Mobile App Monday - Billy Possum's Interactive Comprehension

"Throughout each of the 25 chapters, emphasis is placed on ‘making meaning’ at the sentence and text level achieved through the practice of strategies supporting understanding of literal and inferential meanings, prediction, visualisation, and sequencing." -iTunes

Want to learn more about it? Please visit:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/billy-possums-interactive/id875598691?mt=8

Sensory Fiction?

According to a story on NPR, MIT engineers have developed a way for readers to experience the physiological emotions of a book they are reading. A book was "augmented" to help set the mood through lighting and vibration and a "wearable" was developed to help with the physiological sensations.

The book and wearable support the following outputs:

• Light (the book cover has 150 programmable LEDs to create ambient light based on changing setting and mood)
• Sound
• Personal heating device to change skin temperature (through a Peltier junction secured at the collarbone)
• Vibration to influence heart rate
• Compression system (to convey tightness or loosening through pressurized airbags)

To read the NPR story, please visit:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/02/06/272044748/sensory-fiction-books-that-let-you-feel-what-the-characters-do?

For more pictures of the book and wearable, visit:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/38088189@N07/sets/72157638927649876/

I Get It!: Building Social Thinking and Reading Comprehension Through Book Chats

I Get It!: Building Social Thinking and Reading Comprehension through Book Chats is a guide for parents and teachers to help build a child's reading comprehension from the angle of the student's social thinking ability. The author believes that reading comprehension is less about understanding language and more about understanding social thinking. Contents of the book include:

• Discussion of the research on reading comprehension and its relationship to social thinking
• A teaching approach called Book Chat that uses children's literature to teach social thinking
• Teacher-tested strategies for in-classroom use, aligned with current educational standards
• Numerous examples of Book Chat literature, organized to teach specific concepts
• IEP goal ideas and examples

Want to know more? Email us at cedir@indiana.edu to check out this title.