Agenda  Check in  Why this is important?  How we arrived here?  What we are doing?  Text readers and Audio books  Student Access

Check-in  What strategies do you use in supporting students with reading grade level text?  How do you use technology to support student’s reading grade level text?

Why is college easier then high school?

The needs we saw…  Increased graduation requirements for all students in content areas  Increased presence of students in general education  Increased pressure to take and pass tests  Students were already in those classes and I had to support them but did not know how  I could not find the books I needed and did not know where to find them.

What colleges do: University of Oregon  Provides access to wynn, MP3 copies of all books, and Kurzweil files.  Provide alternate format books by chopping and scanning student’s texts  Students need to have a documented disability to access services.

What colleges do: Oregon State University  Kurzweil  Daisy format free readers  Daisy on I-Pad  Students need to have a documented disability to access services.

Student preference  Important consideration in making audio books for students is considering their needs and preferences  Consider what barriers students have coming to the reading and try to mitigate those when creating audio books  Students will stop listening to audio books whenever listening to books or textbooks is slower then their preferred mode of completing homework

How we got here...the first year  Pilot project: Spring  Initial success: higher grades for one student  Started collecting audio books  Expanding the project with more books, Ipods, converting and storing books  Started creating systems for distributing to more students  Researched copyright

How we got here… the second year  In-service training for district staff in Fall 2009  Formed the Access to Instructional Technology group.  Collected more books, experimented with new formats  Started getting clarity about copyright  Expanded use to more students

How we got here…the third year  Approached district for a grant to expand to all high schools  Another pilot with a chopper, scanner, and more sophisticated software.  Provided technology training, software and hardware to all high schools.  Continued to collect books, cds, and streamlined how students access books in alternate format.

How the project is growing?  Developing training materials for staff and student training  Collecting and converting textbooks to digital books  Continually figuring more efficient ways for students to access these materials  Figuring out how to align the audio materials with the text the student has in class

Glimpses of the project: What we do: the chopper  2 Choppers  Bought a heavy duty paper cutter  Can cut up to 1 inch thick paper back books  Use it to cut off the binding of the book

Glimpses of the project: What we do: the scanner  4 High speed scanners for every high school  Automatic fed scanner  Double sided copies

Glimpses of the project: What we do: the program  Kurzeil program  Open the scanned document and convert into MP3 for novels and plays, and into a kurzweil file for textbooks.

Glimpses of the project: What we do  Moodle  All files are stored on a district run website  All high schools store hard copies of their formats in house and store an additional copy on the website  All schools then access the website  Only registered students and teachers may access the moodle.

Organizing your materials: Tools  Moodle  External Hard Drive  Server space

Student Access  Moodle: On-line storage and access  Audio CDs  Flash drives  Web versions of Kurzweil  Free Natural Reader

Is accessible instruction a free for all?  Right now, we can only provide audio for students with qualifying disabilities  Students need to have a 504 or IEP  Students with disabilities are learning to access support that they will receive in the post-secondary level  Appropriateness for regular education students

Some things to consider:  Appropriate gender voices for first person narratives.  Aligning chapters on audio and the real book  Find good copies to scan instead of discarded copies  Text readers read anything on the page including captions end of pages and stamps  Pronunciation of words in text readers may be mispronounced.

What colleges do: Lane Community College  LCC students can get their textbooks and novels chopped and scanned into an alternate format.  The book is returned with a new binding.  Students need to have a documented disability to access services.

Getting Literature in MP3: Introduction  Technology expands and develops daily  Multiple formats to access books and textbooks  Huge variety of possibilities and costs  Many organizations that are already converting and providing digital copies of text.

Getting Literature in MP3: Audibles.com Advantages  On-line web based service where you can download any of up to 85,000 titles for a cost per book.  $150 for 12 books  Books can be downloaded directly on to an MP3 player Drawbacks  Can only use the books you download on a few devices.  Books are encrypted with a device that restricts their sharing beyond the few devices.

Getting Literature in MP3: Audio CDs Advantages  Audio CDs are great because they use human voices.  There is an increasing amount of audio CDs available on-line and at bookstores. Drawbacks  The audio CDs are not always organized according to chapter or pages.  Students get really confused when they do not know where to start listening if they start later then their class.  Not all of the books that are read in class are available in audio CD.

Getting Literature in MP3: Librivox Advantages  Free public domain books that are in MP3 format and can be downloaded unto a MP3 device.  These are created by volunteers and also have human voices. Drawbacks  Public domain books are great for searching for the classics like Huck Finn but even some Shakespeare plays are not available.  Many content teachers assign more contemporary books.

An organization to consider: Bookshare Advantages  Offers a large variety of books for students with print disabilities.  Books are downloaded from the website and put into a text reader- it is then read to the student in a computer voice.  The voices have come a long way in the past few years.  Students can access this service after high school Drawbacks  Once again, not all the books are available for students however the organization is willing to take recommendations for converting books.  Very strict about who uses the service.  One book=one student

Text Readers: introduction  MP3 are not the only way to provide students with the grade level text  Text readers in computers that read text to students  These programs also allow kids to highlight text, answer questions on tests, and read the web.  The voices have come a long way.

Text Readers: Wynn Advantages  Colleges use this reading software  Possible to convert files into MP3 format  Can highlight text, take tests, and complete worksheets. Drawbacks  The voices are not as good as the one’s that are available in Kurzweil and Natural Reader.  About $1000 per license

Text Readers: Kurzweil Advantages  Have all text read to students  Web based and networked version, students can access at home and at school  Students can highlight notes, take tests, and complete worksheets  Easy to open all files and convert to MP3 format  Colleges and Universities use this format Drawbacks  Expensive  The voices that are converted to MP3 are not the same quality as other text readers  Between $ for a single license

Text Readers: Natural Reader Advantages  Free version can read any documents on your computer in and out of the program.  Paid version allows you to have 2 good voices and the ability to convert any text into MP3 format.  The paid version costs $25 Drawbacks  Students will not have the full range of study tools available as in Wynn or Kurzweil.  Students have historically not enjoyed the voices for the free version

Text Readers: Mac voices Advantages  Most Macs, and all new Macs, come with a text to speech option.  High quality voices  Comes free with the computer  Can read anything on your computer Drawbacks  This program does not allow you to create MP3.  It is only available on Macs

Text Readers: Adobe Reader Advantages  Free download for Macs and PCs.  Allows students to read documents in a PDF version. Drawbacks  The pace of the reading can be a little halting.

The Voices

Questions: