Readers Rejoice! Thanks to all the hard work of Allison, Becky, Lynn, and me you can benefit. We wanted to actually SEE how the Capstone Interactive Books would work with our students before purchasing. Capstone agreed to let us have free access for a limited basis to their ENTIRE LINE of 167 interactive books. Because we are so good at pleading for our friends, readers of this blog also have access.
This account is active from now until the end of September and contains 167 Interactive Books.
Just go to www.mycapstonelibrary.com
Enter the following:
Login: read
Password: everywhere
I will be highlighting some interesting titles and practical ways to use this site this week. Please go check it out, try it out with your teachers, and get your students using these books so you can determine if this is a must purchase for your library. We pleaded for the opportunity to show it to our students so you can have time to work with some titles this summer and test them with students at the beginning of school.
These interactive books are different from the Living Books. Remember those? Students had so much fun clicking frantically on all the pictures that they ignored the text and story? The Capstone Interactive books have a different purpose. They focus on the text and the story. All bibliographies, table of contents, glossaries, indices, and read-more pages are included so you can teach students without having to create your own overheads or powerpoints.
I especially like how they highlight the different panes of graphic novels and make the speech bubbles larger when a character is speaking. This not only teaches students how to read a graphic novel, but it is also a fabulous professional development tool. Do you have a principal or teachers who turn their noses up at GN’s? Take this opportunity to show them how graphic novels work. When they realize the complex nature of reading, retaining, and comprehending stories and details with visuals, they may become your strongest supporters.
One additional area that might be of interest is the fact that interactive books work with a diverse group of readers. Special Education, ELL and reluctant readers as well as accomplished readers can use these titles. "It makes the library a place without walls and becomes a great rally point for collaboration with the teachers." – says Eric Fitzgerald, the vice president of direct sales.
There are many ways to get these titles for your own school. You can subscribe to single titles with Capstone hosting, buy them individually as CD’s, or get access to all of them from the server. If your school hides everything behind a firewall, you can even work with Capstone to host them internally from your server behind the firewall.
Your school OPAC can have a link in the 856 MARC record tag for URI uniform resource indentifier. If your students are at home or school searching the OPAC and click on the link, they can access the interactive book. Imagine instead of only one copy of the book and one CD, you could have multiple access points!
As you spend your summer playing, researching, reading, and preparing new lesson plans, be sure to bookmark the site and plan how you can integrate interactive books with your students.
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