

Furthering Accessibility of Graphs at the International Space Apps Challenge

Over the weekend of April 21 and 22, two engineers from the Bookshare team, Gerardo Capiel and Rom Srinivasan, participated in the International Space Apps Challenge, a two-day event designed to bring citizens from around the world together to solve challenges relevant to spatial exploration and social need. It’s a “code-a-thon” weekend – a technology development marathon – with engineers on all seven continents and in space volunteering their time, collaborating on solutions to interesting problems. The Bookshare team contributed one of the challenges for the weekend: to continue development of MathTrax, an open source graphing application developed by NASA…

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Published April 20, 2012

Words of Wisdom on Transition from a College Freshman

How does a very talented, bright, highly motivated young woman with severe dyslexia succeed in college? How is she getting almost a 4.0 GPA, top grades in all her classes, without her mom sitting beside her, patiently reading every word in every book as she did for twelve years? All incoming freshman experience some college jitters, but this driven young woman, Elizabeth, was justifiably concerned about succeeding in classes with hundreds of others students who didn’t have dyslexia. Her story about her transition should inspire many high school seniors in similar situations: “When I applied to college, I asked for…

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Published April 16, 2012

Can We Give Too Much?

A guest post from Lucy Greco, a blind advocate for accessible technology. An Assistive Technology Specialist at UC Berkeley, San Francisco Bay Area, Greco is the user of various assistive technologies since the early 1980s. She is passionate about the ways technology makes the world more accessible to everyone but especially to individuals with disabilities. “For students with disabilities in college and universities, where do we draw the line between providing them support services and teaching them to be independent,” asks Lucy Greco. I graduated from California State University Hayward in 1997. The ADA was only six years old and…

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Published September 23, 2011

Does Bookshare Have the Books and Textbooks I Need?

This question comes up frequently and doesn’t have a clear “yes” or “no” answer. Every month Bookshare adds more of the books our Members want! We process hundreds of textbooks based on student requests and add lots of postsecondary titles from university partners. We added over 16,000 new books to our collection from April to June this year, including New York Times bestsellers as well as hundreds of new textbooks. Please consider some facts. Bookshare now has over 125,000 books; teachers and professors regularly assign many of these books as required reading. Over 6000 are classified as textbooks. Publishers have…

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Published September 1, 2011

Graduate Student Finds Books in Bookshare

Many thanks to Lauren Conner, graduate student, for sharing her story. Lauren Conner stumbled across Bookshare last year looking for postsecondary accessible books for her studies in Community and College Counseling. She attends Longwood University in Virginia and has impaired vision. “When I look for a textbook on psycho-pathology, ethics or behavior modification, I am thrilled that the digital book is already in Bookshare’s online library collection,” said Lauren. “Another member must have taken the same course and requested all the required books that I need. I love that!” Since birth, Lauren’s visual impairment made it difficult for her to…

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Published August 17, 2011

Hidden Gems

Many thanks to Judy S., a Bookshare member and volunteer, for this guest post! If you have a horse-crazy kid, or were one yourself, you’ve undoubtedly discovered the standard horse book fare, ranging from Walter Farley’s The Black Stallion to Dick Francis’ best-selling horse-racing mysteries in Bookshare’s collection. But did you know that Bookshare’s library contains many other hidden gems relating to horses? Here’s ten of my favorite lesser-known horse books, ranging from young-reader chapter books to adult mysteries to non-fiction titles. For the younger set, don’t miss Kristin Earhart’s Big Apple Barn series. It’s a great introduction to the…

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Published August 12, 2011

Making Research Fun With Bookshare – Part Three

Guest post by Deborah Armstrong, Alternate Media Specialist, DeAnza Community College, CA Different Reading Devices…Is it Time for a Change? If you don’t like reading books on your computer, have you tried portable reading devices? I found portable devices tedious so I taught myself how to use the two screen-reader friendly DAISY readers for Bookshare members –Victor Reader Soft and Amis. Both applications let me sort through books on my computer first. After I do that, I move the books to my portable device to read them. Also, consider downloading the free Read:Out Loud Bookshare edition text reader. This way…

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Published August 5, 2011

Making Research Fun With Bookshare – Part Two

A guest post, the second in a three-part series, by Deborah Armstrong, the alternate media specialist at De Anza Community College in Cupertino CA. Now that you can navigate through an accessible book and record notes and relevant information, it is time to search Bookshare and find books on a topic you enjoy or one that makes you curious. Keep your topic broad, but not too broad. If your subject is Animals, you will have too many books in your search results making it hard to select one. If your subject is poodles, you might not find enough. If your…

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Published May 11, 2011

Win an iPad 2 in the “Bookshare Everywhere” Summer Contest!

Tell us all the ways Bookshare made your summer fun! One of the best things about Bookshare is that you can take it anywhere you want. Whether you go on vacation, hang out at a local park, or curl up on a comfy chair at home, you can enjoy Bookshare books wherever you want. This summer, don’t just have fun reading with Bookshare, enter the summer contest and you might win some totally awesome prizes, like an Apple iPad 2! Who can play: Contestants must be U.S. Individual Members of Bookshare in grades K-12 and college. Don’t have an individual…

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Published April 15, 2011

Welcome Taylor & Francis to the Bookshare Family of Publishers

Taylor & Francis Group, headquartered in London and one of the world’s leading international academic publishers, has signed an agreement with Bookshare. They will grant world rights to all books added to the collection. Initially they will give us titles that have specifically been requested by our Members. *Members, if you would like to see Taylor & Francis titles added to the collection, please send your requests via our Contact Us form. Select the Requesting a Book title from the drop down. Taylor & Francis (T&F) is a two-hundred-year-old company, founded in the UK in 1798, with 20 offices worldwide,…

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Category: Higher ed