North Shore Middle School Transforms Student Reading Experience

Press release from Northshore Schools:

June 12 2020

GLEN HEAD, N.Y. – In this mobile age, technology has become increasingly valuable in supporting new generations of lifelong learners and readers. Now, North Shore Middle School is using technology to expand access to digital reading materials by connecting their students with the school’s broad collection of ebooks and audiobooks through the Sora app. The combination of convenience, ease of reading on-the-go, and personalized reading experience of both teacher-assigned and student-selected digital books inspires student learning anytime, anywhere.

“Ebooks and audiobooks contain so many features to help all types of learners feel comfortable in their own unique reading experiences,” said Nina Livingston, Library Media Specialist at North Shore Middle School. “Now that we have moved to home learning and teaching, Sora has been an invaluable resource for our students and ELA teachers to continue their amazing work. It was a seamless transition and my data shows the kids are busy reading!”

Through Sora, North Shore Middle School students have convenient and safe access to hundreds of age-appropriate ebooks and audiobooks from the school’s collection. As an example, the school incorporated Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone ebooks and audiobooks for their 6th graders in English, Spanish and Chinese to improve reading skills in an enjoyable way. All of North Shore Middle School’s digital reading materials are available for use inside the classroom, at home and anywhere 24/7 in Sora.

Inspired by educator and student feedback, Sora offers both assigned and pleasure reading incentivized with fun avatars and achievements within the app to encourage a focus on learning. Sora also supports teachers by offering classroom-specific tools like personal assignments, reading analytics and exportable notes that individualize learning. Data from thousands of schools using Sora shows students of all ages read more, improve comprehension and learn critical listening through audiobooks.

Sora, named one of TIME’s Best Inventions of 2019, was designed to transform the modern student reading experience and built by OverDrive Education, a division of OverDrive serving 23,000 K-12 schools worldwide. OverDrive is the leading digital reading platform for a growing network of 45,000 libraries – including Gold Coast Public Library – and schools in 78 countries.

The Sora app is available for North Shore Middle School students, faculty and staff to download through the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, and on Chromebooks that support the Google Play Store. It is also available for use in web browsers at https://soraapp.com.

To learn more, visit https://meet.soraapp.com/.

About North Shore Middle School

North Shore Schools is a community made up of five public schools located on the North Shore of Long Island, NY serving grades K-12.

"Our Mission Is To Nurture And Enrich Our Students' Natural Delight In Learning And In The Powers Of Mind And Body."

About OverDrive Education – a division of OverDrive

OverDrive Education is the leading digital reading platform for K-12 schools, offering the industry’s largest catalog of ebooks, audiobooks and streaming video. As a 100% digital company serving 23,000 schools worldwide, OverDrive combines technology with content to support learning and reading in the K-12 classroom, library and home on all major devices. Sora, the student reading appwas named one of TIME’s Best Inventions of 2019. Founded in 1986, OverDrive – the leading digital reading platform for libraries and schools worldwide – and OverDrive Education are based in Cleveland, Ohio USA. overdrive.com/schools

This press release was produced by the Northshore Schools. The views expressed here are the author’s own.