My friend and co-worker authored these Disney Interest books.

You can access the bookshelf here

Kim Possible

Thats So Raven

The Proud Family

High School Musical

Hannah Montana

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There is a great deal to share here in the coming months regarding the Books Please Project and its recent transformations.  That being said, this project is not just about the US and English, but about individuals from all around the world.  Check out the Italian, English, and Arabic Versions.

I Gati Dicono Meow

Cats Say Meow

Cats Say in Arabic

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1. Including Samuel

2. ASHA 2007 ALLTOGETHER LAUNCHER

3. PRC Pictures (3,385 of them) Wow!

4. Hannah Montana Book,
   

   Skateboarders Ride Transitional Book,
   

   Dogs by Samuel Sennott

5. You Can Golf

6. AAC-RERC Webcasts

7. Video Writing Setups

8. The Tango Tutorial: An Exercise in Not Reduplicating Training

9. Connecting Video to Reading and Writing

10. Tar Heel Reader: An Open Source Library of Talking Books

11. Padded Head Switches and Loc-Line Mounting Arms

12. AAC Considerations and the Stages Framework

13. AAC Consideration Materials and Checklists

14. Goossens, Crain, Elder Communication Overlay Color Reminder

15. Art Website Launcher

16. Math Websites Core Tools

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Check out the Fablevision collection of books to read online.  You can find them at: http://www.fablevision.com/place/library/index.html .  There is some two switch accessibility with tab and enter.  Other than that you must use a mouse click.  There are some decent conventional texts here to explore.

	The Blue Shoe by Peter H. Reynolds
	Deep Spring by Peter H. Reynolds
	The Eyebrow Story by Peter H. Reynolds
	Benjamin’s Bowtie by Noah Z. Jones Download Classic Mac Version (ben.sit – 328k) Download Windows Version (ben.zip – 312k)
	Tess’s Tree by Jess Brallier
	Benty by Delores Esposito

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There is much to process after the explosion of the Apps Store to the world and the advent of the iPhone 3G.  After helping create an AAC device for the iPhone for last year’s Closing the Gap, I have been dreaming about the possibilities of what this platform brings for quite some time.   The legitimate 3rd party application party begins.  It will be exciting to report on the AAC  and literacy apps to come.

For now, here are some resources to get up to date with all the big Apple news:

1. www.macrumors.com
2. http://www.apple.com/iphone/
3. http://www.tuaw.com/

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLxq90xmYUs]

A Funny Blending Clip!

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Russel Cross recently posted a great list of accessible books on the ACOLUG (Augmentative Communication Online Users Group) Listserv.  Check it out:

http://www.gutenberg.org/ – project gutenburg – html, text (FREE)

http://www.ebooks.com/ – ebooks – Microsoft reader, Mobipocket, Adobe

http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/ – University of Adelaide – html, txt (FREE)

http://www.ereader.com/ – ereader – ereader format (use with Palm, Mob, Mac, PC) – has best DRM I have seen IMHO – can copy as much as you like but must enter name and credit card number every time.

http://www.fictionwise.com/ – Microsoft reader, Mobipocket, Adobe, Palm reader, fiction wise reader?

http://www.amazon.com – Adobe, Microsoft reader

http://etext.virginia.edu/ebooks/ – Microsoft, Palm – (FREE)

http://manybooks.net/ – eReader, PDF, Plucker, iSilo, Doc, or zTXT (FREE)

http://www.memoware.com/ – Formats, so many it insane (FREE) http://www.memoware.com/mw.cgi/?screen=help_format

http://www.pdabookstore.com/ – Memoware bookstore – many formats

http://www.pdabookstore.com/servlet/mw?t=help_help&si=4

http://www.buddhanet.net/ebooks.htm – Adobe (FREE)

http://www.adobe.com/epaper/ebooks/ebookmall/index.html – huge list of pay sites using Adobe

http://www.awe-struck.net/ – romance & sci-fi – HTML, PDF,Rocket, REB, Microsoft Reader,Pocket PC PDA, Mobipocket, EBookman, Hiebook

http://www.planetpdf.com/free_pdf_e…p?CurrentPage=1 – PDFs (FREE)

http://www.powells.com/ebookstore/ebooks.html – Microsoft, Adobe, Palm

http://www.double-dragon-ebooks.com/ – Rocket-eBook, Hiebook, Adobe PDF, MS-Reader, Mobipocket, iSilo, Franklin eBookMan, and Palm Doc.

http://www.diesel-ebooks.com/ – Microsoft, Adobe, Palm

http://www.bob-e-books.com/ – Microsoft, Rocket, Softbook

http://esspc-ebooks.com/default.htm – Microsoft PC Reader, Mobipocket

http://www.bookrags.com/ebooks/ – PDF, RTF, HTML (Free?)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/clas…oks/index.shtml – HTML (FREE but only Dr Who books?)

http://ebooks.whsmith.co.uk/151ABB2…/en/Default.htm – Adobe, Microsoft, Mobipocket

http://www.ebooks3.com/ – html (FREE)

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Previously I wrote a post covering online text to speech recording called Listening to Research as MP3 Files on Your iWhatever.  Today, I got word of a very powerful tool of this genre called ReadTheWords.  It not only is quick, has a smooth graphic user interface, the ability to embed your recording, but it also has an option to have an avatar read your text.

