I hope that everyone enjoys the Thanksgiving Break! I am looking forward to spending the week with family! I also plan on spending time reading and hope that you will encourage your children to enjoy some good books. I've spoken to several of you about the preference for holding an "old school" book in hand, but don't want you to discount the value of our electronic book resources. The information below should be coming home in Wednesday folders along with a bookmark or two with access points. Please take some time to check out myON and MackinVIA. Let me know if you have questions or concerns. As we look forward to new places, spaces, and adventures, we may need to rely more on electronic resources. Take the reading challenge- keep track of time spent reading and leave a comment here to let me know how it's going. I'd love to hear what new favorites you've found on VIA and am excited to get back to see how many minutes the Owls read over the Thanksgiving Break! ~Bonnie
Reading Challenge
Thanksgiving Break 2017
- myON is a personalized digital literacy environment that makes reading engaging for students and enables them to take ownership over their learning.
- www.myON.com Username: S+ (student ID number) Password: aisd
- The recommendation engine combines student interests, grade level and Lexile reading level to provide each learner with a list of “just right” books for independent, self-directed reading.
- Educator tools enable teachers to seamlessly monitor activity and growth and allow quick access to information about individual student’s reading
- Challenge: Have your child set a goal for “time spent reading” over the break. myON is a fantastic place to access online electronic books.
MackinVIA (virtual library)
- MackinVIA™ is a program that makes it easy to access your school’s digital resources. You can use MackinVIA on any desktop, laptop, or mobile device with Internet access. If you would like to download titles to read offline, a free app is available for all major mobile devices.
- Access the VIA tile in your portal: ·https://portal.austinisd.org or ·MackinVIA app
- Student User: S ID# (use capital S before ID#) PW: Capital Last Name Initial + 6 digit birthday + lower case s
- Finding electronic resources in VIA-
- keyword search
- view pre-selected categories
- filter resources
- browse resources
- Once you find a resource,
- click Open Now to read it,
- add to Favorites (or the Heart icon) to save it for later
- click Checkout to borrow it
Book (old school, paper, turn the pages kind)
- Don’t forget that these count too! Keep track of time spent reading or number of pages read. Challenge yourself to bring your book or device with a downloaded e-book everywhere you go! You never know when you’ll have a few minutes to read! Happy Thanksgiving! Love, Mrs. Lang
