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Bookshare Blog Posts

Published June 24, 2010

Through Virginia’s Eyes – Painting with Macular Degeneration

A famous local artist, Virginia Doyle, has graciously lent her work to Benetech/Bookshare for display on conference room and hall walls. The unique aspect of this display is that in 2002, Virginia was diagnosed with macular degeneration, a medical condition of the eye that makes it difficult or impossible to read or recognize faces.  This disease is a leading cause of blindness among older citizens due to the loss of light sensing cells in the retina. Many view her work as representations of the world through the eyes and lens of a person with macular degeneration.  Viewers glimpse the world…

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Published June 22, 2010

Resources for Summer Staff Development

Many districts schedule staff development during summer vacation. Some teachers use the time independently for continuing education.  A good topic for this summer is accessible instructional materials (AIM) as these materials are rapidly finding their way into schools and classrooms.  Further, IDEA 2004 calls for use of AIM when indicated by a student’s learning style and IEP. Accessible books from Bookshare for qualified students are a great way to start bringing AIM into your classrooms, and good tools and resources exist to help you get started: 1. There’s a wealth of information on Bookshare’s site and Training page. 2. A…

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Published June 9, 2010

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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Published June 5, 2010

Top Talent!

The Bookshare Volunteer Program is very pleased to have the continued assistance of Dr. Scott Rains, the well-known author and consultant on topics about travel and issues in the tourism industry of interest to people with disabilities. The operations team appreciated Scott’s energy, creative new approach, and leadership so much that they decided to extend his interim contract and keep him on board as a Fellow. To support the growth of the Volunteer Program, Scott will develop a curriculum and training materials for volunteers, in addition to recruiting volunteers. For those of you who don’t know Scott, he is the…

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Published June 2, 2010

Enter Bookshare’s Summer Reading RoadTrip Contest – Win FUN Prizes!

FASTEN Your Seatbelt and ENTER Bookshare’s Summer Road Trip Reading Contest Discover new places! Explore! What’s more fun than a summer road trip? Bookshare’s Summer Road Trip Contest! Students in grades K-12 with individual Bookshare memberships can win awesome prizes like iPod Nanos, Victor Reader Streams, digital book bags and more! Participants will go on a “virtual road trip” across the 50 U.S. states by downloading and reading Bookshare books. Many of the titles come from the National Education Association – 50 State Booklist. Participants who want to go on a journey will share their thoughts about the books in…

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Published May 21, 2010

Let’s Talk!

What’s better than a good Bookshare book? The three new ways you can communicate with Bookshare. 1.      The all-new Bookshare Blog! It’s going to be Bookshare’s Greatest Hits. You, our Members, schools, volunteers, partners, publishers and students, have so many interesting stories and we want to tell them. This blog will become your space and our space for news, information, thoughts and stories.  Please subscribe to it so you can read the blog posts that are most interesting to you. And please do leave a comment when you visit! 2.      Ideas? This new forum, accessed from a new link on all pages,…

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