Check out some information from their site:  http://www.readthewords.com

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I envision a bookshelf/ launcher that is powerful, flexible, open and user friendly across multiple platforms.  It is so needed right now, but as we explode into the Bookshare age it will become vital. I have some pretty cool workups to share over the coming weeks, but see the one created for the Accessible Book Collection for a proof of concept:  http://alltogether.wordpress.com/2008/06/11/a-bookshelf-for-the-accessibile-book-collections-ics-formatted-books/

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One to One Thousand is a concept that I believe will powerfully help the field of special education. The basic premise is that if a thousand people each work for an hour on a project with agreed upon standards, then they can create something that one person working for a thousand hours, could never create. It gets pretty in-depth from there, but I am excited to share how the theory is shaping up in some upcoming presentations, papers, and webcasts.

That being said, it is fun watching the theory unfold over on the terrific collaboration between UNC’s Center for Literacy and Disability Studies and the Computer Science Department, the Tar Heel Reader. Look at how quickly an open source library of books is growing, by checking out a snip from a post on the site’s homepage:

“The graph below shows the amazing growth of the collection thanks to the contributions of many authors.

We’ve had 66111 page views from 1470 different computers worldwide.”

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Children, teenagers, and adults need books to be able to learn to read and getting accessible books to them is the goal of the Tar Heel Reader. This open source library of books that are switch accessible, talking, internet accessible, and downloadable will grow exponentially due to the terrific job Gary Bishop, a computer scientist from UNC Chapel Hill, has done designing the Worpress powered interface. This combination of efforts between computer science and education is phenomenal. He presently teaches a course in Computer Science focused on accessible software and hardware. Karen Erickson, Gretchen Hanser and Gary Bishop have been meeting and collaborating for quite some time. It is inspiring to me to see as an example as I emerge into the research phase of my teaching practice. From earlier efforts from this team of computer scientists, The Tar Heel Typer and Dance Dance Revolution mods, to the present and into the future, they surely serve as a powerful example of what we can do as educators to team up with computer science programs. Karen Erickson and David Koppenhaver have worked tirelessly on the concept of creating accessible texts that are age appropriate, rich in quality, and powerful in the literacy instructional process. See the Beginning Literacy Framework by Karen Erickson, Caroline Ramsey Musselwhite, and Ruth Ziolkowski to understand types of texts helpful to early readers. This project has the potential to make texts available to people in a way only possible with the advent of the internet and the concepts behind the Read/Write web and Web 2.0.

I believe in this project and concept with all my heart and am more than happy to be now seeing it come into the world. As I step forward from teacher to both teacher and researcher, I have seen a very powerful lesson: combine your dreams, visions, gifts and technical skills with others who have other dreams, visions, gifts, and technical skills and you can create and help more than ever imagined.

So start getting these books to your students and start authoring. Remember if one thousand people each work for one hour on a project with agreed upon standards you can create…

Go to the Tar Heel Reader

Let’s See the Books and How it Works!

Here is how you choose a book.

Here is a page from a book:

You have multiple options for accessing the books:

• on the web
• download the PowerPoint File
• Open Office Impress File
• Flash File

Speech can be enabled or disabled.

Switch Scanning

Switch Scanners can access the books with various keystrokes, including most of they keys on the keyboard. (soon to be optimized to go forward and back)

The power of this project is in the exponential amount of material to be available for all types of individuals learning to read. I have been working on this concept quite a bit and I believe that this is a One to One Thousand scenario. One key concept is the availability of age appropriate texts on an unprecedented level.

Here is how the book building process works:

• You use images from the Creative Commons section of Yahoo’s Flickr.

• The images are automatically cited. See how it works here.
  
• You add your text to each page you create.

• Add some keyword tags, such as words about the content, if it is an enrichment, transitional, or conventional text, or anything else you would like.
• Click to post your book. A talking book that is switch accessible and and able to be downloaded offline is created.
  
• It is that simple. No more PP notes citations, large file problems, conversion nightmares! Hallelujah.
  

Let us rally behind this amazing project in a way never before seen! Let’s go! We can do it all together!

Go to the Tar Heel Reader

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