The American Association of School Librarians (AASL) announced their picks for Best Apps for Teaching & Learning 2019. “Apps recognized foster the qualities of innovation, creativity, active participation, and collaboration and are user friendly to encourage a community of learners to explore and discover. “

Like last week’s featured app, Sora is an app that will definitely be great to use in your school library or media center!

“Sora is the school library companion to Overdrive and Libby. With Sora students and teachers are able to access audio and e-books through a digital platform customized for school library users. Sora is able to be connected to a school library collection, and given the school district permissions, the local public library collection. Educators are able to assign texts to students to read and students are able to self-select. Badges can be awarded to readers for various achievements.”

Platform: iOS & Android 
Grades: All
Cost: FREE

This link is for a PDF document from a Sora Training Specialist that will go over a variety of ways to use Sora in your classroom. This article from Publisher’s Weekly explains the history of the app and how it hopes to continue working with schools and teachers in the future. And this article from Granite Media has step-by-step instructions for getting started with Sora.

Watch this 1 min video to see how Sora works: