Category: Sora

Exciting Beginnings: A New School Year Brings New Titles to Sora

8/23/2023

As summer draws to a close and the days start getting shorter, the unmistakable energy of a new school year begins to fill the air. Amidst this whirlwind of excitement, there's one place within the school that holds a special allure for both voracious readers and curious minds alike – the library. And with the start of a new school year comes a collection of new titles that promise to captivate and inspire!

If you’re a long-distance commuter like me, try listening to an audiobook. It won’t put you to sleep and you’ll find yourself relaxed once you get to your destination!

Once you download the Sora app onto your personal Wi-Fi devices (no more than five), locate your school library and log in. You’ll find a collection of over 7000 titles, and if you need help logging in, ask your school librarian.

New titles for adult level readers include:

American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (audio)
Mickey7: A Novel – scifi (audio)
Antimatter Blues: A Mickey7 Novel – (audio) Movie coming!
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes – Hunger Games series (audio and eBook) Moving coming in November!
The Body Keeps Score: Brain, Mind, Body in the Healing of Trauma (audio and eBook)
The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics (audio and eBook) Movie coming!
The Courage to Be Disliked: How to Free Yourself, Change Your Life, and Achieve Real Happiness (audio)
Napolean Bonaparte: The Biography of a Leader Who Changed the History of France (eBook) Movie coming!
Surrounded by Idiots: The Four Types of Human Behavior and How to Effectively Communicate with Each (audio)
Tomorrowmind: Thriving at Work with Resilience, Creating, and Connection – Now and in an Uncertain Future (audio and eBook)

Sora makes personalized eBook reading easy with a choice of font styles, screen contrast, text sizing, defining words, highlighting text, and making notes. Audiobooks have great features, too, and you can control the speed of the recording. Any notes saved will remain for as long as you have an account through your school.

The infusion of new titles into this virtual library collection also presents an opportunity for educators to incorporate fresh content into their lesson plans. From assigning relevant reading materials to organizing book discussions, teachers can offer a variety of book formats to enrich teaching strategies and deepen student engagement.

Sora is now a partner with TeachingBooks, a fantastic resource you can access once logged in to resources.caboces.org. Find lesson plans for many titles used in K-12 classrooms, author interviews, book and movie trailers, and vocabulary-building activities. If you wish to have personalized training in using Sora or TeachingBooks, or wish to schedule an in-school training, reach out to me at [email protected].

By: Cece Fuoco, CA BOCES Learning Resources

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The Data Is In: Student Reading Experience Transformed

10/28/2020

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Students are connecting with a broad collection of ebooks and audiobooks through OverDrive’s Sora app. Inspired by educator and student feedback, Sora offers both assigned and pleasure reading incentivized with digital badges for achievements. It was also named one of TIME’s Best Inventions of 2019.

During spring and summer 2020 Zoom trainings, educators downloaded Sora onto personal devices and discovered how to change an ebook’s font style to dyslexic, increase text size, highlight text, and make notes – even in an audiobook. Teachers were thrilled to learn that class sets can be assigned to students and highlighted texts and notes may be exported in response to an assignment. As a result, 19 titles (class sets) have been assigned to more than 450 students in 7 districts since September.

The combination of convenience, ease of reading on-the-go without wi-fi, and personalized reading experience has led to over 9,127 non-assigned ebooks and audiobooks being borrowed within the CABOCES’ region September 1 through October 27, 2020. See the graph below for the most popular titles checked out since September 1, 2020.

This digital collection is not limited to students in grades PreK – Twelve. Teachers and support staff can access many books featured in the NY Times’ Best Seller’s list and USA Today’s popular titles, as well as those that complement PD trainings.

For more information on how to maximize Sora at your school, please contact [email protected].

By: Cece Fuoco, CA BOCES Learning Resources

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Innovative Teaching

Exciting Beginnings: A New School Year Brings New Titles to Sora

The Data Is In: Student Reading Experience Transformed

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Innovative Teaching

Exciting Beginnings: A New School Year Brings New Titles to Sora

The Data Is In: Student Reading Experience Transformed

Follow us on ​social media

Categories

Archives

Follow us on
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