Help me give my students universal, equitable access to audiobooks by doubling the size of our loanable MP3 player collection of SanDisk Clip Jam players.
I am fortunate to be the librarian in an elementary school of over 400 3rd, 4th and 5th graders. My students come from varied backgrounds and have a variety of reading needs and skills.
For many, the school library is the only place for them to access books and digital resources.
Most students do not live within walking distance to our town center and rely on car transportation to get around after school. The school library is their information superstore, and they need to be able to access current, exciting resources 24/7, with or without a home internet connection.
My Project
For several years, I have worked to build a rich collection of audiobooks for my students through Sora, our school audiobook platform. My students love to listen to a variety of books. Some listen for pleasure and others listen as a support or accommodation so they can engage with complex, grade-level texts.
But many students do not have access to a device at home on which they can listen to audiobooks.
We have 12 MP3 players that students can borrow for a period of two weeks. These MP3 players are always checked out, and a have waiting list of 30-40 kids at a time. We are in need of increasing the number of MP3 players we loan to students so they can take their audiobooks on the go. Although Sora works on any mobile device, there are many reasons that parents may not want their children to use their devices after school, particularly with concerns about the impact of screen time of child development. In addition, many families do not have the resources to purchase devices for their children for home use.
The MP3 player provides a listening device that is really very low-tech. There are no other distractions, other than the book they are listening to. The battery has a long life and students can come to the library during their loan period to re-load a new audiobook. Having a larger collection of MP3 players would provide greater, equitable access for many more students than we are able to serve currently.
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