Volunteer Nation Live

Have you been a part of our Volunteer Nation Live! events? Each month we're exploring another aspect of Learning Ally, from volunteering and reading best practices, to the user experience. Last month Amy Leona was our guest, explaining and demonstrating the Learning Ally Audiobook Solution, our application for delivering audiobooks to our member borrowers. In addition, she showed us how teachers can use the software and websites to assign books to students and track their reading progress.

If you'd like to watch a recording of the presentation you can find it here.

Remember, these events are also an opportunity to have your questions answered, either live or in follow-up messages. Here are some questions answered from our last webinar.

David W. asked: Does text highlighting apply to our textbooks as well?

Answer: Our textbooks are typically Classic Audio, which means that they are human-narrated with no highlighted text on the screen. For a multi-sensory experience, we encourage our students to follow along in the traditional textbook, as they listen to the audiobook.

John A. asked: If synchronized text is the most valued feature, (of our audiobooks) why are we still doing so many "classic" format books.

Answer: We are in fact producing many more VOICEtext books with synchronized text these days, twice the number of Classic Audio books we produced this past year. Textbooks, however are much more complicated in terms of layout and non-text content. Creating a navigable version of the such books would be extremely time and resource intensive, delaying books for weeks or months. Besides, the majority of our borrowers are reading along with their physical textbooks at school or home.

Recording and Reading a Classic Audio Book

Here to provide more detail on the how and why of Classic Audio is Jeff, a 42 year veteran of Learning Ally volunteering. Watch his video here: Classic Audio demo

Office Hours

Learning Ally staff are online to answer your questions live on alternating Wednesdays at 2 PM EST. You'll find links, and more information on the training site.

Congratulations To Our Training Graduates for the month of September

Jim R., Suzanne M., James M., Daniel F., Susan K., Lisa T., Craig J., Bonnie H., Aishah J-E., Anna F., Blair K., Samantha H., Mark M., Jenny B., Brian W., Carmen C., Catherine M., Brianna W., Wendy S., Jamie P., Kim W., Hamilton C., Michele N., John B.