Learning Ally provides audio for a wide range of textbooks - from Music History to Economics to French Grammar to Geometry to Biochemistry! We have several specialized sub-fields within our Instructional Textbooks. Today, we’ll be taking an inside look at our Science & Technology Community, with our small but powerful Computer and Programming group.

What are these computer books all about?
Our Computer Science projects can be broken down into three main categories. The most common books are those that teach students how to use computer programs like Microsoft Word, Excel, AutoCAD, and more. Every now and then, we’ll get one or two books dealing with IT or computer service and repair. Finally, some of our more challenging projects are books on programming and markup languages like HTML, Java, and C++.

Help! How do I read  “⌘”?*

These Computer Skills and Programming books come with their own special challenges. How do we read a page full of program code? When do we use “hashtag” versus “pound”? You might be surprised to learn that there is actually a lot we don’t read in these projects. Most of our members are fully sighted, and many more have some usable vision. We don’t describe computer screenshots or read all of the punctuation in code. Our job is to focus on the textual detail, so that the students can focus on what they’re good at - thinking through code structure and building their tech skills.

Our staff members can answer many questions, but we often rely on our expert volunteers as much as our own specialized knowledge and research skills. I’m Sarah Klipper, our Computer and Programming Text Lead. I work with our Science & Technology  Lead, Christine Hoffman, on everyday problems and tricky questions in our Science & Tech projects. To better deal with quirky computer lingo, I developed our Computer and Code Guidelines following Christine’s and the Science volunteers’ work on the Science Terms and Conventions as a guide. I’m grateful to have plenty of help with these Guidelines from our programmer volunteers, who know how some of these arcane terms are used in the classroom and in professional circles.

Google Hangouts are a big help with this kind of group collaboration; our Computer/Code Chat Group has been absolutely invaluable as we help each other figure out pronunciations and usage of coding syntax. Many thanks go to Ev Tate, Joseph “Old Joe” Clark, Ann Bouchard, and Kim Dauber for their contributions in this chat and various project Hangouts. Many thanks also to volunteer alumnus (and Staff husband) Michael Klipper for his help with Computer Science concepts.

Want to learn more about computers but too scared to try? We’re here to help…  and if we don’t have the answer, we can help you find one. ;-) 

*That ⌘ symbol is the Command key on a Macintosh computer.

As our Instructional Production team begins to position ourselves for growth, we are piloting some new opportunities for increased involvement with our volunteers.  One of these new pilots includes our Project Guidelines Pilot, known also as “Team Project Site”.

Staff has been working to create our structure and processes to include:

• Step by step procedures for creating project guidelines.

• Creating a library of Project Guideline templates; organized by publisher.

• Training and working closely with volunteers on the creation of our project guidelines.

• New structure to our current Project Guidelines.  

Thank you to Team Project Site member Susan Wilson, who has been the first brave soul to start this pilot and has been doing great!  With Susan’s help, we have already added over twenty new projects to our Upper Instructional Community.

We’d like to welcome new member Kathy Cummings to Team Project Site. She is currently working with Upper Instructional, but will soon be joining the Lower Instructional group.

Here are some great new features in our Project Guidelines to keep an eye out for:

If you are interested in joining our Project Guidelines please reach out to Audrey in your Staff Hangout.  Once again, thanks for all you do!!!