Reading In The 21st Century – Digital And Print Compared via ebookfriendly

Reading In The 21st Century – Digital And Print Compared

ebookfriendly: 12.03.2019 by Ola Kowalczyk

Take a look at a wonderful infographic designed by Morgan Beatty from University of Cincinnati College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning.

The visual puts together interesting facts that help learn how reading evolves in the times when we are exposed to digital screens.

Reading digital books gives lots of benefits, naming only holding extensive collections of books always with you, customizing reading interface, easy purchasing, syncing and highlighting.

However, switching from reading print to electronic books brings disadvantages, and even threats. Here are a few examples:  READ MORE >>

6 Tips for Engaging the Families of English Language Learners via Edutopia

6 Tips for Engaging the Families of English Language Learners

Edutopia: 11 .25.2019 by Louise El Yaafouri

The most impactful plans for student growth engage not only the learner but also his or her family. In fact, research points to parents and caretakers as invaluable stakeholders in students’ academic achievement. Unfortunately, parents who are new to English are often left out of family engagement at the school level to some degree. How can we do a better job of appealing to and including the parents of English language learners (ELLs) as valuable members of the school community?

Here are six keys to successfully engaging ELL parents and families.

1. MAKE IT RECIPROCAL

Engagement is a partnership between the parents and the school to serve the best interests of students.

2. AIM FOR AUTHENTICITY

Efforts to engage diverse parent groups must be authentic and meaningful.

3. USE A CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE APPROACH

Where do families’ deeply rooted cultural values show up in the school? How do parents’ cultural perspectives drive expectations for parent engagement?

4. KEEP IT SIMPLE

Communication is essential to successful parent engagement efforts. We should aim for clarity in all of our exchanges with parents, especially those who are still new to English.

5. INCREASE CAPACITY

Grow English learner caretakers as leaders in the school community by providing a range of low-risk opportunities for parent input, feedback, and cultural sharing. Here are some ideas:

6. FIND YOUR WAY HOME

In building and nurturing relationships with ELL families, the value of teacher home visits cannot be understated:  READ MORE >>

31 Days, 31 Lists: 2019 Great Board Books via SLJ

#31days31lists

31 Days, 31 Lists: 2019 Great Board Books

SLJ: 12.01.2019 by Elizabeth Bird

Ahhhhhh. I actually feel a deep seated sense of relief when I begin publishing these lists. All throughout 2019 I was a good girl and wrote down the descriptions for each book appearing on these lists long ahead of time so that I wouldn’t kill myself this month. And what better way to kick off 31 days of my favorite children’s books of the year than with the most successful (I’d argue) format?

As with last year I will note that though it looks like I’ve included every single last board book in Christendom on this list, this is but a small sampling of the books that are available. They are, however, the ones that I feel went above and beyond the call of duty.

Oh. And if you’d like to see previous round-ups, here are the board book lists from 2018 and 2017, respectively.

Interested in the other lists? Here’s the schedule of everything being covered this month. Enjoy!

December 1 – Great Board Books

December 2 – Board Book Reprints & Adaptations

December 3 – Transcendent Holiday Picture Books

December 4 – Picture Book Readalouds

December 5 – Rhyming Picture Books

December 6 – Funny Picture Books

December 7 – CaldeNotts

December 8 – Picture Book Reprints

December 9 – Math Books for Kids

December 10 – Bilingual Books

December 11 – Translated Picture Books

December 12 – Books with a Message

December 13 – Fabulous Photography

December 14 – Fairy Tales / Folktales / Religious Tales

December 15 – Oddest Books of the Year

December 16 – Poetry Books

December 17 – Easy Books

December 18 – Early Chapter Books

December 19 – Comics

December 20 – Older Funny Books

December 21 – Science Fiction Books

December 22 – Fictionalized Nonfiction

December 23 – American History

December 24 – Science & Nature Books

December 25 – Wordless Picture Books

December 26 – Unique Biographies

December 27 – Nonfiction Picture Books

December 28 – Nonfiction Chapter Books

December 29 – Fiction Reprints

December 30 – Middle Grade Novels

December 31 – Picture Books

Literacy – Spanning North America :: Tarrytown NY :: Jasper AL :: Kelowna BC

Literacy: Spanning North America

Literacy Volunteers of the Tarrytowns Celebrating 45 Years

Hudson Independent: 11.30.2019 by Tom Pedulla

Sean Weiner wanted to find a way to be a better neighbor. It used to bother him when he made eye contact with someone of a different ethnic background at a local store and that stranger remained a stranger.

