Tales 2 Go Audiobooks now available!

Heartland AEA11 recently announced the purchase of Tales 2 Go audiobooks for elementary, middle and junior high school students. Tales 2 Go is an award-winning audiobook service that streams thousands of titles from leading publishers and storytellers to desktop or laptop computers. You’ll find popular titles and some old favorites. All have professional narration. Titles range from two minutes to two+ hours. You can search by character, age, grade, level, story type, and more.

Go to www.mackin.com/via and log in with the online database username/password. Click Databases, click Tales 2 Go, click Read Now.

To obtain the schools user id and password, please contact your schools teacher librarian.

Audiobooks and the Common Core
Audiobooks have been used in classrooms for decades because listening builds critical listening, comprehension and fluency skills.  Oral language precedes written language (i.e. developmentally), making listening an important component of language acquisition. In fact, there are reading methods such as The Daily 5 that include listening as a component of reading instruction.  Also, the Common Core Standards spell out specific Listening and Speaking skills required of all primary grade students.

Tales 2 Go will be another effective resource to support literacy instruction. Some students may want to check out the book from the school or public library and follow along as they listen to the book. If you are looking for audiobooks that also include the text, don’t forget BookFLIX, TrueFLIX, and the audiobooks (cassette or CD) and accompanying books that are also available resources from Heartland AEA.

Desktop Instructions (pdf) for Tales 2 Go

Mobile Device Instructions (pdf) for Tales 2 Go

General information about Tales2Go (pdf)

What students think of technology in our school district.

For the past few years, we’ve invited students to provide feedback on our district’s technology services.  We send an invitation to all students in 6th grade thru 12th grade –  however, this years response was extremely low.  Only 106 responses.

Although the number of responses are extremely low and we need to rethink how we collect feedback from students – it’s still important that we recognize the feedback that we do have.

Download the complete 2012 student technology survey (in pdf format).

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Here’s a quick sample of the various responses……………….

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What’s going well

There are sufficient computers and laptops for use during class, study halls, and off-periods. These computers generally work in a timely and efficient manner. The infinite campus iPhone and Android apps are very helpful.

There are almost always computers and electronics in general open to a student whenever they need it making the wifi easy to access.

Infinite Campus is the best thing since sliced bread, I love how accessible it is!

Staying connected through Edmodo and my classes that have Twitter accounts have really helped me stay organized this year.

Access h drive and s drive from home is awesome.

Edmodo is by far the best communication and education tool.

Suggestions

Currently the focus is more oriented towards “full-class” technology like the projector versus “individual” technology like laptops.

I hate the messages sent to parents with missing assignments.

Sometimes I am very frustrated when I can’t get on facebook because I use it as a communication tool for groups that I lead. But at the same time I understand that teachers want the computers to be used for homework and many students would abuse the access to facebook.

Most of the computers we use take a lot of time to boot up.

Also printing is a big problem. The maximum amout of pages to print at one time doesn’t help kids and also being able to print in more than 5 pages on one document doesn’t help.

Blocking social networking sites like Twitter and Pinterest would make school alot easier to focus

Upgrade to Google Chrome would be better.

Use Edmodo more

Our computer lab computers are too slow things just run soooo slow

Student emails are always spammed so teachers never get them

Students using their personal computers can currently access the S and H drives, but they cannot access the printers.

Having it so that if you log on, it won’t take such a long time. It sometimes takes 5 minutes for a computer to log on.