Benefits to students:
- Learning Ally provides access to the general education curriculum.
- Learning Ally increases independence because students can work on assignments with the support of audiobooks.
- Learning Ally raises self-esteem because students are able to meet higher academic goals which leads to greater levels of academic success.
Benefits to teachers:
- Learning Ally complements the existing curriculum in all subject areas.
- Learning Ally helps with classroom management. Teachers can use audiobooks as a support tool for students to continue working independently on assignments. It helps to minimize the amount of one-on-one instructional time a teacher may have spent in the past reading textbooks to students.
- Learning Ally helps to decrease behavioral problems because students who previously could not participate in assignments due to learning differences can now participate. Students are more engaged with the text.
- Audiobooks provide access to the general education curriculum.
Benefits of Learning Ally vs. commercial CDs:
- Learning Ally's AudioPlus® and AudioAccessSM books are navigable because they are recorded in a special format known as DAISY (Digital Accessible Information SYstem). Users are able to jump from page to page or chapter to chapter; place bookmarks; and adjust the speed of the reader.
- Learning Ally's textbooks and books usually fit on one CD or one small set of downloadable files because of the special way that they are recorded.
- Learning Ally's books are read by volunteers. Human voice is important because it allows students to hear proper voice inflection, pronunciation and prosody. Teachers have provided feedback that this is especially important for literature books and textbooks.
- Learning Ally provides the entire textbook or book, not portions of the book as many commercial publishers do. This allows schools to meet the legal requirements in the accommodation section of a student’s individualized education plan (IEP), which dictates the student must have textbooks in an auditory format.
- It is currently at the discretion of the publisher to provide text in an audio format. Therefore, schools cannot consistently rely on their textbook publishers to provide audio formats.
Why do I need Learning Ally when I already have a reading program?
- Learning Ally complements the existing curriculum and can supplement all subject areas, not just the reading component. Learning Ally can provide literature novels, math books, history books, science books, etc.
- Learning Ally complements the independent reading, vocabulary development, comprehension and language development of all programs listed above.
- Learning Ally provides access to authentic literature (i.e. The Catcher in the Rye), which many skill-based reading programs lack. Many skill-based reading programs use high-interest, low-level reading passages that are written to specifically address the skill that is being taught.