The International Reading Association (IRA) is now partnering with myON, a business unit of Capstone, the leading developer of personalized literacy solutions for Pre-K to the 12th grade, to recognize individual and/or team achievements in the advancement of literacy initiatives in schools, districts, and communities. The Legends in Literacy awards will be presented at IRA’s upcoming conference in New Orleans.

The individual and/or teams selected for this honor will be recognized for their work and commitment to literacy by demonstrating leadership in reading improvement, providing ideas for implementations and best practices, involving the community and encouraging widespread reading within the school and community.

Nominations must be submitted online at www.LegendsinLiteracy.com. The nomination must include the following information:

• Submitting party’s name, address, e-mail and phone number
• Name, address, e-mail, and phone number for individual or team nominated
• 500-word description of the contribution and the reason for the nomination
• 250-word description of the results and/or contribution of the individual/team and the benefit to students, schools, districts, and the community

Nominations must be submitted by 5:00 p.m. CST on March 14, 2014. They will be vetted by a panel of judges, one of whom will be provided by IRA. On April 1, 2014 the top three finalists will be announced. The awards will be given during the Council Awards Ceremony at the IRA 59th Annual Conference, Friday May 9, 2014 from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.

About myON

myON (www.myon.com), a business unit of Capstone—the leading provider of school and library texts for more than 20 years—develops personalized learning environments for students. myON provides access to a library of more than 5,000 enhanced digital books with multimedia scaffolds to support student reading at all levels. In turn, myON empowers teachers with real-time, actionable data—number and type of books opened and read, time spent reading, results of regular benchmark assessments, and more—based on embedded Lexile assessments that measure student reading growth. With myON, every student can have unlimited access to more than 5,000 diverse titles, which allows students to take ownership of their reading and literacy growth. The myON collection of resources is robust, and includes titles from award-winning publishers including Capstone Press, Compass Point Books, Heinemann-Raintree, Picture Window Books, Stone Arch Books, Sylvan Dell, Saddleback, Orca, Bellwether, Little Brown, DK, and others.

Partnership with IRA

This past February, myON and IRA executed a partnership that will drive mutual benefits. myON is supporting IRA’s recruitment outreach by offering a free trial of IRA’s online membership on the myON professional services portal which is accessible by all customers. myON and IRA will also collaborate on creating a digital classroom for literacy education, offering sessions on the exhibit floor at the annual IRA conference.