Bookshare Product News Archives - Page 4 of 5

Published April 2, 2013

New Bookshelf Tool Keeps Member’s Favorite Books ‘Top of Mind’

Avid reader Annette Moore, a relatively new Bookshare adult member, says Bookshelf helps her organize and track her favorite genres and keep them at the “top of her mind.” Annette has lots of diverse reading interests! “In addition to Christian fiction and romance, I like historical journals, books written in letter format, biographies, and I am a huge weather buff,” she said. “Bookshelf helps me categorize the books I want to read fast!” One of the books on Annette’s Bookshelf is called Letters Home to Sarah, a compilation of letters from a gentleman in the Civil War written to his…

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Published March 12, 2013

Web Reader Screen Shortcuts and Educator Tips

The Bookshare Web Reader makes it easy to preview or read Bookshare books because you don’t need to download and unzip them. It’s a quick way to preview a book or read it in its entirety. Below are some shortcuts. Do you use a screen reader? You can use your screen reader with Internet Explorer 9, Safari, or a recent version of Firefox to read with Bookshare Web Reader. To start, find a book, then select the “Read Now” link. Expect to hear an announcement saying that your book is being packaged. Once complete, Bookshare Web Reader will open, and the…

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Published February 7, 2013

Top Tips for the New Bookshare Web Reader and Bookshelf

Many members are already enjoying the benefits of the new Bookshelf and Bookshare Web Reader. As with anything new, we’ve received a few questions. First-time users, you may want to start with our first-time users guides: First-time Bookshare Web Reader First-time Bookshelf Top Tips for Bookshare Web Reader If you are sighted, use Google Chrome because it provides text-to-speech using your computer’s built-in voices and word-level highlighting. Note that when you select “Read Now” for the first time, you will be prompted to do a one-time installation of a Chrome extension. If you use a screen reader, use Internet Explorer,…

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Published February 4, 2013

First Reactions: Educators and Members Talk about the Bookshelf and Web Reader

You probably saw that Bookshare just released two new pieces of functionality, the Bookshelf and Web Reader. If you haven’t heard the news, our website has lots of information, including links to training, videos, and webinars. You can also read the announcement. Both tools are going to make it quicker and easier to get books to Bookshare students, saving time and effort. The Bookshelf will help individual members organize their books. Several educators and members have already tested and used the tools and have agreed to share their feedback. We encourage you to try the tools too! Here’s what they…

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Published January 23, 2013

Educators, This Week Is the Week for Individual Memberships Because…

An announcement next week about changes to Bookshare will let students with individual memberships (IMs) get books more quickly and easily. So get them ready! Giving students individual memberships is really easy: In your account, in “My Organization,” select “Members,” and click the box next to the names of all members you plan to give an individual membership. Then select the “Individual Membership Form” at the bottom of the screen. Forms will have the basic information about your students filled in. Print the forms and send them home for a parental signature, email address and mailing address. Teachers or parents…

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Published July 26, 2012

My Google Summer of Code Experience with Benetech

Many thanks to Thushan Ganegedara for this post about his summer project. I’m Thushan Ganegedara, a 3rd year undergraduate from the Department of Computer Science & Engineering, University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. My interests are Mobile Development and Computational Intelligence. My first-ever experience with Google Summer of Code has been with Benetech. I have realized that Benetech is indeed “technology serving humanity.” I feel fortunate to work with a set of employees who are technically competent yet very friendly and helpful. My project is associated with the ‘Go Read’ Android application. Go Read is a free e-book reader that people…

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Published May 1, 2012

Google Selected Benetech for Google Summer of Code

Students to Contribute to Development of Go Read Every summer, Google sponsors “Google Summer of Code” (GSoC) which offers stipends to postsecondary student developers and pairs them with open source mentoring organizations. Given Google’s high engineering standards, selection as a mentoring organization is a great honor! This year, Benetech was awarded three, top-notch students and is asking them to work on Go Read development projects. Go Read is a free, open source, accessible e-book reader for Android phones and tablets. Currently optimized for visually-impaired readers (and usable by anyone), Go Read allows readers to enjoy Bookshare books whenever and wherever…

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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 9, 2012

Assistive Technology Spotlight – Texthelp Apps

We are happy to feature innovative new assistive technologies in this blog. Today, we want to tell you about a Web App from Texthelp, eBook Reader, that reads Bookshare books in the Cloud. eBook Reader is one of a new suite of Web Apps that work within browsers on iPad, iPod Touch, iPhone, and other mobile devices as well as PCs and Macs. A short video shows how the eBook Reader works. Current Apps include: Read&Write Web, eBook Reader for Bookshare® eBooks, Speech, and Dictionary. Students in schools and colleges who use Read&Write GOLD can use these Apps at school…

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Published February 16, 2012

What Is Text-to-Speech?

Special education, assistive technology, and technology in general is chock full of jargon. Bookshare uses terms that may seem like a foreign language, a fact I was recently reminded of while sharing a ride to Capitol Hill with a wise director from one of the many Parent Centers with whom we work. She encouraged me to stop talking like a PhD and to start talking like a “Ph-DO.” To this end, we’ll dedicate this and future blog posts to making our terminology and technology more accessible to all. This week, we focus on “text-to-speech” or TTS for short. What is…

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Category: Bookshare Product News