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A Common New Volunteer Story
As a new volunteer excited to start helping our struggling students, you may start at our main website and fill out a registration form, but you then get sent to another site for training. You get an email response with the same links just in case you lose them, but maybe that email gets buried by others and although you logged into the training center and started a course, you're not sure how to get back to it, and what is this volunteer portal you've heard about as well and are you supposed to go there for training? And why can't you log in at LearningAlly.org to continue your training? How can you find your way?!
We know our various sites and resources can seem like a maze! Navigating our volunteer system can be challenging at times and producing audiobooks is not a simple task. We started weekly Training Office Hours meetings where new volunteers and recent graduates can tune in and ask questions and get answers right away. We are also available through our Training chat for quick questions, and both communities also use their own Google chat channels for communication too (Virtual Water Cooler, Literary Salon, Textbook Staff hangouts, etc.). And there's always email as well. Paula Restrepo and Lori Leland also reach out to volunteers via email and phone to ensure they have what they need to succeed as volunteers. We wish we could be there looking over your shoulder to help when you're stuck, but our virtual volunteering system doesn't allow us to be there with you physically.
What is virtual volunteering?
We use the term "virtual volunteering" sometimes to describe what you do since your volunteer activity is done online and from your own home. However, we do NOT consider you a "virtual volunteer"! You are very real and gracious folks who give your time and talents to help others succeed and we really, really appreciate you! We are here to help you navigate and figure out how you can help our students.
Try our new Volunteer Sitemap!
To alleviate some of this confusion, we created a Volunteer Sitemap mini-lesson that explains our various sites and what they do. New volunteers get a link to this in their initial emailed registration response, and it's also in our Virtual Training site dashboard and in the Volunteer Portal's Resources section at the bottom of the page. Traditionally, a sitemap is a map of a single Internet site, but out Volunteer Sitemap is designed to help you navigate all the sites you may encounter in our volunteer community. We hope this helps and feedback is always welcome!
Please reach out to us if you have any questions...we are here to help!
Have you been a part of our Volunteer Nation Live! events? Each month we're exploring another aspect of Learning Ally, from volunteering and reading best practices, to the user experience. Last month Amy Leona was our guest, explaining and demonstrating the Learning Ally Audiobook Solution, our application for delivering audiobooks to our member borrowers. In addition, she showed us how teachers can use the software and websites to assign books to students and track their reading progress.
If you'd like to watch a recording of the presentation you can find it here.
Remember, these events are also an opportunity to have your questions answered, either live or in follow-up messages. Here are some questions answered from our last webinar.
David W. asked: Does text highlighting apply to our textbooks as well?
Answer: Our textbooks are typically Classic Audio, which means that they are human-narrated with no highlighted text on the screen. For a multi-sensory experience, we encourage our students to follow along in the traditional textbook, as they listen to the audiobook.
John A. asked: If synchronized text is the most valued feature, (of our audiobooks) why are we still doing so many "classic" format books.
Answer: We are in fact producing many more VOICEtext books with synchronized text these days, twice the number of Classic Audio books we produced this past year. Textbooks, however are much more complicated in terms of layout and non-text content. Creating a navigable version of the such books would be extremely time and resource intensive, delaying books for weeks or months. Besides, the majority of our borrowers are reading along with their physical textbooks at school or home.
Here to provide more detail on the how and why of Classic Audio is Jeff, a 42 year veteran of Learning Ally volunteering. Watch his video here: Classic Audio demo
Learning Ally staff are online to answer your questions live on alternating Wednesdays at 2 PM EST. You'll find links, and more information on the training site.
Jim R., Suzanne M., James M., Daniel F., Susan K., Lisa T., Craig J., Bonnie H., Aishah J-E., Anna F., Blair K., Samantha H., Mark M., Jenny B., Brian W., Carmen C., Catherine M., Brianna W., Wendy S., Jamie P., Kim W., Hamilton C., Michele N., John B.