Teaching Learners with Multiple Special Needs: Library

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

An Electronic Visit to the Library

To make a short story long I have a couple of students in our extended year program who earn a visit to my office to spend time with me as part of their positive behavior support plan. One of these students loves interactive stories, so today after work I was bookmarking some of our favorite interactive book sites on the office computer and went to my local library's website to add their free (with a library card) link to Bookflix.

While I was on the library website I started exploring some of the things that they offer online, either for free or with a library card. I am excited about using many of their offerings in the fall with my students. I can't wait to explore some of the audio books that can be downloaded (and sometimes even burned to a CD) with some students via Overdrive. (I am feeling very excited about keeping my Audible.com credits for myself; call me greedy!) You can search if your library has access to Overdrive on their search site or at your library's site.

In addition my public library offers access to the following paid online services for free with your library card as well:

Salem Health (an online medical and health library)
Learning Express Services (test tutorials and practice tests for GED, GRE, US Citizenship, Middle School Reading, etc)
Global Road Warrior (travel planning and travel advice)
Rosetta Stone (foreign language software online)

A little clicking around and I even discovered that a library in our consortium has free access to Tumblebooks! Now if only one of the consortium members had free access to Brain Pop and Brain Pop Jr. I would be hysterical with glee.

Did you know that my public library is so cool they have a Myspace page? Yours might too.

What does your public library offer?

Image via WikipediaSummer reading programs are a staple in schools. They are also often sponsored by local libraries, book stores and other programs. As I have written before such programs can be adapted to our learners. An article on LD Online suggests the possibility of developing a summer listening program for learners with special needs. I love this idea and all of the suggestions on how to do it. From e-books with text-to-speech, to parents reading to children, to downloaded MP3 audio books and audio books from the library on a CD player. Also there are interactive books like Silly Books, TumbleBooks, and Bookflix. (Our local library just added Bookflix to their website.)

Sites and Articles about Summer Book Programs

Where to Find Summer Book Programs (There is no reason a student with a disability should not be able to count books listened to instead of read)