I went to several sessions today which focused on how our students are changing and need more media rich lessons. One good session was about audiobooks and e-books.
One great site for audiobooks is www.librivox.org. It is a volunteer project with readers contributing books by reading aloud books from the public domain. Your students could even volunteer to be a reader! It has poetry, short works, and novels, and many classics are there. This is a great and free tool.
Microsoft Reader which is a free download, can also be used to download electronic books to your computer. You can read the books from your computer or have them read to you(although it uses a “computer” voice). There is a cost for some of the books; however, it is less than a physical book would cost. http://www.microsoft.com/reader/default.mspx
The International Children’s Digital Library is an online library with children’s books from all over the world, published in all different languages. (a great site for foreign language teachers!) There are three formats that you can read the books in and you can zoom into the pages to see them more easily. http://www.icdlbooks.org/
The speakers also showed us these incredible “portable” book readers from the Follett company.
They are smaller than a mini-cassette and they come with little earbuds. The little device contains one book in the player, and can be checked out from a library. http://www.flr.follett.com/intro/playaway.html Students just check them out and there is now downloading or player needed!
The speakers also talked about Itunes audiobooks, and they are having their students record audio booktalks that can be downloaded from Itunes. Here is a link to all of the audiobooks available on Itunes. http://www.apple.com/itunes/store/audiobooks.html Evidently Best Buy has a grant program, and the two librarians applied for a grant for four Ipods for their library so they could download audiobooks and check the Ipods out. Great idea…
Just a few things that I learned today…
Oh Googling Goddess of Geeks,
…now if we could just have a staff development day where we could read about, try out and brain storm w/peers on implementation strategies…
Now do keep the geeky stuff coming…
I know…I’ve learned more in two days than I can implement or show people in months!
I hope next year our schedule allows for more planning days and training days!
I love the reading capabilities that are out there. I read today that Microsoft Vista the OS itself will have a dictation tool in it so you can talk and the computer will type for you.
Wow
Adobe Acrobat Reader 7.0 has tools in it to read documents to the audience who uses it. When I was in college, I would record audio books for the blind students at school. There just wasn’t a lot of books in audio format for students with visual disability.
When I went to an Adobe conference this week, someone gave me a business card from Adobe and it had the contact information in braille on the card. I knew when they handed it to me that Adobe is now onto something great.
Our students should not just know how to read a book on their own, but they should know how to read it out loud to others. Podcasting was and is a way to do that. To teach students a way to deliver content without a Power Point or a visual interference. To teach them how to script and to communicate audibly to an audience.
Love it all, Carolyn. Keep it up!
I would prefer to download my audiobooks directly into my device, like a phone, or iPod, rather than PC first then into device? I am waiting for my phones (and I know there are some that allow it) to handle downloads of my audiobooks. Why carry 3 or 4 devices with you? Here is a audiobook phone compatible list http://www.playsforsure.com/SearchResults.aspx?searchtype=GetStarted&cat=SmartPhone
Not many right now. Found in http://www.booktones.com audiobook phone compatible list
this is one great site for audiobooks is http://www.librivox.org. It is a volunteer project with readers contributing books by reading aloud books from the public domain. Your students could even volunteer to be a reader! It has poetry, short works, and novels, and many classics are there. This is a great and free tool.
audio books