Sunday, August 25, 2013

Tales2Go Brings Audio Books To Van Meter....And A Whole Lot Of Reading Excitement!

I have been going into the classrooms to teach and refresh the students and teachers about all of the wonderful resources we have available within our library and through Heartland AEA.  

One of the resources that is new to us this year is Tales2Go....an amazing database of over 3000 audio books for our students in grades K-8.  
As you can see, Tales2Go has so much to offer our young people while getting them excited and connected to reading through audiobooks.  
There are several things we are doing to promote Tales2Go as we add it to our school community.  

I am teaching them how to access TalesToGo on their iPads and the devices we have in the library.  By showing the students and teachers how to access and use TalesToGo, this is giving them the opportunity to actually get into the database and take it for a spin.  

I also spoke to all our secondary students about Tales2Go during "Library In Your Pocket" orientation when school started.   By having access to Tales2Go and their own devices, the students are able to listen to audio books anytime and anywhere.  
I included it in the "Van Meter Library Voice Newsletter" I created using Smore.  This has been sent home to our school community and shared on various social networks such as our library Facebook, Van Meter Voice, and Twitter @vmlibraryvoice.  I love that the students and families can use Tales2Go at home and as they travel as well.  
In the library, I am also teaching the students to use Tales2Go on the laptops.  They log into our MackinVIA account and find it under "Databases".   I have had several students also put Tales2Go into the "Backpack" within their personal MackinVIA account so they can get to it easily.   
As I walked around the 4th grade classroom I was excited to see what was happening with this friend.  He had went to Tales2Go and searched for the Diary of a Wimpy Kid book he had checked out earlier from our library.  It was so fun seeing him reading along as he listened to the book with his iPad. 

Also, very exciting to the teacher and other students.  
 With the website and app, the audio books within Tales2Go are very easy to search and find.  There are a lot of ways one can find what they want to read too. 
 
All of the students are enjoying learning about Tales2Go within their classrooms and the library. I have had students show up after school to ask questions and even messages from parents who are accessing it at home with their children. 
And with their iPads they can curl up somewhere comfy to listen and read, just like they can with a book.  
As we continue to learn about Tales2Go and find easy ways to access it through MackinVIA, our Library In Your Pocket campaign, and awesome posters and bookmarks around the school, I can't wait to see how these audio books hook our students into many more wonderful books and authors.  

We are creating and inspiring readers by giving our students and school community one more place to read with Tales2Go.  

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