Are you a Truman Elementary School alum or former teacher? If so, Jane Hake’s fourth-grade class wants to hear from you!

Mrs. Hake’s class is collecting historical documents and oral stories as part of a project leading up to Truman Elementary School’s transition to a middle school in Fall 2011.

Report cards, letters, photos, newspaper articles or event programs are examples of some of the many items that tell the story of Lindbergh’s Truman School Building from its eras as a junior high, early childhood, middle school and elementary school.

Truman will transition to a middle school in Fall 2011 as part of Lindbergh’s Prop R 2008 bond issue, which passed last November. The two-year history project will help cap off Truman’s years as an elementary school and bring it full circle back to a middle school. For more information, please contact Jane Hake at jhake@lindberghschools.ws or 314-729-2470.

New Books Aid Home Schoolers, Autistic Students

At the Assistive Technology Industry Association's (ATIA) conference in Chicago, the education services and technology company ,Pearson,  announced new HTMLbooks™,  digital versions of the company's course materials designed for students with learning, print, speech and language disabilities; auditory learners; children with autism; struggling readers; and homeschoolers.

The first of many to come, HTMLbooks are available currently for the titles Prentice Hall Literature 2010, Magruders American Government, Prentice Hall Economics and Miller & Levine Biology. Additional mathematics titles in the subjects of Algebra I, Algebra II and Geometry will be available in January 2010. The Pearson HTMLbooks are available for the same price as the print book.

"This fall, nearly 50 million students headed back to school, and approximately 6.5 million of these were students with diverse needs. Recognizing the importance of differentiated instruction and the need for curriculum that is useful and meaningful to all students, Pearson is expanding schools' accessible curricular options and breaking down barriers to learning through technology with our HTMLbooks," said Emily Swenson, Executive Vice President, Product Management. She added, "Pearson HMTLbooks reflect our commitment to meeting student's individualized learning needs, as they are comprised of the full core content of the print book, including both text and images, and are based on state standards to help prepare learners of all abilities for their state assessments."

Pearson HTMLbooks are particularly appropriate for students with reading and print disabilities, like dyslexia, blindness or low vision, who rely on assistive technology, such as adaptive keyboards and text readers, to access their educational content. Pearson worked with four assistive technology partners: textHELP, Kurzweil Educational Systems, Don Johnston and gh, to ensure Pearson HTMLbooks were compatible with the leading technology applications that increase, maintain or improve functional capabilities of a child with a disability.

Pearson's HTMLbooks are distributed on CD-ROMs  All titles run on the Windows and Apple operating systems and include an interactive table of contents, "go-to-page" functionality and additional features like full keyboard access and the ability to skip navigation links.

An example of a Pearson HTMLbook, Pearson's Miller & Levine Biology, can be accessed at http://media.pearsoncmg.com/ebookplus/cg/html_test/Biology/index.html. A live demonstration of a Pearson HTMLbook will take place at ATIA's conference on Friday, October 30. To learn more about Pearson HTMLbooks, visit www.pearsonschool.com/htmlbooks.

The company's respected brands include Scott Foresman, Prentice Hall, Addison Wesley, Benjamin Cummings, PEMSolutions, Stanford 10, SuccessNet, MyLabs, PowerSchool, SuccessMaker and many others. For more information, go to www.pearson.com.