Kamis, 24 November 2011

The revival of the audio book

A short history of the audio book

In 1920 the Royal National Institute for the Blind in England was allready doing research on how to create audio books for the blind. At that time there were a lot of ex World War 1 soldiers who had gone blind as a result of the fighting. In 1926 the RNIB started to use LP's to record audio books which could be played on record players (the kind with the big horn, you had to swing a handel a couple of times befor it would play).

In 1936 the "Talking Book Service" was launched.The first two books were:'The murder of Roger Ackroyd' by Agatha Christie and Joseph Conrad's 'Thyphoon'. The records used at the time could hold 25 minutes of spoken tekst, so they needed about 10 records for an average audio book.

In 1940 the studio used by the RNIB was bombed, and one month later a replacement studio was bombed as wel.The RNIB wanted to start publishing audio books again, but they needed certain materials which had been destroyed.

In America, the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB), had started producing audio books as wel, and they did send the much needed parts to help their English counterparts. Unfortunatly the shipment got lost during a bombing raid of the London harbour! A second shipment however did make it, and the RNIB was able to start again with the production of audio books.

In the sixties the audio books started to appear on casettes, and later, after the infention of the compact disk player, on CD's.

Nowadays the audio books have become more are popular then ever befor, in spite of their age. One of the main reasons for their ever growing popularity is the fact that audio books can be downloaded straight from the Internet. There are a good few audio book publishers who provide this service, and it looks like their on to a winner.

Audio books, more then 70 years old and still gowing strong.

Unique films Can Improve Student Reading Skill

Does your child read at a proficient reading level? National statistics paint a bleak picture.

According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, 90 percent of eighth-graders in Washington, D.C., 81 percent in New Mexico, 80 percent in Mississippi and Nevada, 78 percent in Louisiana, California and Hawaii, 74 percent in Texas, and 73 percent in Florida were reading at a level below proficiency in 2003. At least 63 percent of eighth-graders in 32 other states read at a level below proficiency.

To assist educators and parents in helping children become more proficient in reading, SFK Media Specially For Kids Corp. provides an innovative learning program called ReadEnt. It blends reading with entertaining movies to teach and improve vocabulary and comprehension. These Reading Movies use a patented technology called "Action Captions," which show each spoken word on-screen, in real-time, as a character speaks.

According to SFK Media, this type of captioning is effective in improving the rate of vocabulary development and comprehension. The words become ingrained in the children's minds and, therefore, both reading and spoken language skills develop naturally.

"[Students] watching these Reading Movies, even though they think they are just watching a movie that is entertaining, ... are comprehending words. They are reading whether they realize that they are or not," said Chelsee Atkins, an educator and reading specialist in Florida. "If they sit down and watch a couple of these movies each week, they are spending 10 hours a week reading."

ReadEnt's Reading Movies are available as interactive DVD programs for use on the TV or computer and include such classic titles as "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea," "Tales of Gulliver's Travels" and "The Trojan Horse." They can be used in a variety of different teaching configurations: as a shared experience on a single television monitor; as a guided activity, where a group of students interact on their own computers; and as a one-to-one tutorial, in which the teacher or parent assesses the child's comprehension and vocabulary recognition.

"Learning is playing in its best sense, and entertainment should be learning," said Joy Esterberg, a language skills specialist at Baruch College in New York. "This program is a wonderful marriage between learning and entertainment."
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