C. Smith's ISCI 761 Blog

  Want a tool that can help ALL of your students enjoy books that they love? Bookshare is for you. (Bookshare, n.d.) What is Bookshare? Bookshare is an online reading tool that provides “1,185,284 titles” in many different formats that suit a reader’s preference or need (Bookshare, n.d., para. 3). These different formats include “ebooks in audio, audio + highlighted text, braille, large font, and other formats” (Bookshare, n.d., para. 2).   Users of Bookshare can access it through a lot of different platforms such as “smartphones, tablets, Chromebooks, computers, and assistive technology devices” (Bookshare, n.d., para. 4) The great thing is that this resource is free to U.S. students that meet the Bookshare qualifications. Below is a video that explains more about Bookshare and can be shown to teachers and other educators to get them on board with using Bookshare. There is also a link to page that tells you about the qualifications.     Link to qual...

 Want to hear about something that will change your whole teaching life? Have you ever heard of a document camera? I am sure you have in this digitally sound world we live in. I guess a better question is have you ever considered using one in your classroom? Or you want to use one, but you don’t know how you would use one in your classroom? The really good news is, you are in the right place!   (Science and Literacy, n.d.) A document camera is a physical tool that can be used in the classroom setting to enhance student learning. It is a tool that has a camera in it that can sit easily on your desk.   The camera is on a stand that is flexible so that the camera can be moved over the object that the teacher wants to show to the class. The camera can project and zoom in on any item so that it can be seen on a smartboard, OneTouch, etc., for the whole class to see.     (Elmo Connecting Minds, n.d.) The document camera can meet the Technology Integration ...

  Hi, readers! It’s me again! I am here this week to share a new technology tool I found on a School Library Journal Blog called Neverending Search by Joyce Valenza. Unfortunately, according to the School Library Journal this blog does not post anymore blogs (Valenza, 2020). However, I found a blog post on this blog that I feel would be beneficial to teachers that teach elementary grades (2-6) to middle school grades (6-8), or maybe even some teachers in high school. In the blog post called TeachingBooks Launches Free Chrome Extension by Joyce Valenza, Valenza discusses how TeachingBooks has an extension that can be added to Chrome to make the resources and materials that TeachingBooks has to offer more accessible to teachers and students (Valenza, 2020). (TeachingBooks, LLC, 2001)   What is TeachingBooks?   To be honest, TeachingBooks was new to me. I have never heard about TeachingBooks, but thankfully Valenza explained what TeachingBooks is and had a lin...