Weiner decided to take a small, yet in another sense, huge step by helping to fill the great need for tutors at Literacy Volunteers of the Tarrytowns. He was eventually paired with Andres, a young family man from Ecuador who has been in the United States for nine years. Andres, a carpenter, already was relatively advanced in his ability to speak English but needed to refine his skills.

They meet for the suggested two hours per week and formed a bond neither might have envisioned before they were brought together by Literacy Volunteers, which is based at Warner Library in Tarrytown.  READ MORE >>

Literacy Council 

Walker County

Resident Learns To Read Through Literacy Council

Mountain Eagle: 10.06.2019 by Nicole Smith

Imagine longing for an education, an opportunity only steps away but still out of reach.

"I used to pick cotton and watch a school bus go by and cry because I wasn't on that bus," Walker County resident Sharon Burton said in tears. "I wanted to be on that bus. I didn't want to be in that cotton field."

On Tuesday at The Literacy Council of Walker County office, Burton recalled the many times she carried a 50-pound bag of cotton through hot fields. She wasn't required to go to school and wasn't learning to read or write at the time; instead, her labor was vital in a family of nearly 20 children.

"We had to work. We had to feed the babies. We had to pay the bills," she said.

Burton was originally from Double Springs and raised in Chicago, and as the years passed by she held on to an affirmation.

"One day I will read. One day I will write. One day I will learn, and there's somebody out there for me," she told herself.  READ MORE >>

@ProLitCOS

Learning To Read Got Man Off The Streets

Kelowna Daily Courier: 9.26.2019

Two years ago, Adam was homeless. He had spent the last 20 years as an alcoholic, going from minimum wage job to job with only a Grade 10 level education.

As he began to get help with his addiction, councillors at Freedom’s Door pointed him to Project Literacy Central Okanagan Society. As a child, Adam did well in school and 20 years later, he had a goal to finish high school and begin college. Adam felt respected by the staff at Project Literacy, describing his first time walking in as “warm, welcoming and uplifting.” Project Literacy’s educators helped Adam to set a goal ‚ to take his LPI and get accepted into the Electronics Engineering program at Okanagan College.

“Part of my journey was rediscovering my born talent — a gift for working with electronics,” Adam said.

He came to Project Literacy on a regular basis, completing practice essays and comprehension tests. One of the most memorable moments of his literacy journey was writing an impressive essay off the top of his head. He says that he’ll never forget the educators “running to the other offices and showing it off to people.” Having his talents and abilities celebrated was a new experience for him.  READ MORE >>

Books Have the Power to Rehabilitate. But Prisons Are Blocking Access to Them. via Mother Jones

Books Have the Power to Rehabilitate. But Prisons Are Blocking Access to Them.

No Ulysses, Where’s Waldo?, or The New Jim Crow: Welcome to “the nation’s largest book ban.”

Mother Jones: Jan/ Feb 2020 by Samantha Michaels

Behind the walls of California State Prison, Sacramento, six inmates gather in the library for their weekly short-story club. The librarian introduces the day’s pick, Doris Lessing’s A Sunrise on the Veld, and the men take turns reading it aloud. Some of them lean forward in their chairs as they listen; one traces the words with his index finger. It almost feels like a classroom, except that the library’s computers don’t connect to the internet, and there’s no natural light. A back room holds metal cages where prisoners with behavioral problems can do legal research. About half the books are donated, many from a public library, and the pickings are slim: Nonfiction is kept behind the counter, and most of the fiction is locked away in a small room.

But for Michael Blanco, who is 19 years into an 87-to-life sentence, this represents a vast improvement. At his last prison, he says the librarians stocked the shelves largely with books inmates had requested from family and nonprofits. Still, California has one of the better prison library programs. The state spends $350,000 annually on recreational books for prisoners, much more than other states do.

Citing concerns about contraband, officials around the country are ratcheting up restrictions on what gets into prison libraries. They say there’s been an uptick of drug smuggling via books, whose pages can be soaked with synthetic marijuana or other potent liquids. In September 2018, Pennsylvania’s corrections department temporarily banned all book donations after dozens of prison staffers landed in the emergency room with tingling skin, headaches, and dizziness after handling inmates’ belongings. New York, Maryland, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons have adopted similar policies, and Washington state banned most used books from its prisons, though all eventually backtracked because of public outrage.

