One of the areas of access that has preoccupied me most has been the access
of students with disabilities to materials. There are many difficulties in terms
of aquiring resourses that will appeal to the 'high interest low readablitiy'
crowd. I have been working on this in the library as TL, as a Student Services
Teacher, and now as a grade 8 classroom teacher. I have many questions about how
best to serve students with special needs and their families.
Where can we find materials?
How should we house those materials?
How can we balance the often more expensive needs of the few (ie audiobook vs. paperback) with the needs of the larger school population?
In term of pleasure reading publishers such as Orca are creating content that is great for our middle school aged students (athough I think they need to work on their covers), but how to shelve them? In their own area or in baskets? Kids who need this content won't go there because they don't want to be singled out. Intershelving them with an 'EZ read' sticker or some such? Have them in the resource rooms and let the Student Services teachers match kids with books at their reading level? What would they do when their class comes to the library?
Classroom related reading this is also a huge challenge. Non-fiction access for special needs students might be less of an issue as there are books on many topics, especially social studies for example, for many grade/ reading levels. In some curricular areas however, especially science, there do not seem to be books at lower reading levels geared to our BC curriculum. Dinosaurs yes, but what about fluids and optics? Digital resources seem to be easier to locate when we are able to do things like use our OPAC Destiny to search for web resources at a particular reading level and create reading lists etc. using the computer to access databases or World Book online, does eliminate some problems for special needs students, but finding content that is not too baby-ish for middle schoolers can be difficult.
Finding materials in alternate formats also seems to be a challenge. ARC-BC is a great resource for materials such as audio versions of novels (read by a computer voice) and material scanned for use with Kurzweil 3000, but many of the books we have in our lit kits are not available in these formats. How can you provide access to them for students when copywrite issues come up? Audio books on cassette and on CD are available in our library, but for staff not student loan. There are not many of them in any case.
We have strated a project of staff recording themselves reading books aloud, using "Audacity". I am halfway through recoring "Pagan's Crusade" from our Middle ages/Renaissance lit kit. I don't know what to do with it when I am finished. Put it in a document library on our libraries Sharepoint website? Are we allowed to do that?
I would like to get portable devices with text to speech softeware that students could access, but what id the best to get? how do you manage lending that kind of equipment? How can you do ebooks in a public school library, when not all students have equal access to personal devices?
So many questions and not enough answers yet...
Where can we find materials?
How should we house those materials?
How can we balance the often more expensive needs of the few (ie audiobook vs. paperback) with the needs of the larger school population?
In term of pleasure reading publishers such as Orca are creating content that is great for our middle school aged students (athough I think they need to work on their covers), but how to shelve them? In their own area or in baskets? Kids who need this content won't go there because they don't want to be singled out. Intershelving them with an 'EZ read' sticker or some such? Have them in the resource rooms and let the Student Services teachers match kids with books at their reading level? What would they do when their class comes to the library?
Classroom related reading this is also a huge challenge. Non-fiction access for special needs students might be less of an issue as there are books on many topics, especially social studies for example, for many grade/ reading levels. In some curricular areas however, especially science, there do not seem to be books at lower reading levels geared to our BC curriculum. Dinosaurs yes, but what about fluids and optics? Digital resources seem to be easier to locate when we are able to do things like use our OPAC Destiny to search for web resources at a particular reading level and create reading lists etc. using the computer to access databases or World Book online, does eliminate some problems for special needs students, but finding content that is not too baby-ish for middle schoolers can be difficult.
Finding materials in alternate formats also seems to be a challenge. ARC-BC is a great resource for materials such as audio versions of novels (read by a computer voice) and material scanned for use with Kurzweil 3000, but many of the books we have in our lit kits are not available in these formats. How can you provide access to them for students when copywrite issues come up? Audio books on cassette and on CD are available in our library, but for staff not student loan. There are not many of them in any case.
We have strated a project of staff recording themselves reading books aloud, using "Audacity". I am halfway through recoring "Pagan's Crusade" from our Middle ages/Renaissance lit kit. I don't know what to do with it when I am finished. Put it in a document library on our libraries Sharepoint website? Are we allowed to do that?
I would like to get portable devices with text to speech softeware that students could access, but what id the best to get? how do you manage lending that kind of equipment? How can you do ebooks in a public school library, when not all students have equal access to personal devices?
So many questions and not enough answers yet...
