For eight years now CRIS Radio (Connecticut Radio Information System) began to expand their services to students around the state.

“Teachers came to us and said ‘Hey we have special needs kids who are not able to access classroom material. Can you do custom recordings?’ So, we started doing that,” explains Diane Weaver Dunne, CRIS Radio’s executive director.

Fast forward to today, not only are there over 1,300 recordings available in their ‘CRISKids Audio Library’ for all grades, but now they are offering something new for students from Hartford to Enfield.

“During this pandemic, we realized teachers were really overwhelmed, kids were sick of being in front of the computer screens so we said let’s do a book bag, a CRISKids book bag.”

Weaver Dunne tells Channel 3 that CRIS Radio partnered with the Hartford Public Library and the Educational Resources for Children, or ERfC in Enfield for this unique offering.

Colleen Semanie, Literacy Coordinator for ERfC explains how it works. “The kids can take home five books and we preload all those books onto an MP3 player and send it home with stickers and a rainbow chart so they can track how many books they’re reading.”

And they are already seeing positive results from the book club. An independent study based off of standardized test scores of ERfC kids in a 14-month period found that 75% of the lowest-level readers improved significantly more compared with 10% of the kids who did not use it.

The CRISKids book bag is incorporated into the ERfC summer camp as well.

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The book club provides a unique learning tool that combines human-narrated audio books with the printed versions of the books.

CRIS Radio (Connecticut Radio Information System), a 42-year-old Windsor-based nonprofit radio station that broadcasts news and information published in newspapers and magazines, produces a family of audio services for people who are blind or struggle to read due to various print challenges.

The CRISKids Book Club is being funded by a grant award from The Fund for Greater Hartford.

Participating children at Hartford Public Library will be invited to check-out a CRISKids Book Bag with a library card. The book bag will include five books that correspond to the audio version of the books that are preloaded onto an MP3 player. The book bag also will include earbuds, an incentive, and sticker sheet to help the students track the number of books they read. When the students finish reading the books, they are invited to return the book bag and check-out another one with a new set of five books.

“The Hartford Public Library Youth Services Department is thrilled to embark on this new partnership with CRISKids,” said Denise Martens, system-wide manager of Hartford Public Library’s Youth & Family Services. “We look forward to serving the Hartford community with more opportunities to enhance positive reading outcomes through audio books.”

Students attending Educational Resources for Children’s before school, school day remote learning, afterschool, and summer programs, in partnership with Enfield Public Schools, will also have an opportunity to participate in the CRISKids Book Club.

“The CRISKids Book Club continues to give Enfield kids exciting opportunities to expand and improve their reading skills,” said Claire Hall, ERfC’s executive director. “We use the program to encourage all students to read more for fun. Our students look forward to getting their new book bags every week.”

ERfC, a nonprofit, previously collaborated with CRIS Radio on a 14-month independent evaluation of CRISKids to determine the impact of students listening to an audio book while following along in the print version. The evaluation demonstrated that CRISKids is an effective, low-cost educational tool that helps kids who struggle to read.

Specifically, the majority of students with reading challenges who listened to CRISKids’ recordings for more than 100 minutes during the school year improved more than expected compared with students who did not listen to CRISKids. The evaluation also found that students who listened to CRISKids for 30 minutes or more during the summer either maintained or exceeded the gains made during the school year, an important finding that offsets the typical “summer slide” experienced by many students when out of school during the summer.

Numerous studies have determined that improved literacy impacts a child life-long in terms of employment, health care choices, academic opportunities, and food insecurity.

The evaluation quantified a striking association between access to CRISKids’ audio recordings and student reading improvement. The findings highlight the following:

• Among the lowest-level readers in Grades 1-3, 75% of the students who listened to CRISKids for more than 100 minutes during the school year improved more than expected as compared with 7% who did not access CRISKids.
• For all abilities, 40% of students with more than 100 minutes of access to CRISKids also improved more than expected as compared with 10%; and
• More than 80% of rising Grade 1-3 students accessing CRISKids for more than 30 minutes during a seven-week summer camp period either maintained or improved what they learned during the school

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“We are pleased to announce the election of four new members to CRIS Radio’s Board of Directors, said CRIS Board Chair Paul A. Young. “These new members enhance the diversity and expertise of our organization’s work to improve access to print information through our 24/7 broadcasts, podcasts, and online streaming of more than 70 newspapers and magazines, including Spanish language publications and children’s magazines, to the state’s vulnerable population who are blind or unable to read due to other print disabilities.”