Even in places without wholesale bans, corrections departments are cracking down. Florida blocks 20,000 titles and Texas blocks 10,000 titles they claim could stir up disorder. A recent report by PEN America decried similar restrictions around the country as so arbitrary and sweeping as to effectively be “the nation’s largest book ban.” Texas prisons have prohibited Where’s Waldo? and a collection of Shakespeare’s sonnets with racy illustrations. Literary groups and activists banded together to protest the censorship in Florida prisons by appealing to the Supreme Court in the fall of 2018. “Access to compelling books can be a godsend,” they wrote in an amicus brief, “for both prisoners and the rest of us, who benefit when prisoners have constructive outlets and better odds of rehabilitation.”

For centuries, the printed word has been seen as a way to help incarcerated people turn their lives around. In the late 1700s, inmates received religious texts to encourage their rehabilitation. In the 1940s, California prison librarian Herman Spector pushed the theory of bibliotherapy, which held that incarcerated people could be reformed through reading. During a talk to the American Prison Association in 1940, Dr. C.V. Morrison recommended book “prescriptions” for inmates; around that time, officials at California’s San Quentin Prison took library records into account when deciding parole eligibility.

Some lockups in Brazil and Italy allow people to shave three or four days off their sentences for each book they finish. A 2014 study by psychologists in the United States found that bibliotherapy in jails and prisons helped reduce inmates’ depression and psychological distress.  READ MORE >>

West Virginia Inmates Charged for Reading ‘Free’ Books on Tablets

The Crime Report: 11.25 .2019

A new policy that charges West Virginia inmates to read books on electronic tablets is stirring outrage.

At several West Virginia prisons, the incarcerated are getting “free” electronic tablets to read books, send emails, and communicate with their families, but under a 2019 contract between the West Virginia Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation (WVDCR) and Global Tel Link (GTL), the company that is providing electronic multimedia tablets to 10 West Virginia prisons, inmates will be charged 3 cents a minute to read the books, reported Reason.

The charge happens even though the books all come from Project Gutenberg, a free online library of more than 60,000 texts in the public domain. This means reading a classic novel “will cost them far more than it would have if they’d simply gotten a mass market paperback, because the tablets charge readers by the minute,” according to Reason.

The Appalachian Book Project reported last week that “people in WV prisons will be charged 5 cents/minute to access much of the tablet’s content. For now, a promotional discount brings the cost of reading e-books down to 3 cents/minute. Either way, it’s no way to read.”

═════════►

“The adoption of costly video-technology is part of a disturbing nation-wide trend: 74 percent of jails who have adopted video calls have subsequently banned in-person visitation,” tweeted Rebecca Kavanaugh, media director of The Appeal.

Kavanaugh continued, “There’s also been a troubling national trend to ban donations of used books to people who are incarcerated and to restrict book purchases to certain vendors that charge exorbitant prices and have limited censored selections.”

Over the past few years, there has been a rise in “prison profiteers who strike deals with state corrections officers to provide ‘free’ tablets to prisoners (these being the flimsiest, cheapest, least reliable hardware imaginable), and then profiting by charging exorbitant sums for prisoners to send emails” or video-conference with family, reported boingboing.  READ MORE >>

10 Tools to Create Stunning Visual Content Your Followers Will Love :: Red

10 Tools to Create Stunning Visual Content Your Followers Will Love

Red: 11.06.2015

Do you struggle creating visual content to share with your followers? Want some handy tools that can help ramp up your social media engagement?

The ever increasing visual nature of social platforms like Twitter and Instagram means creating visual content is now a necessity if you want to stand out. But what do you do if you have no experience creating shareworthy images?

Lucky for you there are plenty of tools to help, the guys at Digital Matchbox have included 10 in the infographic.

Canva

Fotor

Imgflip

LogoGarden

quickmeme

Recite

Skitch

Social Image Resizer Tools

Venngage

Videolicious

Literacy – Spanning North America :: Calexico CA :: Fort Erie ON :: Philadelphia PA :: Cañon City CO

Literacy: Spanning North  America

Camarena Library

Why Is Literacy Important?

