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Category: accessible instructional materials

What We’re Reading {September 3, 2010}

The Bookshare team reads a lot of books every week. And so do our children, friends and families. Among those, there are always a handful of standouts — the shortlist, the books with buzz–perfect for children, tweens, teens, college students, and young adults. “What We’re Reading” brings you picks of the most interesting recent reads, along with short descriptions; sometimes we’ll even include candid comments and notes from the team. We’ll be bringing you “What We’re Reading” every Friday, be sure to look for it and download some great books! This week our recommendations come to us from our tweens! All books are appropriate for grades 5…

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Digital Resources in the Classroom?

A guest post from Robin Seaman, Publisher Liaison for Bookshare “At the revamped Association of Educational Publishers (AEP) summit, the opening session took a unique tack.  Months earlier, the AEP decided the best way for traditional publishers to understand what teachers needed and wanted in digital resources in the classroom was to hear from the teachers directly – using the digital tools already at the teachers’ disposal,” explained Frank Catalano, the noted educational consultant. Frank worked with the AEP and the social networking site edWeb.net to solicit teacher videos to be submitted via YouTube and he posted the following in…

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Get the Most Out of Study Time with Textbooks From Bookshare

This very informative article written by Deborah Armstrong, Alternate Media Specialist at De Anza College in Cupertino, CA,  provides some great tips and ideas to get the most out of your study time reading textbooks from Bookshare. She is a lifelong learner who is addicted to reading and says that she’s downloaded over 1,075 books and has read over 900 of them.  While this post is a bit longer than others, it’s really good. ****************** If you are new to electronic books, or don’t read much, you’ll find study skills training intended for print readers might not work well for you. Worry…

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What We’re Reading {August 27 2010}

The Bookshare team reads avidly. And we read a lot of books every week. And so do our children, friends and families. Among those, there are always a handful of standouts — the shortlist, the books with buzz–perfect for children, tweens, teens, college students, and young adults. “What We’re Reading” brings you picks of the most interesting recent reads, along with short descriptions; sometimes we’ll even include candid comments and notes from the team. We’ll be bringing you “What We’re Reading” every Friday, be sure to look for it and download some great books! Mockingjay (The Hunger Games Trilogy #3) by Suzanne Collins – Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has…

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Collaborative Philanthropy: Deepen Your Commitment to Bring Social Change to Low-Income Urban Neighborhoods and Rural Communities

By Marcy Guttman, Summer Associate for Corporate Philanthropy Wisdom can often come from unexpected places.  I remember a message that I read when traveling in the New York City subways: “kindness is contagious, and it begins with you.”  Huddled in the crowded masses of people, holding on to bars and handles touched by thousands of other travelers, I generally tried to avoid “catching” anything.  However, reading those seven words made me realize that kindness is something that I not only wanted to “catch” but also desired to pass on to others. The gratification of doing something kind for another consistently…

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Is Braille Now Optional?

Is learning braille now optional? If so, why? Or is optional braille another example of the weakness in today’s educational system – decried by the Obama administration – that allows students to get by, not learn the tough subjects, and not graduate ready for college or a career? In letting today’s youth skip braille, are we handcuffing them for life? Most would agree that learning can occur auditorily and that for many, auditory learning is the preferred mode. Many software applications (including those available from Bookshare) and devices render printed content as spoken language for readers with visual impairments and…

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University Partners Help Each Other

Bookshare’s University Partners Program has grown substantially. Today, 25 university partners (please see the list below) regularly contribute books they have scanned on their local campuses to benefit U.S. students with print disabilities. By pooling books scanned on campuses in Bookshare, university partners help each other reduce the nationwide challenge and workload of providing accessible books for postsecondary students.  Scanning once and sharing saves costs associated with scanning and conversion. Finding a textbook that a student needs gets easier and takes less time; campus DSS staff are saying that more and more, they are finding books their students need in…

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Do Accessible Instructional Materials Work?

Every educator would like an answer to this question, as accessible instructional materials, AIM, become more prevalent in classroom use. Think of AIM as the books from Bookshare or content “read” in non-traditional ways, beyond print on a page. Often reading AIM combines multiple modalities such as seeing a word and hearing it at the same time. Good news is emerging that yes, AIM does help improve student outcomes. We have early, encouraging indications from informal research, not from controlled studies, pointing to better performance. The first sign of success comes from an informal survey of teachers in K-12 who…

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