Digital Books - Special Qualifications (Except Loyal Books)
Open eBooks is a partnership between Digital Public Library of America, The New York Public Library, and First Book, with content support from digital books distributor Baker & Taylor. This effort is made possible by generous commitments of publishers with funding support provided in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and is part of the White House ConnectED Initiative. Educators that are in the following groups qualify:
Head Start, Title I or Title I eligible School, USDA Food and Nutrition Program,Federally Qualified Health Center, Title VII recipient, Military family support program, Library with an E-rate of 90, A program primarily serving children with disabilities (INDIVIDUAL SPECIAL EDUCATION TEACHERS!!), A program where at least 70% of children come from low-income families. Students can check out 10 books at a time...parents can have the app on their phones, tablet...etc. Students can login on up to 6 devices and access all their books.
Steps to get individual student access codes.
Start here - OPENBOOKS users will then click the Sign up at FirstBook. This is another website that manages the accounts. (To avoid a lot of their extra "sales pitch" pages come back to the "OPENBOOKS" page from above and select the Step 2- Marketplace link. )
After educators signup for accounts and "CHECKOUT" (like users are purchasing) the number of student codes an educator needs for their students. There isn't a cost, it will show $0.00, but this is how the process works on the platform. Educators can choose a grade level band or select "all" for the codes that are being requested. Users can go back to the account at anytime and "purchase" more codes, so don't worry if the need for more codes comes with getting additional students.
Educators can printout Parent letters and write each student's code to send home, or just a reminder for teachers to help students login at school.
The platform is working on being available on the web/ChromeBooks before the end of 2016, but right now it is just iOS and Android.
**Open Dyslexic font can be activated on this platform for the students that need that accommodation.
Head Start, Title I or Title I eligible School, USDA Food and Nutrition Program,Federally Qualified Health Center, Title VII recipient, Military family support program, Library with an E-rate of 90, A program primarily serving children with disabilities (INDIVIDUAL SPECIAL EDUCATION TEACHERS!!), A program where at least 70% of children come from low-income families. Students can check out 10 books at a time...parents can have the app on their phones, tablet...etc. Students can login on up to 6 devices and access all their books.
Steps to get individual student access codes.
Start here - OPENBOOKS users will then click the Sign up at FirstBook. This is another website that manages the accounts. (To avoid a lot of their extra "sales pitch" pages come back to the "OPENBOOKS" page from above and select the Step 2- Marketplace link. )
After educators signup for accounts and "CHECKOUT" (like users are purchasing) the number of student codes an educator needs for their students. There isn't a cost, it will show $0.00, but this is how the process works on the platform. Educators can choose a grade level band or select "all" for the codes that are being requested. Users can go back to the account at anytime and "purchase" more codes, so don't worry if the need for more codes comes with getting additional students.
Educators can printout Parent letters and write each student's code to send home, or just a reminder for teachers to help students login at school.
The platform is working on being available on the web/ChromeBooks before the end of 2016, but right now it is just iOS and Android.
**Open Dyslexic font can be activated on this platform for the students that need that accommodation.
Bookshare is an online library of accessible eBooks and educational materials for people with print disabilities. Access more than 250,000 textbooks, bestsellers, children’s books, newspapers, magazines, and more! Anyone with a physically-based disability that makes it difficult or impossible to read printed materials, including blindness or low vision, a physical disability, or a learning or reading disability. There are two membership options: Individual Memberships, and Organizational Memberships for schools and other organizations.Membership is FREE to qualified U.S. students and schools. Special Education teachers can be the qualifying person to setup the students account. The IEP gives the student access to the textbooks. (Books can be downloaded to mobile devices.) Bookshare's WebReader tool can be used on most all devices....Including a CHROMEBOOK!!! (tag- textbooks)
Loyal Books is a platform that offers free audio books online. (Formerly Books Should Be Free) Books can be searched by keywords, genre, or even language. Books are all public domain, free to share and can be downloaded to a tablet or phone.
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Read & Write Extension in CHROME can boost reading and writing confidence. The Extension can offer support for Google Docs/web to students with learning difficulties, dyslexia or ELL/ESL.
