1. GOVERNMENT

Children with learning disabilities (LD), like dyslexia, have trouble understanding words they read. Causes are unclear, but we now know that LD is not due to a lack of intelligence or a desire to learn. While dyslexia is a life-long condition, early identification, support from a parent or teacher, and access to digital or audio books and other learning materials may help your child to improve their learning outcomes and be better prepared to successfully work around their LD. Research now demonstrates that when children with LD are given accessible instructional materials (often referred to as AIM) — textbooks or learning materials that are delivered in audio and/or digital formats — they can excel in school and also learn to enjoy reading.

Reading with digital (or e-books) and audio books can enrich a user’s learning experience by engaging them in the content in multisensory ways (e.g., reading and listening at the same time, reading along while the e-book highlights each word). Sadly and too often, thousands of children who struggle with reading because of a print disability such as dyslexia do not receive access to resources that may help them enjoy reading.

Author and fan websites. Young readers like know more “about the author” and the Internet is rich with resources produced both by the authors themselves, their publishers, and their fans. Want to know what’s next in a favorite series? Check the author’s page or blog. Want to read more about a favorite character? Check the “fanfiction” often written by other young readers. That popular new movie jsut might be based on a novel that's in the library, so media ties-ins are powerfully motivating. Clever librarians find ways of helping students easily locate these materials by pasting printed lists of websites or QR codes in the backs of books or by adding links as a part of the electronic bibliographic record in the catalog. 2. Sharing/social networking sites. Making reading a social activity no longer means just having a weekly book club meeting. Make sure older kids know about free websites like Shelfari, LibraryThing, and Goodreads. Biblionasium id great for younger readers. If you want a "walled-garden" program that allows sharing, ibrary automation programs like Follett’s Destiny Quest allow students to record what they’ve read, write recommendations, share their recommendations with other students and discuss books online. Figment is designed just for aspiring authors to share their own writings with others. 3. Curation tools for student use. While not designed just for sharing reading interests like the tools above, generic curation tools like Pinterest, Tumblr, ScoopIt - along with older tools like Delicious and Diigo - allow the selection and sharing of interests among students. Student read what other students recommend and get excited about.

4. Library/student productivity tools. Book “reports” take on a whole new look when readers are allowed to use multimedia tools to generate creative responses to books - and then share them with other students online. Using Glogster, Animoto, poster makers, digital image editors and dozens of other (usually) free tools, students can communicate through sight and sound as well as in writing. Make sure these student-created products are available for other students to see via GoogleDrive, Dropbox, YouTube, Slideshare, or other sites that make the work public - or at least viewable by others within the school. 5. Library promotion webpages. Good library sites, of course, promote good books. But the best homepages hook readers through slideshows, videos, widgets, and podcasts - generating interest in print through media. (How about the stuff kids create themselves?) Creative librarians do surveys and polls on book related topics using free online tools like GoogleApps Forms and SurveyMonkey. (Collect requests for new materials using an online form as well.) Does your library have a Facebook fan page and a Twitter account to let kids know about new materials - and remind them of classics?
Virtual author visits. Author visits can generate a lot interest in books and reading, but unless only local authors come to the school, such visits may not fit a library’s budget. But it is far less expensive to bring an author in virtually using Skype, Google Hangouts or othe video conferencing program. Check out theSkype an Author Network website to get some ideas. 6. E-book libraries and e-book apps. Take advantage of those tablets, smart phones and other student-owned (or school provided) devices by making sure your e-book collection, digital magazines, and other digital resources are easy to find. Students are showing a growing preference for reading in digital formats. Even if your library does not have the budget for commercial e-materials, provide links to repositories of open source e-books like Project Gutenberg and ICDL. Link to the materials that your public library system may offer. (Ours provides access to dozens of popular magazines via Zinio to students having a public library card.) 7. Reading self-assessment tools. While subject to no small degree of debate in the educational community, programs like Accelerated Reader can be motivating for many students. E-book libraries likeMyOnReader are now including self-assessment reading ability and interest tests and means of students being able to track their own reading levels and amount read. Will being able to find books that interest a student - at a level that they can comprehend - spark reading? I think so