Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Re: Electronic books

Greg-

I maintain a wikipage of all things 'electronic books.' It is used to
organize my thoughts, the trends in electronic books, and share a
compilation of information with others who hold an interest in the
subject.

Could I post your description below about DAISY and related hardware
into my wiki, giving you attribution for the text?

http://lab-inst.usu.edu/groups/inst4010/wiki/25b70/Electronic_Books.html


--
Kurt Johnson
Assistant Director
Center for Open and Sustainable Learning
Utah State University
2830 Old Main Hill
Logan, UT 84322-2830
(435) 797-3611

http://cosl.usu.edu/


On Apr 1, 2008, at 9:27 AM, Greg Kearney wrote:

>>
>
> 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
>>>
>>> [ For info on ISED-L see http://www.gds.org/ISED-L ]
>>> Submissions to ISED-L are released under a creative commons,
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>>> Snon-commercial, share-alike license.
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>>
>> [ For info on ISED-L see http://www.gds.org/ISED-L ]
>> Submissions to ISED-L are released under a creative commons,
>> attribution, non-commercial, share-alike license.
>> RSS Feed, http://listserv.syr.edu/scripts/wa.exe?RSS&L=ISED-L
>
> [ For info on ISED-L see http://www.gds.org/ISED-L ]
> Submissions to ISED-L are released under a creative commons,
> attribution, non-commercial, share-alike license.
> RSS Feed, http://listserv.syr.edu/scripts/wa.exe?RSS&L=ISED-L


[ For info on ISED-L see http://www.gds.org/ISED-L ]
Submissions to ISED-L are released under a creative commons, attribution, non-commercial, share-alike license.
RSS Feed, http://listserv.syr.edu/scripts/wa.exe?RSS&L=ISED-L