Archive for ‘cool tools’

July 21st, 2010

Me and eBooks Down by the Schoolyard

So. I was going to blog on my two new very favorite things of this summer: my iPod Touch and Overdrive Media. That’s it, short and simple. But in thinking about them, my brain’s rambled on to digital media in general…and ebooks in particular…and how I feel about them as a writer, a reader and a librarian.*

The boys got me an iPod Touch for Mother’s Day. I use it every day and, at the risk of sounding like an old fogey, every day I marvel at it. Do you remember Ziggy from Quantum Leap? That’s my iPod Touch! Only better. And cuter.

One of my favorite iPod Touch uses is audiobooks from my public library. Does your public library have a digital audiobook collection? Our library subscribes to Overdrive Media. They have for years but (like my iPod) I’m just coming to it now.  I LOVE downloading books (for free! just the rest of the library!) and not having to mess with disks or figuring out where I left off. And, I can download multiple titles, some for me and different ones for my kids. All on my little Ziggy!

So now here’s where I digress…because Overdrive Media has ebooks, too. And I’ve had mixed feelings about ebooks for a while. As a writer, I desperately want my books in paper format. Maybe it’s nostalgia. But as a reader…I am starting to see that there are times I’d read a book digitally. Like last summer, when I traveled to China. I needed lots of reading material, but didn’t have a lot of space. I thought about how nice it’d be to have a bunch of books on one device. People argue that they’d miss the feeling of a book in their hands, and I’m with them. I love to browse and read ahead and flip around. That’s not so easy to do on a screen. But then, I think about newspapers or magazines. I’ve already made the jump to reading news online. Maybe it won’t be so different? Maybe ebooks will be gradual…a little bit at a time…until it just seems logical and natural. Even to old fogeys like me.

And then that got me thinking about ebooks as a librarian. Earlier this summer, I sat down with an architect to plan out new shelving, and I wondered…will we even need this shelving in ten years? I keep downsizing my reference section as more and more often we use online resources for research. And I’m looking forward to the day when textbooks are digital (for the first week and last week of school, I count shifting textbooks as my workouts).

Will there come a day when the picture books and the easy readers and the chapter books don’t need the shelves either? It’s hard to imagine in my old fogey brain. I wouldn’t have to worry about repairs or labels or reshelving, which takes up huge chunks of my time.  But how will kids browse them? Will they still come to the library as a place? What will checkout time look like?  Will I booktalk them? How will we select the books?

And there it is, my source of mixed feelings on ebooks. I love digital media as a consumer. So why wouldn’t my readers and students? And why does that make me nervous as a writer and librarian?

Recent articles on ebooks and kids (and yes, the irony that they’re all links is not lost on me):

*Also fully aware that this post will be comically dated very soon.

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September 9th, 2009

Create Your Own Comics…in the Library

Last week when I wrote about The Dunderheads, I forgot to link to some of the other online reviews. One of my favorites is by 100 Scope Notes. Yes, he created a “Toon Review”!

Once I got past my jealousy of not thinking of doing “Toon Reviews” first :-) , I had to check out the site 100 Scope Notes used to create his comics: Bitstrips, http://www.bitstrips.com. It was so very much fun that now I’m thinking of how I can use them in the library with students. Yes, we will probably do our own “Toon Reviews”  because I love that idea. But with library orientations looming in front of me, I’ve been thinking about having the older students take a library rule or procedure and create a comic for it. Then we’ll share them with the younger students.

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with this: a conversation I had yesterday with Colonel Mustard.

bitstrips

Related Links

Go Animate (create your own cartoon!)

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September 2nd, 2009

Wednesday’s Links to Look At

Here are some things that I came across in my web perusing this last week that made me stop and click. Thought they might interest you, too. (No, no, not running out of things to say. Just everyone else says/does it so much better!)

In a post rounding up some news articles about reading, one of my reading heroes, The Book Whisperer (Donalyn Miller), says,

“No matter how much we discover about teaching reading we seem to ask the same questions. Are we really teaching if we do not micromanage every aspect of the reading process, from the books children read to how they respond? Is inspiring students to read more important than sharing a common literary heritage? Does pleasure reading matter anymore? I believe we can create literate, educated citizens who also love to read.”

ALSC has added to its Great Websites for Kids. Here are the highlights (including the very fun “Go Wild” that I played with earlier this week).