Cassells, an East Hartford resident, is an underwriter for American Eagle Financial Credit Union. Prior to being elected to CRIS Radio’s Board of Directors, Cassells, who learned about CRIS Radio through Leadership Greater Hartford, initially served CRIS Radio as a Spanish-language volunteer reader.

“CRIS is unique, inspiring and simply put, benevolent,” she said. “It is especially meaningful to me that CRIS has made gains to provide access in Spanish with CRIS en Español, minimizing communication barriers.”

Another long-time CRIS Radio volunteer reader, Pariser, also expanded her service to the nonprofit through her election to its board. A resident of West Hartford and retired client executive in global sales and marketing at IBM Corp., she has been a volunteer reader for 15 years.

“CRIS provides such a valuable service and has such dedicated employees and volunteers that I wanted to be a part of the bigger picture,” Pariser said.  “I continue to be delighted and amazed at the myriad activities that CRIS coordinates and hope to be of service.”

CRIS board members, Schimelman and Sehmbi, also were introduced to CRIS through Leadership Greater Hartford, another local nonprofit. Schimelman, an attorney with Gfeller Laurie LLP, lives in Middletown, said he was impressed with the creative way CRIS uses technology to help people. “CRIS provides a critical means for people who are unable to read printed materials to stay connected with current events around Connecticut and the world, but it is so much more than that. CRIS has successfully broadened its reach beyond radio to be accessible anywhere over the internet; it is also available in healthcare facilities and to Spanish-speaking listeners,” he said.

Sehmbi, a resident of Newington, is a brand innovation associate for Melissa & Doug. “I look forward to helping the organization strategize its future goals with the needs of its listeners,” she said. “By growing the awareness of its mission and building more external partnerships in Connecticut and beyond, CRIS Radio is sure to become a national model for other radio-reading services.” 

In addition to CRIS Radio broadcasts, it also offers a family of audio services for individuals with print disabilities, including CRISKids, providing audio versions of classroom materials; CRIS Streaming, making CRIS available in English and Spanish to patient rooms at acute care hospitals; CRISAccess, providing audio tours through individual smartphones at museums or other public spaces, such as walking tours; and CRIS en Español, audio versions Spanish-language magazines. 

For more information about CRIS Radio, visit www.crisradio.org or email info@crisradio.org.   

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For administrators, the innovative CRISAccess app is affordable and turnkey, and doesn’t require them to purchase audio equipment and disinfect it after each use. It also offers them an alternative tours conducted by staff and volunteer docents.

For visitors, the free app is easy to use, can be downloaded in minutes on their own smartphone, and allows them to keep their physical distance from others.

Unlike some other audio tour apps, the CRISAccess app doesn’t require visitors to input a series of numbers in order to listen to the audio recording. The CRISAccess app syncs directly to the exhibit either through a QR Code or GPS function, making it more accessible for people with visual challenges.

With no date in sight for a vaccine for the coronavirus, museum administrators will need to continue to do things differently to attract visitors with appealing and safe experiences. Among the changes, interactive touch screens displayed at exhibits and headsets for audio tours are no longer being loaned out due to the highly contagious coronavirus.

In-person tours have taken a hit through staff layoffs or furloughs due to a loss in admission and event revenues. Volunteer docents – many of retirement age – whom many museums count on to conduct their tours, are self-selecting to suspend their volunteer activities because their age places them at heightened risk of serious illness from the coronavirus.

Facing these COVID-19 challenges, the CRISAccess app provides museum administrators and their visitors a win-win with a digital alternative that is engaging, quick to implement, and affordable.

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The 23rd CRIS Golf Classic was a huge success, raising money by gathering old friends and new for an afternoon of the ancient game. The money raised from the tournament allows CRIS to offer its service at no cost to people living in the community who are blind or unable to read due to learning, physical, intellectual, and emotional disabilities.

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CRIS Radio is collaborating with the Hartford Courant’s News In Education program by making its lessons available in audio for students who struggle to read.

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