Useful sites (weekly)

  by  dianecordell 

• Free Pictures – Wylio.com A useful site for finding creative commons images to use on a website. It searches flickr & other open photos. You can then resize online and then after it creates the custom code, you cut and paste code into a blog. The image goes onto your site with the proper attribution.  

• iCyte – Join iCyte can help you: 1. Keep any webpage forever 2.Highlight what’s important 3. Add notes & tags to the web 4.Save & Annotate PDFs 5. Collaborate on projects 6. Stay updated with RSS & Embed. An education account is free of charge  

• ZapNotes ”ZapNotes is a notepad you can use to keep your notes together in the same place for fast and easy access. It’s ideal for replacing hastily jotted scribbles on scraps of paper or Post-It and the perfect way to stay organized and avoid losing messages. It’s also a great checklist! “

• ThinkFold You can use ThinkFold to create outlines that can be shared and collaborated in real-time.  

• Flowchart Software – Online Flow charts software service with Realtime collaboration [2.3.6-r44, updated 2011/03/10 08:14 UTC] Create charts to organize your thoughts or notes with this useful tool. Online multi-user, real-time collaboration flowchart software. You have to register but Beta version is free to use.   

• Debate online using aMap – argument map. Great for Critical thinking. | aMap pocket argument guides, argument mapping and critical thinking stuff! A useful tool when developing an argument/discussion response. Scaffolds critical thinking about an issue or topic.  

• Citations2010 A flash tutorial that makes citation look easy 

• Awesome Augmented Reality App Could Save Librarians Hours  This app will scan shelves to find books that are out of order and provide a visual indication as to where they should go. It will also generate an inventory of what is on the shelf.   

• Time Riders | TimeRiders Trailer 

• Time Riders | Books by Alex Scarrow  

• Booklist Online – Top 10 Graphic Novels for Youth: 2011, by Ian Chipman (FEATURE) A list of the best graphic novels for children and teens reviewed in the past 12 months in Booklist suggests, it was a good year for sweeping, seafaring adventures, but all of the books point to the remarkable versatility of the comics format to deliver thrills, laughs, and ideas to all kinds of readers.

• Meanjin · The best of new writing in Australia · Stet by Me: Thoughts on Editing Fiction  An article that examines the editorial process. The author sees it as a collaboration between author and editor and why editing matters.

• Coursekit An online classroom for creating simple courses. This is an LMS designed by uni students.    

• Curate.Us ” Create visually compelling clips and quotes of web content that are easily embedded in blog posts, email, forums, and websites.”  

• FIND’s Personalise Your Map site – Customise maps with free mapping tools 

• Official Book Website for Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys 

• - Ruta E. Sepetys Author - 

• Comments4Kids Comments4Kids is a way for students and teachers to find blogs to comment on and to get their own posts commented on. It all started when Carey Pohanka, Derek Smith, and Wm Chamberlain had a conversation on Twitter about how to get people to comment on student posts. There is a link to my post that explains what happened.   

• Zoom.it Zoom.it is an application for displaying large images in blogs, wikis, and websites. Zoom.it creates a display of your images in a format that allows you to zoom in, zoom out, and scroll around a large image. To use Zoom.it your image does need to be hosted online somewhere (Flickr and Picasa work fine). Then to create your zoomable image just copy the url of your hosted image and paste it into Zoom.it. You can then share your image by giving people the direct link to it or embedding the image into your blog or website.  

• Diffbot: Follow Anything Diffbot looks like a new sort of RSS reader but one that turns webpages of choice into a “newspaper” sort of look. This may offer others an easier way to read this information.  

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Shaun Tan wins the 2011 ALMA

More exciting news for the Australian book world and especially Shaun Tan. He has been announced as the winner of this year’s ALMA.

 The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (ALMA) is the world’s largest prize for children’s and young adult literature. The award, which amounts to SEK 5 million, is awarded annually to a single recipient or to several. Authors, illustrators, oral storytellers and those active in reading promotion may be rewarded. The award is designed to promote interest in children’s and young adult literature, and in children’s rights, globally.

