Overdrive Training

I have a pretty long step by step hand out for Overdrive. Overdrive is our district eBook and eAudio book database. We have the School Download library plus we have added some titles to our system in addition to the base collection as well. The handout can be downloaded from: http://www.greenville.k12.sc.us/gcsd/depts/ets/its/docs/overdrivetraining.pdf - for copyright reasons I am not going to use screen captures of the program in this blog - but you can see screen captures in the handout as you participate in training. You can access our Overdrive library at http://greenville.lib.overdrive.com - Log in by finding your school and using your network username and password. OR - K-2 students have a library card number and an alternate login screen.

I LOVE audio books - we've been using these digitial audiobooks for awesome projects and reading reinforcements. There are several schools doing "Exercise Your Mind" type programs where students/teachers load the books onto MP3 players and the students listen to them while walking on the tracks for PE minutes (or inside in yucky weather). Then students can come inside for discussion groups and lessons on what they have read. The books have been listened to in small groups for literature circles and shared over teacher Promethean boards for supplements to class novel sets. They are wonderful!! Read the research from Janet Allen on "Plugged into Reading" and other works about how audiobooks can improve comprehension and fluency!!

The eBooks are incredible in the classroom. It is the natural progression from holding books up to share with the class, to using a document camera, to having an full screen image to interact with in the classroom or on an individual computer. POWERFUL! Most of you know one of my big professional interests is teaching non-fiction reading strategies to students. To be able to show the titles on the screen and guide students through the access strategies is incredible and to be able to have the students interact and post questions in Adobe Reader is the best!!