By now, you’ve probably heard: Reading Rainbow is done. “Butterfly in the sky…”

Kirby Larson (Newbery-Honor-winning author of Hattie Big Sky) has been hosting a great series of posts about boys and books and reading on her blog. Things they’re pondering?

“If there is such a thing as a boy’s book, what does it look like? If there is such a thing as a girl’s book what does it look like?”

My Animoto love continues. Because now you can add video clips to your videos!

If you, like me, are on a long waiting list at the library for Suzanne Collins’ Catching Fire, you can read a chapter on NPR.

And finally, I stumbled across this video on TeacherTube. Cute.

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August 27th, 2009

Warbling About Wordle

wrdle-bigSo, in trying to get back to my regularly scheduled blog posts (nothing like traveling across the world to throw you for a loop)…I’m still interested in trying out some of the websites that AASL deemed “the Best,”and seeing how I can put them to use in my writing and librarianing lives. My next up is Wordle.

Disclaimer:if you’ve perused any of the links on my site at all, you’ll know I already was familiar with Wordle. In fact, I have a Wordle to the right here –>. So, it’s not new to me. But be kind, I’m still waking up in the middle of the night with jet lag and reacquainting myself with American food and my running shoes.

Wordle (http//www.wordle.net) is a nifty (and somewhat addictive) site that allows you to plunk in a chunk of text, then it analyses it and pulls out the most frequently used words. Then it arranges it all pretty with color, funky fonts, and different directions of text–a word cloud. See, here’s my post on China, all Wordlized. (And it makes me think I should go back and edit–how did I use the word “baby” so frequently in that post???)

chinawordle

You can also plug in a blog or web address (as long as it has an RSS feed) and it’ll analyze the whole thing.

If you are a control freak, you can set your fonts and color and text directions. You can even limit how many words you want your Wordle to zoom in on or if you want it to take out the most common (the the’s, a’s, etc.). Or you can just keep hitting randomize until you see a Wordle you like. Which, personally, I think is the most interesting.

So fun, right? But what’s the point? Well, I’ve been mulling this over. In my writing, I’ve found it somewhat enlightening to plug in my synopsis of the novel I’m working on. You can see it here. It gives me a big picture look at what my book is really about.

At school, I can see even more uses. Someone on lm_net came up with some Wordles for the Dewey Decimal system. They are some nice displays of what kinds of books are in each hundred (and ones I totally plan to borrow and adapt). You could do this for any theme or display. Here’s a Wordle that I’m going to use as a poster at the entrance of my library.

Manzlibrarywordle

To do these kind of Wordles, instead of pasting in text, you need to do some brainstorming and enter in the words into Wordle. Then you have to weigh the words, entering the more important ones more times. For example, I entered “books” more times than I did for “audiobooks”, so that “books” would show up bigger in the Wordle.

And that’s where I think the power of Wordle is. Student projects, where kids need to sum up something. It makes them put their ideas into words, but in a different way than the typical sentences. It’s a whole different kind synthesizing learning. A great back-to-school introduction to the computer lab might be to have students create Wordles on themselves. Or maybe, after my third graders finish their animal reports, we plug those papers into Wordle to see what they look like, just for fun. Or maybe students could create Wordles about a character in a book, or the main idea of a science or social studies lesson.

Here are some other examples of Wordle uses in the classroom/library.

What have you used Wordle for?

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July 25th, 2009

Easy-Peasy Book Trailers

So what else can you do with Animoto, my new hobby?

Authors–how about using it as a book trailer? Here’s one I pulled together for my Follow That Food Chain series from Lerner. 


Photos used under Flickr Creative Commons from dpape, Stephen Barnett, chem7, belgianchocolate, kento.ikeda, and antaean.

Granted, it’s not as flashy as some and I didn’t have complete creative control over it.  If I had my life-long-dream book coming out from a big publisher, I’d probably do something a little fancier. But–on the other hand? This was scary easy to do. And it was free. So for my little school/library series, this works just fine.

How To

Animoto walks you through making a video in just three steps. Well, four, if you count going to their site and logging in.

1.  Images

I searched for Creative Commons licensed photos in Flickr and uploaded them to a new video in Animoto. You can also upload your own. (Having not been to Borneo, sadly, my collection was lacking.) The librarian in me reminds you to note the photos’ sources for later credit in the video.

I also added some text slides.