The Literacy Place Camarena Library: Sep 2019

Literacy is important because it is the foundation upon which people are able to interact with the world, educate themselves, and thus contribute to society as well as their own well being.

This is a brief interview from one of our tutors, Mark Hurych. He is a retired teacher who is very passionate about helping others improve their literacy skills.

1. Why do you volunteer your time to help adults with their literacy skills?

“Personally I find that when I have the opportunity to support someone in meeting their needs for being able to speak their mind I feel grateful. I feel I am a better person for it.”

2. What advice would you give to someone considering becoming a literacy tutor?

“I guess if your head is in it and your heart is in it, your head and your heart sort of get paid like this: I tell my students they have to SPEND time and PAY attention to improve their skill sets. In the end I feel like I'm paid in full.”

“In conclusion, adult learners, and the need for improved adult literacy, deserve our attention and efforts because these people deserve the opportunity not just to survive, but to flourish! READ MORE >>

Fort Erie
Adult Literacy Council

Future Success Comes 1 Word At A Time For Fort Erie Adult Literacy Council

Fort Erie Post: 9.30.2019 by Richard Hutton

No one can dispute the importance of literacy.

Knowing how to read, write and comprehend are necessary skills for life in order to succeed, whether it be for a job, a chance to attend an institute of higher learning or simply navigate through the day-to-days of life.

In a 2007 study of literacy levels in the Niagara Region conducted by Paul Knafelc of Community Benchmarks, it was shown that 42.6 per cent of Fort Erie’s population has achieved a level of educational attainment no greater than a high school diploma.

That same study concluded that the level of literacy skills in Fort Erie varies across prose, document and numeracy skills. On average, the community consistently exhibits a higher proportion of its population in lower literacy levels. For example, for those aged 25 to 34, the proportion of the community’s population at level one is 19.3 per cent compared to 17.7 per cent and 16.8 per cent for the region and Ontario respectively. The same observation is also relevant for those ages 35 to 44. For the 45 to 54 age group, both the community and the region approximate one another, less than a one per cent spread. However, Fort Erie significantly differs from the province. The proportion of individuals with level one literacy within the community is equal to that of the region, but higher than the province. Beyond the age of 64 however, people in Fort Erie demonstrate higher literacy levels relative to the region and approximate the provincial level.  READ MORE >>

@Center4Literacy

Center for Literacy Opens Doors To Jobs And Education

Generocity: 10.01.2019 by Melanie Menkevich, ESL Transition Coor -Center for Literacy

When Leon Santos first came to Philadelphia, he encountered a lot of barriers that made his day-to-day life difficult and his future seem grim. Then, he came to Center for Literacy (CFL).

“Before Center for Literacy, my life was really tough,” said Santos, who emigrated from Brazil in the summer of 2016. “I had many barriers with job research, and regular basic communication. I didn’t have confidence speaking in English. CFL gave me this confidence to speak without fear.”

Santos had been looking for English classes for a while, but he felt defeated in his efforts to improve his English. Every time he took a test, he was told his English was too advanced for the classes. “I was looking for an ESL class to improve my English and assimilate to the American culture and language, and also to help me find a better job,” said Santos. “CFL was the only one able to help me achieve my goals.”

Santos isn’t alone. Other immigrants in Philadelphia are considered too advanced to take a free ESL class in the city, but still seek education because they want to improve their lives.  READ MORE >>

@CanonLibrary

Cañon City Public Library Launches New Adult Literacy Program

Canyon City Daily Record: 10.02.2019 by Carie Canterbury

When Ed Pellegrini suffered a stroke seven years ago, just months after the death of his wife, he lost everything: his home, his money, his construction company, his vehicles and his ability to walk, talk and read.

Doctors told his family that the stroke was so severe that he “was done,” but Pellegrini set his mind to rebuilding his life and restoring his health.

Pellegrini, 72, now cares for himself, walks, talks, works out daily, serves on the board of directors of the Cañon City Pregnancy Center, helps veterans going through hospice, and recently he built his own garage.

The last piece of his recovery is to re-learn to read because he desires to read his Bible again, and he needs to be able to read when he’s shopping.

Pellegrini is one of the first participants in a new program called “Squash Illiteracy at the Cañon City Public Library.”  READ MORE >>