The Global Book Alliance is delighted to announce that one of its flagship initiatives, the Global Digital Library (GDL), is now supporting book printing on a new level.
Global Digital Library Launches Repository of Print-ready Book Files
Global Book Alliance COVID-19 Response
We, the members of the Global Book Alliance, welcome the establishment of a COVID-19 education coalition by UNESCO.
We believe this coalition has a unique opportunity to ensure continuity around children’s acquisition and practice of reading skills. We also want to help ensure that responses today help to build resilience and access to reading material in case of future crises.
As education systems everywhere are being disrupted at an unprecedented level, children will need to continue learning to read and reading to learn in their home settings.
The Global Book Alliance, through its flagship initiative the Global Digital Library (GDL), managed by the Government of Norway through Norad, can contribute by facilitating better and easier access to openly-licensed, free, high-quality reading resources, in languages children use and understand. Reading resources should be available, accessible, appropriate, free/affordable, and actively used at all times.
In response to the current pandemic, Norad and the GBA will redirect current resources to fast-track the creation of a seamless cross-platform search function that will allow users to access quality open educational resources for reading from multiple source sites.
By summer, 2020, the cross-platform search will cover resources in at least 150 languages. The number of languages is planned to expand to more than 250 in the longer term.
In accelerating this work, Norad and the GBA will emphasize and leverage equitable pathways for reaching all children, including those with disabilities, at scale with reading resources, including through distribution partnerships with mobile operators and technology companies and through books being audio recorded, subtitled with sign languages, or potentially read aloud on radio.
The mission of UNESCO's COVID-19 education coalition is important. The GBA looks forward to helping by supporting the goal that all learners have access to free and openly licensed high-quality reading material in languages they use and understand at this critical time.
Exciting New Partnership to Build Reading Skills
Literacy for all children worldwide is about to become one step closer to reality. In support of the Global Book Alliance (GBA), United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Government of Norway through the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad), and Google are joining forces.
Webinar: Creative Commons Basics
Realizing the critical role that an open educational resource (OER) policy can play in supporting Early Grade Reading (EGR) efforts, the Global Reading Network has collaborated with Global Book Alliance (GBA) and All Children Reading (ACR) to conduct a series of three in-depth webinar-based trainings on open licensing in April and in the summer months of 2019. The webinars are intended to support ministries of education, publishers and Early Grade Reading (EGR) implementers as they work to provide open EGR resources.
Why schools are only part of the solution for effective global education
Creating a Culture of Accountability in Tracking Book Delivery
The Book Desert: Authors, publishers and innovators have key role in solving global literacy challenge
How a global community of innovators can embrace inclusive EdTech design for children with disabilities
Panelists from All Children Reading: A Grand Challenge for Development’s (ACR GCD) plenary session at the 8th annual Mobiles for Education (mEducation) Symposium urged the audience of global education innovators and implementers to develop or implement digital solutions that embrace inclusive design for children with disabilities. Simply offering books and literacy materials in digital formats does not equate to accessibility, so more must be done to incorporate features including alt text with image descriptions, sign language video, voice-over, and text that can easily be enlarged, among other features, panelists noted.