Read&Write for Google Chrome™ offers a range of powerful support tools to help students gain confidence with reading, writing, studying and research, including: • Hear words, passages, or whole documents read aloud with easy-to-follow dual color highlighting • See the meaning of words explained with text and picture dictionaries • Get suggestions for the current or next word as you type • Turn words into text as you speak • Simplify and summarize text on web pages For more information on how EXTENSIONS work in Chrome click here to go to the Chrome page on this website. |
Text to Speech Resources
Natural Readers is a text to speech online platform that converts any written text into spoken words. This web free version allows unlimited usage of the "free voices", supports PDF, Docx, RTF and Txt documents. Users can also Copy and Paste text into the box on the main page and select the play button at the top. There are 18 English (American and UK) voices, 8 Spanish, 7 German, 5 Italian, 5 Portuguese, 4 Swedish and 3 Dutch voices on the FREE platform. There are also 14 different "speeds" that can be set.
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PowerTalk is a free program that automatically speaks any presentation or slide show running in Microsoft PowerPoint for Windows.
You just download and install PowerTalk and while you open and run the presentation as usual it speaks the text on your slides. The advantage over other generic 'Text To Speech' programs is that PowerTalk is able to speak text as it appears and can also speak hidden text attached to images. |
Teacher Resources
IEP Quality Project is an online resource to assist Illinois Special Education Educators with developing IEP Goals. Developed with a research grant at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, funded by the U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences. The platform has a toolbox with assistant tools for Academic goals, Functional goals (behavioral/social emotional) and Transition goals. The toolbox assistant walks educators through the process to develop goals for students, making connections to the Illinois standards, including social emotional learning standards!!! There are student scenarios and a useful resource library.
Dyslexie Font is a platform that allows a "personal use" download of the font to be placed in the users computer font folder. This then allows all programs to be able to access the dyslexie font, such as Word, Google Docs, PowerPoint.etc. If educators are just needing to have the Dyslexie font for one student, this would be a free option available. If educators need to have multiple school computers with this font, there is an educational option to purchase. This is also an option for students home use since it is not just an educational use tool.
LEARN DESMOS: ACCESSIBILITY
Our mission at Desmos is to help every student learn math and love learning math. Not some students. Every student. With that in mind, we recently introduced improvements to the calculator to ensure students who are blind or visually impaired have the same opportunities as their peers to discover the joy of learning math. Get started with the video here, then dive deeper at www.desmos.com/accessibility. The Birdhouse student documentation app was designed to help stay organized, be more efficient, and free you up to have time to focus on what matters– teaching! The platform has an easy-to-use mobile and web-based app, to record, retrieve, and share streamlined digital notes, anywhere, at anytime!
Include IEP goals for each student, note when an event occurs with notes included for future retrieval and review. The Birdhouse app has tools to help you share info more easily and more clearly with parents and co-teachers, reducing confusion, improving action, and providing better records. The free plan allows for unlimited students or classes, streamlined notetaking, quick summaries, team collaboration and communication logs. (Web App, iOS, Android and KINDLE!) |
Open Dyslexic Font is a font that can be added to your web browser to make webpages more readable font for students with Dyslexia. The website provides instructions on how to download and incorporate the font into your computer to that you can use it in chrome and other browsers. CHROME has an EXTENSION that can be added that will automatically convert websites to this font when it is activated.
Mouse Skills Exercises are practiced at this basic drag and drop skills website. Students can manipulate the tools they will use necessary for PARCC testing. This website offers simple practice pages to help students master these tools/skills for either a mouse, touch pad or other input device. .
Maavis provides greatly simplified access to media, communications, web and programs on a computer. It is primarily designed for people who are either unsure of computers or unable to use them without adaptation. It was designed and developed as part of research into use of technology by people living with dementia. Maavis is a program that must be downloaded and installed. When installed and activated Maavis replaces the "desktop" (Windows screen) with a simplistic easy to understand platform. This replacement desktop can be customized by the educator to meet the needs of the student...ie large squares of specific colors signifying which selection will start an ELA activity, a Math activity...etc. Maavis is FREE open source software.
Do2learn provides thousands of free pages with social skills and behavioral regulation activities and guidance, learning songs and games, communication cards, academic material, and transition guides for employment and life skills. Within each topic, we provide the hands-on resources needed to implement our suggestions. If we explain how to devise a visual communication system using picture cards, we provide free cards to get you started. When we present the Teacher Toolbox on how to adapt a classroom for children with special needs, we provide resources for behavior management plans, literacy tools, and the materials to create everything in your classroom.
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Language - ELL/ESL
Vocabulix is an online language resource that can transfer between English, German, Spanish, Italian, and French in either direction. Users do not need to create an account to use the tools on the website, but it is recommended if users want to monitor progress or save lists and resources. Educators can create lessons based on vocabulary lists and share with others.
