This week’s Bookshare recommendations come to us from our Young Adult members.
Leave a CommentCategory: accessible instructional materials
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…
8 CommentsUniversity 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…
4 CommentsDo 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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