Useful links

  by  m_edens 

• The League of Extraordinary Librarians: SLJ’s latest tech survey shows that media specialists are leading the way – The Digital Shift ”According to School Library Journal’s 2012 School Technology Survey, media specialists are leading the charge to bring new media, mobile devices, social apps, and web-based technologies into our nation’s classrooms.”

• Life of an Educator by Justin Tarte: The importance of literacy… ”The simplest acquisition of literacy can have a profoundly empowering effect personally, socially and politically.  Literacy gives people tools with which to improve their livelihoods, participate in community decision-making, gain access to information about health care, and above all, it enables individuals to realize their rights as citizens and human beings. Literacy is not just about reading and writing; it is about respect, opportunity and development…”

• SearchReSearch: Presentation on “What does it mean to be literate in the Age of Google?” From Dan Russell. Abstract:  What does it mean to be literate at a time when you can search over billions of texts in less than 300 milliseconds? Although you might think that “literacy” is one of the great constants that transcends the ages, the skills of a literate person have changed substantially over time as texts and technology allow for new kinds of reading and understanding. Knowing how to read is just the beginning of it—knowing how to frame a question, pose a query, how to interpret the texts that you find, how to organize and use the information you discover, how to understand your metacognition—these are all critical parts of being literate as well.

• Format Factory Home Page – Free media file format converter ”Format Factory is a multifunctional media converter”

• The Ten Commandments Of Twitter | Business 2 Community

• Ebooks & Digital Content | Transforming Libraries To help meet a growing need, the ALA’s Digital Content & Libraries Working Group was formed in Fall 2011 to implement the recommendations and to continue the work of ALA’s Task Force on Equitable Access to Digital Content. Working Group members were selected by the ALA President based on their high level of expertise and range of experience regarding libraries and digital content, and are broadly representative of the various constituencies within the Association and library community. This website is meant to be a resource to support libraries in their transformation from print to digital content.

• Create and share electronic books for free with BookType and Booki — freewaregenius.com

• Random House Says Libraries Own Their Ebooks | LJ Insider Random House (one Big Six publishers) is, to its credit, on the record saying it is granting ownership.

• eBooks: Amazon Introduces Whispercast to Manage Fleets of Kindles | LJ INFOdocket  Libraries and schools that lend Kindles to users might be interested in this new service from Amazon that just launched.

• An ePortfolio idea from Scotland | eLearning Island  Offers an example of how e-portfolios could be used. Has some good lists of questions and resources for students working on ePortfolios

• Free Sound Clips | SoundBible.com SoundBible.com offers free sound clips for download in either wav or mp3 format. They offer free and royalty free sound effects and clips for video editors, movie scores, game designers, and weekend sound warriors.

• Teachers and Parents – The new rules of engagement | Generation Next  ”What is ‘parent engagement’ and how does it affect our children’s learning and well-being? Research (and evidenced-based results of effective parent engagement in schools) indicates that we need to move away from the ‘ivory tower’ perception of schools and the ‘locked gate’ mentality to embracing family engagement as policy, as education reform. Weiss, Lopez and Rosenberg (2010) assert that ‘family engagement must be a systemic, integrated and sustained approach, not an add-on or a random act.’”

• Free Music & Sound Loops for PowerPoint Presentations | PowerPoint Presentation  ”Some resources where you can download free music and sound loops for presentations.”

• Teen Read Week: Creating a Text-Rich School | Edutopia Ideas from literature addict Heather Wolpert-Gawron.”As a teacher, my mission is to spread this addiction to my own students. But I have a greater, more sinister, goal than that this year. I want to spread it to my entire school. And to do that, I have to allow literature to leak out of my classroom and into my school at large.”

• Guidelines for working with RDA and non-RDA records prior to implementation of RDA- Program for Cooperative Cataloging (Library of Congress) From the Library of Congress:The following guidelines were recommended by the Task Group on Hybrid Bibliographic Records (Sept. 1, 2011). The recommendations were approved by the PCC Policy Committee. The documents below include guidelines for working with RDA and non-RDA records for monographs, serials, and integrating resources prior to implementation of RDA.

• A Primer on Ebooks for Libraries Just Starting With Downloadable Media – The Digital Shift The Library Journal has been presenting a series of articles, “Exploring Ebook Options”, that take an in-depth look at some of the e-book platforms that are now in the marketplace. Article provides a good summary and explains some of the pros and cons of e-collections; the issues involved with eBooks and downloadable media, and what’s out there right now.

• The library with no rules Manila’s Reading Club 2000 is a library like no other: it lets anyone borrow and then bring back or keep any of its thousands of books.

• Authors Who Skype with Classes & Book Clubs (for free!) The site is is maintained by Kate Messner, an author and educator. Listed here are the books for which she offers free Skype chats for schools. She also lists and provides links to other authors who offer free Skype chats. This is a great way for small, rural libraries to connect students with authors.

• How to Use Pinterest to Improve Your Writing « Grow With Stacy

• Who can we trust? The importance of teaching our students to interpret the news. Today news is available at all times and technology brings us an unending stream of updates that don’t have the opportunity to be fact checked or vetted by experienced editors. It is inevitable that errors make occur, misrepresentations and blatant untruths can be easily promulgated and distortions published. This can happen, not just on websites, but also on TV and radio news and current affairs programs. Educators of young people today need to focus heavily on developing critical thinking skills in reading news and other purported fact based writing.

• Piktochart- Infographic & Presentation Tool. Piktochart offers 5 free templates, but many more options for paid accounts. There is a variety of pre-created shapes and images on Piktochart; you are able to upload a limited amount of customized images with a free account. t

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