By Thomas DeVere Wolsey
Written for Literacy Beat
Recently, I participated in a Twitter chat hosted by the International Literacy Association #ILAChat and Sam Patterson (@SamPatue) on the topic of the Association’s latest What’s Hot in Literacy report. While there, I met the Story Shares team.
In their own words, “Story Shares is a non-profit organization devoted to inspiring reading practice and improving literacy skills.” The organization leverages technology to bring books worth reading to teens and young adults who struggle. As most readers of Literacy Beat who work with adolescents know, finding material that is not overwhelming is a challenge.
Story Shares has created an online space that provides opportunities for writers to publish their work in a variety of genres and fills the need of teen readers for something meaty but not impossible to read.
The online book collection is searchable by the usual indicators (author, title)
but also by interest level and three readability indices. The books are easy to navigate by chapter and by scrolling. Controls include a bookmark, a word lookup tool that brings up definitions of challenging words, and a tool to mark a book for reading later.
Some readers prefer books on paper, so Story Shares makes some of their collection available for purchase as a paper-bound book.
Because some readers benefit from hearing the words of a book read aloud, the Story Shares team has built in a text-to-speech reader. As the reader speaks the words, the written words are highlighted on the page.
I sampled the books on my computer and on my iPad. Both worked perfectly with the books on Story Shares.
For authors who wish to write for the teen and young adult audience, a user-friendly interface allows the writer to focus on the narrative and not the technology. I tried it and found the graphic user interface (GUI) very easy to use.
Because Story Shares is a nonprofit organization that serves students around the world, they also appreciate donations. Just click here to help them out.