Audio Readings - K-12 - free download

I saw this resource highlighted on the Apple Website and immediately bookmarked the site so that I could go back when I needed it. University of South Florida has complied audio recordings of stories, poems, fairytales, textbooks, lectures and more for grade levels K-12 (and in spanish too!) that you can download from free. Use them with your computer or your ipod or other mp3 device.

Two places you can could go and both offer different sorting capabilities:

Direct to iTunes - has the different grade levels in separate tabs: need to brush up on your nursey rhymes? look under K, some of Aesop's Fables are under Grade 4, and under the Grade 12 you have Aristoltle's Physics.

Lit2Go - If you go to this site you can search by author and title, plus you can download a pdf of the reading passage. I also noticed that there was some support material giving suggetions for how to use the document in a class.

I read through the FAQs and saw these two interesting points:

Reading levels are determined by Microsoft Word and then verified by classroom teachers.

According to Microsoft Word Help:

The formula for Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level score is:
(.39 x ASL) + (11.8 x ASW) - 15.59
where:
ASL = average sentence length (the number of words divided by the number of sentences)
ASW = average number of syllables per word (the number of syllables divided by the number of words)

Copyright - you may use up to 25 mp3 and/or text files for education purposes with appropriate credit.

Geology of National Parks

Anyone wanting an entertaining and informative opportunity to learn more about the Geology of National Parks should check out the Open CourseWare opportunity offered by Penn State. The online course content for GEOS 10 - Geology of National Parks is out there for you to look at without having to pay tuition. Complete with video lectures, virtual tours, some guitar! Lots of good content to ready and look through. If anything go here to see and hear the Rock (it is a geology class) Video Reviews. I did have some problems seeing the video lectures, but once I downloaded the browser plug-in I was good to go.

This was passed on by one of UAF's faculty who we've been working with at CDE on an online oceans studies course. We hope to one day open the course up as Penn State has, as an open courseware course but we have many details to figure out (like copyright).

What a fun class to have worked on! To get to visit a bunch of National Parks and hike around–that doesn't sound like too much work to me!