Hello this is a topic about which I happen to know a great deal. There
is a international standard for digital talking books which the
Library of Congress, Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic and the
world's libraries for the blind all use. It is called DAISY www.daisy.org
and unlike traditional recording of books provides for navigation,
going to a particular chapter or page, as well as displaying the text
while reading in some cases.
DAISY books are played on special DAISY play back devices the best of
which, in my opinion are made by Humanware. www.humaware.com These
will also play standard audio and services like Audible as well. As
you are dealing with Dyslexic students you would have access to books
from the National Library Service for the blind and disabled, RFB&D
and Bookshare.org which have extensive collections of books in DAISY
and other formats.
You can also make your own DAISY books from text or from recordings. I
wrote DTBmaker for Macintosh which is free and can be downloaded from
w3.wmcnet.org/dtbmaker
The DAISY Pipeline is a free professional tool to do the same a link
can be found at www.daisy.org
Finally permit me to rant a bit here. The reason I am such a DAISY
expert is because I am a profound dyslexic (Landmark School 1972). As
much as Landmark did for me and it was a fantastic accomplishment
getting me to read at the fourth grade level. One thing they did not
do and which is still not being done that I am aware of anyway, was to
train me how to study and use talking books and other such techniques.
Like it or not some dyslexics, such as myself, will be using talking
books for the rest of our lives. Over time I learned how to learn and
study with them but it would have been much easier for me had I been
given instructions like the blind get.
I can understand that schools such as Landmark and Churchill Center
must and should focus their attention on teaching reading. However it
seems that some attention should also be given to the skills needed to
continue education if you are unable to achieve normal grade level
reading abilities. While I am able to read well enough to get by I
will never trust my skills in critical settings and I will never read
for enjoyment.
Greg Kearney
> A forum for independent school educators <ISED-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU>
> writes:
>> Our school library is a bit different than most. Due to our
>> population
>> (all LD students) we offer our students a "reading library". We
>> have many
>> fiction books, as all students are required to do nightly reading,
>> and
>> about 1200 books on tape. Over the course of the last couple of
>> years we
>> are trying to move away from books on audio tape to books on CD,
>> since
>> nobody has a cassette player anymore! We have been converting the
>> cassette tapes to CDs. Of course now we are starting to think
>> about how
>> we can offer these books to our students that have iPods, which if
>> it's
>> anything like your school, it's most of the kids! I don't know if we
>> should be converting these CDs to digital audio and putting them on
>> some
>> kind of server for them to download, or if we should then podcast
>> them
>> some way. The idea is for kids to be able to listen and read along
>> at
>> home. I'm sure CD players will go the way of cassette players soon
>> and we
>> want to be prepared. I would welcome any thoughts, suggestions or
>> experiences with this issue. Thanks.
>>
>> :) Laurie
>>
>> Laurie Yalem
>> Technology Coordinator
>> Churchill Center & School for Learning Disabilities
>> 1021 Municipal Center Dr.
>> Town & Country, MO 63131
>> 314-997-4343
>> lyalem@churchillstl.org
>> www.churchillstl.org
>>
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