2.  Music

I picked music from Animoto’s free tunes. Again, you can also upload your own. Again, librarian-me says makes sure your sources are legal and that you credit them.

3.  Finalize Your Video

Add your description and your credits here. Let the rendering process begin.

Animoto analyzes the music and the photos and matches them up with tempo and transitions, so you don’t have to worry about that. So voila! It’s done.

Want Something a Notch Above This?

Courtney Summers wrote a great guest post on Danette Haworth’s blog on how she used Movie Maker to make her book trailer (heck, that’s where I first learned about the Flickr Creative Commons licensing!).

Really Gung-ho Over Book Trailers?

Read this post by Darcy Pattison. It’ll probably take you three days, but everything you could ever want to know–well, it’s all there. It’s amazing.

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July 22nd, 2009

Animoto = Ani-mazing

Animoto for Education - Bringing your classroom to live

First up from the AASL Top 25 Websites for Teaching and Learning (remember, I warned you about this?), Animoto.

Do you know Animoto? I confess: I did not. But it’s been a lot of fun to play around with. Basically, Animoto is a web-based tool that allows you to plunk in your photos, add some music (yours or theirs), and text to create mini “movie” slideshows. How’s it different from something you’d make in Powerpoint? Well, it’s just plain snazzier. Animoto times out your music for you and automatically adds transitions between pictures. The results is much more sophisticated (and quicker to do) than anything in Powerpoint. Here are those same photos from my ALA session, all Animoto’d up:

Wasn’t that a lot more fun? And honestly, it probably took me less time than uploading those photos to my blog post originally. Now, the downside is you lose a little creativity. I didn’t get to pick how those photos came in or what font I wanted. Also, the free videos are limited to 30 seconds–about 10-12 photos/slides. Want longer or better quality?–it’ll cost you. These sounds like drawbacks, and if you’re a video editor, they are, but if you’ve ever been in a room with indecisive, click-happy ten-year-olds, sometimes less choice is better. Instead, students have to focus on their message and their content.

Other Pros

The videos are housed on Animoto’s site. So, no grumping from your tech people about taking up too much space on the schools’ servers.

You can email or embed the videos as needed. Great for sharing with classmates, other teachers, and parents at home!

Some Negatives

I had to compress some of my pictures to get them to upload. So if you’re doing a project with a class, you’ll want to check that you’re taking/using pictures that’ll work ahead of time. Having to shrink your pictures would definitely suck up valuable class time.

And the biggest issue is: it’s cool, I’d use it, but can I get to it from school? Unfortunately, a LOT of the great Web 2.0 stuff is blocked with our Internet filters at school. Frustrating, but true. I’ll have to head into work in the next few days to see.

Animoto for Education

I’ve applied for an education account, which I’m crossing my fingers about. I ‘m hoping that it has an easy way for students to log on–without giving up too much personal information. And I suspect that the 30-second time limit isn’t in place, which makes Animoto a possibility for even more projects. Finally, I’m not sure, but with the paid account you can download the videos and burn them (not so with the free one)–maybe the education account will have this, too?

So What Would You Use It For?

You tell me! I’m itching to share with the teachers I know who do book reports–what a fun way to share a book! How about some public service announcements? Or using photos of students’ own artwork to tell a story?

As far as my own applications, I could see using it to make promo videos for our Open House or to launch our Battle of the Books and our Golden Archer student-choice book award programs.

I’d love to hear how you’d use Animoto. Comment and let me know!

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July 21st, 2009

AASL Best Websites for Teaching and Learning

BL-AASL-logoI love lists. So last week when the American Association of School Librarians announced their 25 best sites for teaching and learning, I couldn’t wait to click over to it. And, while many of the sites are familiar, there were a couple I hadn’t used yet and a couple I hadn’t even heard of. For your browsing pleasure, here they are (organized by the AASL Standards for the 21st Century Learner):

Top 25 Web sites for Teaching and Learning

The “Top 25″ Web sites foster the qualities of innovation, creativity, active participation, and collaboration. They are free, Web-based sites that are user friendly and encourage a community of learners to explore and discover.

Organizing and Managing
Content Collaboration 
Curriculum Sharing  
Media Sharing  
Virtual Environments 
Social Networking and Communication  

So, how many do you know from the list? How many have you used? With kids?

Coming soon: Me, trying out some of these and brainstorming about how my students can use them. Right here on this blog. (I know–the SUSPENSE. Don’t miss it! :-) )

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