FIRST YEARS > FAQs Library > Instructions for Using Tar Heel Reader

http://tarheelreader.org/ The Tar Heel Reader, a recent collaboration by FIRST YEARS author Dr. Karen Erickson, is a "collection of free, easy-to-read books" for "beginning readers of all ages." It provides features allowing users to "publish" a book, illustrated with uploaded photos, scanned images, or digitized clipart. The resulting publication can be speech-enabled and/or accessed using multiple interfaces Example: http://tarheelreader.org/2009/12/22/language-experience-books/ - Using Tar Heel Reader - a "perfect way" to generate a typed, published version of a language experience book from a handwritten original.  Finding a book To use existing books, you can search through subject/type/audience categories (http://tarheelreader.org/category/books/). Or, as illustrated below, you can use the more narrowly-defined, user-created "topic tags" (http://tarheelreader.org/index-of-tags/), in this case "speech sounds." To begin reading a chosen book, simply click on its title. Note the speech synthesis options – child, woman, man – on the left of the screen. Source: http://tarheelreader.org/2008/12/01/contrasting-word-pairs-t-and-d/ Registering To create a new book, you must first request an "invitation code" by sending an email to: tarheelreader@cs.unc.edu  When the code is returned, you use it to register at http://tarheelreader.org/wp-login.php?action=register After you submit the registration form, an email comes back to you with a password. You will be using the username and password each time you login to create/publish a book. Creating a book Instructions: http://tarheelreader.org/write-a-book/ The "secret" to creating a book is to do repeated image uploads. When you click the upload button (if using your own images), a new image renders itself on the creation page, where you supply a caption either by typing or copy-pasting from an existing "script." You keep repeating until you have created all the pages. Here, below, you see 3 pages have been uploaded so far. To delete a page, you can click the red X at the top of each page. To move a page around, you can click the green left-right arrows.  To categorize your book, choose from pre-defined topics or choose from/create your own "index tag(s)" (http://tarheelreader.org/index-of-tags/). Editing created books Click http://tarheelreader.org/your-books/ to edit an existing book or scroll down on the main page to click on the "Books you wrote" link. Printing a book To print the entire book, you will need to download it as a Powerpoint presentation. This is done by clicking the "Set up" button on the left, top, on the first page of each book.  Once in Powerpoint, you can print the book pages, as slides, as usual. Note: You may need to adjust the font size in Powerpoint before you print.   Deleting a book Doing this is a bit involved.  Go to the "Books you wrote" page. From there, edit the book you want to delete. Click the "Save as draft"  button. It has now reverted to draft status. On your books page, you will see a checkbox beside the name of the file that will allow you to delete it. Logging out Scroll down on the main page to click the "Log out" link.

Alexander Graham Bell Association | UNC-CH Division of Speech and Hearing Sciences © FIRST YEARS, Last update: February 2010, Maintained by Lane Price Rose, WebSchool Solutions