Randall's ESL Listening Lab has many listening conversation recordings in both adult and children voices. Conversations are categorized on the website and can be found on daily life, careers, social gatherings, etc. On the right hand side there are menu selections to guide educators to more resources. The first stop is a video explaining how the website is structured and is the best place for first time visitors. It can be found HERE.
UVic's Language Teaching Clipart - This website was created by UVic Humanities Computing and Media Centre and Half-Baked Software to provide basic clipart (graphic) images to be used by educators for language development. The website offers many categories of clipart and two options of each. One graphic has a white background and the other is transparent, allowing more flexibility when using the designs. These graphics would also be useful for the special education teacher identifying daily tasks, common words...etc.
Listenwise is an award-winning listening skills platform. We harness the power of listening to advance literacy and learning in all students. Our collection of podcasts and public radio keeps teaching connected to the real world and builds student listening skills at the same time. Listen to engaging real world podcasts. Read along with the interactive transcript. Discuss with students to deepen understanding. Many English Learners are not acquiring the level of academic language needed for college and career readiness. Find out how listening to authentic stories can help!
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duoLingo for Schools is a platform created exclusively for educators, allowing them to access and keep track of each learner’s Duolingo progress. It allows teachers to track their students’ language learning in one place, and gives them special access to parental controls and Duolingo activities designed specifically for the classroom. Duolingo is completely free for students and teachers.
Language Guide - This platform is geared toward helping language learners acquire the vocabulary of the physical world using an image based guide which contains up to 2, 435 words. English and French guides include expressions, verbs and additional nouns. Users can choose which language the platform "displays instructions" and then which language to explore. This platform would also assist students in foreign/ world language courses. No login is required to use the platform.
Educaplay - Create and share multimedia Educational Activities to any device using the HTML5 technology (interactive abilities). ESL students can practice by creating or reviewing conversations with the dialogue activity. Games are available such as matching, fill in the blank, riddles, slide show, word search, video quiz that include audio. All styles can be educator created or selected from a large community of already created resources. The resources are in English and 8 other languages which makes this also a great resource for world language (foreign) classes also.
Digital Dialects is a platform that provides online games to build language skills in 77 languages and 11 categories such as food, colors, numbers, animals, clothing, verbs...etc. Most of the activities include sound and all are interactive. No login is required to use the website.
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APPS
See Touch Learn has picture cards that are an integral part of an effective learning program and are used to help teach new words and concepts and foster self-expression. See.Touch.Learn app combines the effectiveness of picture cards with the power and interactivity of the iPad. Create custom exercises and lessons, automatically track performance, and carry an entire library collection at all times. Free version comes with 100 words and in-app purchases. Currently for $3.99 in-app purchase educators can custom create any photo or text cards to build their own library. There are some holiday and other resource libraries available for download that are free as well. Joining the COMMUNITY (free) will give access to educator shared libraries as well.
Homer FOR EDUCATORS FREE Throughout 2018, Homer is free to qualified and verified teachers and librarians to support educational instruction with progress tracking for up to 32 individual students. Go to the website HERE to create a free account.
Cultivate a love of reading in your child today! - 1,000+ phonics lessons in our groundbreaking step-by-step Homer method for kids age 2-8 - Over 200+ stories in our award-winning library of eBooks - 200+ Science and History lessons to build advanced knowledge - Art and Music activities to foster creativity - Easy-to-use, nurturing, supportive and fun - 150+ Printable Worksheets, Learning Games and Activities for when screen time is over - 60 First Readers - your child’s first books they can read on their own! |
BitsBoard APP comes in a free version as well as a FULLY OPEN paid version currently $19.99. The free version includes access to the Bitsboard catalog including tens of thousands of flashcards and carefully curated lessons covering hundreds of topics. Bitsboard is fully customizable to meet educators specific learning needs and allows educators to create their own cards that can be used in the 14 plus activities in the APP. The free version allows access to an online collection of "boards" that other educators have created that can be downloaded. The PRO version does allow for multiple users on one device and more management capabilities. Also popup reminders to upgrade will disappear. Read more about BitsBoard online HERE.
Breathe, Think, Do teaches children to keep calm and carry on by introducing three possible strategies for working through problems. It touches on familiar emotional challenges such as problem solving, self-control, planning, and time on task. Intended for very young children, this simple app gives players different scenarios in which the Blue Monster character needs to regulate his or her emotions using the breathe-think-do technique.
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