Every Friday, I’ll send you a wonderful website (or more) that my classes and my parents love. I think you’ll find they’ll be a favorite of your students as they are of mine.
Free books for all grades, all languages
Address:
Age:
Kindergarten+
Topic:
Literature
Review
Ms. Noor’s website is one of the better free audio book sites I’ve seen. (A few others: StoryOnline has actors reading stories to children, but there aren’t a lot of options. The well-designed Speakaboos offers beautiful books, but they charge a fee. Then there’s the original, Project Gutenberg, though this site isn’t as user friendly as Ms. Noor’s). It’s clean, easy-to-maneuver, with just a bit of unobtrusive advertising to pay the bills, and she offers dozens–hundreds?–of age-appropriate free downloadable audio books. She has lots of children books, but also older students. I like that. We often forget the expense of buying those books for middle and high school classes. It’s nice to have an opportunity to use that money somewhere else, like gas to drive kids to school.
She organizes books by genre (including teen, young adult, and short stories) and offers a search bar to find a particular title or author. Uniquely, you can select from over twenty different languages, including Urdu and Tamil.
The webmaster, Ms. Noor, appears to be a real person, not a corporation (I wish she had a ‘contact me’ button so we could chat). She considers herself a ‘Jordanian lifelong learner’. Here’s her public profile:
[Ms. Noor] has studied CIS & ICT in education and is passionate about new technologies in the classroom. Miss Noor believes that 21st Century learning & teaching must take place in every classroom in order to prepare our digital native children to live, learn and work in this rapid race of digital communities. She wants every kid to have a better education & life, by spreading knowledge to educators all over the world.
She’s on Twitter, Classroom 2.0, has nine ScoopIt! ezines, and a blog (though not well updated. Still, I found interesting topics there) so despite the lack of a Contact Me button on her website, she’s made it easy to get in touch with her to chat about the books she posts or other topics she covers on her various platforms. I found some interesting links and ideas on digital storytelling in her twitter stream.
But I digress… Enjoy the website! Let me know what you think.
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Jacqui Murray is the editor of a technology curriculum for K-fifth grade and author of two technology training books for middle school. She wrote Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy midshipman. She is webmaster for five blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, a tech columnist forExaminer.com, Editorial Review Board member for ISTE’s Journal for Computing Teachers, IMS tech expert, and a weekly contributor to Write Anything. Currently, she’s seeking representation for a techno-thriller Any suggestions? Contact Jacqui at her writing office, WordDreams, or her tech lab, Ask a Tech Teacher.
Ask a Tech Teacher 
If I can make a recommendation, here’s a great site to download free audiobooks for kids. http://www.twirlygirlshop.com/stories-for-kids
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Thanks, Duncan. I’ll check it out.
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