The award, which is the world’s largest children’s literature award, was awarded for the 11th time this year. You can read more about it on their website. Their explanation about why Shaun Tan won the award is here. I  love their introduction

A masterly visual storyteller

Shaun Tan is a masterly visual storyteller, pointing the way ahead to new possibilities for picture books. His pictorial worlds constitute a separate universe where nothing is self-evident and anything is possible. Memories of childhood and adolescence are fixed reference points, but the pictorial narrative is universal and touches everyone, regardless of age

You can watch the broadcast (in English) of the announcement as well as the presentation to Shaun Tan at  (in Swedish with English subtitles). There is also an article in the UK newspaper, The Guardian

Shaun Tan is the second Australian ALMA winner, the first being Sonya Hartnett in 2008.

Wylio: another way to get free embeddable images

There are quite a lot of ways to search for images on the internet. I am always on the lookout for something that makes it as easy as possible for me and/or my students to obtain good CC images to illustrate my sites (wikis, blogs, etc). I have been using ImageCodr to find CC images for my wiki and blogs (and it works very well) but I have only been able to use Flickr images.

Wylio offers a very easy way to quickly search through the huge number of free images from different sources and then allows you to generate a code so that you can insert those images directly into a blog post.

 It is very simple to use and therefore useful to use with students.

 

• enter a keyword
• browse through the thumbnails Wylio finds
• find an image you like
• click on it to re-size it according to your requirements as well as set the alignment
• click on ‘Get the code’ to obtain the HTML code that can then be used to insert the image in your blog post. The code also includes an attribution to the original photographer 

You do not need to download anything to you own computer. There is (of course) a premium version that is not free but the simple version I have used is enough for me.  Below is an image I found to illustrate some information on Kindle e-readers
photo © 2010 Mike Licht | more info (via: Wylio)

Are you typical?

I really liked this video produced by  National Geographic. The facts listed, the images and the soundtrack chosen make this a very slick and well-made video that would be great for a discussion starter.

National Geographic magazine continues a year long series examining the specific challenges and solutions we face as the worldwide population reaches 7 billion people in 2011 with a March story looking at humans’ massive impact on the planetYou can have a look at some amazing photos and read more about 7 Billion and there was also an earlier video about 7 Billion.

And – apparently –  I am not typical. There must be many of us that can therefore be called “special” or unique?

Useful sites (weekly)

• Amazon revokes Lendle’s API access (Update: We’re back!) – Lendle: Kindle™ Book Sharing

• Shape Collage Features Shape Collage would be useful when creating presentations. It gives you the power to make really quick collections of related photographs, set out in shapes that fit in to your display. It is free, but you need to upgrade to get rid of the watermark.

• Online Referencing Generator An online citation generator that is easy to use and and very clear for students. It usefully offers levels: Junior, Middle and Senior school. Created by School Library Association of South Australia  

• The Librarian’s Guide to Anime and Manga ‘Anime’ usually refers to Animation made in Japan, either on video, television or in comic book format. ‘Manga’ can be roughly translated to mean ‘comic book’. See this site for ways to explore this area of the graphic novel.    

• Learning with ‘e’s: 2020 teachers 

• About – WikiEducator Free online workshop on open content licensing for educators:

• Box.net | Online file sharing, content management, collaboration  

• HowStuffWorks “Are e-readers making books obsolete?” With e-reader and e-book sales on the rise, will printed and bound texts become things of the past?  

• Project Based Learning | BIE  A great source of information on Preject Based Learning

• BBC News – Computer games become a class act  BBC Report on computer games in schools. Early reports suggest that the use of gaming gadgets which younger people are familiar with can improve their performance and boost interest in subjects that they might otherwise not engage with.

• Accompaniments, free sheet music, and musicians interpretations for classical music works Weezic is your place to play classical music. Grab your instrument, print your sheet music and hit play to be accompanied by the whole orchestra.   

• Justin Tarte – Life of an Educator…: 10 videos that WILL ignite a discussion – Part 4  

• Reading List « Libraries and Transliteracy  Google Group–A reference list on information about all literacies for all types of libraries and librarians.

• 1 in 4 College Textbooks Will Be Digital By 2015  

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.