Overdrive is best known for their digital library business. They power the audiobook and ebook collections of the vast majority of libraries in North America and most of the world. Libby is their flagship app, which allows you to borrow content from the library and read it, without having to leave the app. A subset of their business is Overdrive Education. They offer ebooks, audiobooks, digital magazines and other content for over 55,000 K-12 schools and millions of students worldwide. The company’s student reading app, Sora, provides every student with access to the right books. Overdrive has just announced that later this year, educators can soon use a Google Classroom add-on to assign ebook and digital audiobook titles to students.
Later this year, educators can manage their reading assignments in the same place they manage all their learning tools: Google Classroom. With Google Classroom add-ons, teachers can assign the Sora student reading app’s ebook and audiobook titles directly to students. Through this integration, teachers can search for titles, then attach them to their assignment without leaving their Google Classroom. Students receiving the assignment can automatically open the digital book directly in the Sora app. Currently in beta, the Sora Google Classroom add-on will be widely available to educators worldwide later this year.
“Brush School District loves using the Sora add-on for Google Classroom,” said Scott Trautwein, Director of Technology at Brush School District in Colorado. “It’s easy to use with no training, and allows us to assign lessons based on our ebook library built right into Sora. A huge time saver, especially for classes that read entire book sets like High School English.”
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.