Trailers and e-books

I love my illustrated books. Some of my old picture books have such beautiful illustrations. There is now new approach to the classic Alice in Wonderland story… and with a difference, the classic illustrations have been brought to life for the iPad.

This app makes the story interactive. This particular form is not meant to be read sitting still. It can be shaken and turned. There are many interactive elements on the screen to move around, fall down or jump up.  If  you tilt your iPad you can make Alice grow big as a house, or shrink to just six inches tall. It is “odds on” that the kids will love it. I too would love to try it but unfortunately because of the US success the date for the sale of ipads in Australia has been delayed. For now I will just have to make do with this demonstration. I notice that Alice for the iPad is available from the App Store and there is also a free, lite version.

Another beautiful trailer was brought to my notice by my colleague Tania Sheko this week. Neil Gaiman’s journal/blog post, which he labels “just happiness”, he remarks on how happy he is with the result of a collaboration with Charles Vess. In the trailer he is reading his poem Instructions, and Charles Vess illustrations accompanying the words. In the trailer we see the illustrations of Vess developing from pencil drawings to delicate paintings. It is such a whimsical trailer to promote Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess’s upcoming children’s picture book: Instructions. It really whets my appetite for the book.

This week I was at a conference where there was one session on some ebook options. I have also been discussing the future of eBooks with the adminstration at my school and with other teacher librarians and teachers. We are still really at the beginning of the journey with eBooks and there is no clear direction except that the eBook, in one form or another, is here to stay.

The “old technology” hard-copy book version, that has been around for about 500 years (in its common format) is a well-loved and remarkably robust  invention. I believe that eBooks can happily coexist with the paper versions as do audio books. The eBooks can provide access to a library of books, anywhere, anytime and in a very compact package, great if you are on a long flight for instance. I am beginning to regularly see people on trains checking news headlines on the iPhones. This is great if you have limited space or if you have only few minutes to read. Audio books and podcasts also fulfil a need, especially for visually impaired or if you need a hands-free version of the story. They can, in addition, offer a performance akin to a drama in some instances as with my own BBC radio collection titles.  I regularly listen to podcasts out walking or when I am on long drives on country roads. They are great companions on my journeys.

I have also tried eBooks with some of our students and so far they have no clear preference for one form over the other. It depends on many factors and they are really quite forthcoming about the strengths and weakness of each form. So I believe that the “old” book has little to fear in the near term from the new eBook version. Rather they can happily co-exist and support each other.

E-Books Week, a free audio book and Morris Gleitzman

1898 version

Today I downloaded a free copy of an audio book. This version of Alice in Wonderland was read by  Michael York and was  available, in both mp3 and mp4 formats, from Blackstone Audio.  

The free download of this audio book will be available from Blackstone Audio to listeners worldwide until March 16. Thank you to the CMIS fiction focus site for the information as well as for the news that it is currently E-books week (March 7-13).

I am still catching up with everything this term so I did not know about e-books week until today. It still has a few days to go and there is a list of available offers on this site.

I found some more information about e-book week when reading another post (Genreality) It appears that some of the background to this is:

The week was started by Rita Toews in 2004, the event is designed to “educate and inform the public about the pleasures and advantages of reading electronically. Authors, publishers, vendors, the media and readers world-wide are welcome to join in the effort and are encouraged to promote electronic reading with events of their own. These could include: public readings, library displays, reading challenges, school visits, newspaper and blog articles, chat show appearances, internet radio interviews, e-book give-ways, and website banners.”

There is still time to have a look around at what is out there and what may be of use to us here in Victorian/Australian schools. The options we have when it comes to e-books are certainly less than the US but it is perhaps a way to sample some of what is available.

ALSO – From ABC Perth there is an hour long podcast from Morris Gleitzman’s session where he talks primarily about his book Grace but also about writing and the life of a writer, at the Perth Writers Festival. It can be found here. He is always a very articulate writer and when you can listen to him, without distractions, it is another podcast worth listening to and sharing.

Useful Links (weekly)

Perspectives

• educational-origami – Starter Sheets Variety of handouts on tools, these starter sheets are resources for the classroom teacher. The intention of each sheet is to introduce a tool, technology or activity that could be easily adapted for use in the classroom. Each sheet is created to a template design and should have the following features: * must be two pages * must have pictures that illustrate process and outcomes * process must be straight forward * must be simple to read and understand * must have clear benefits for the teacher in the classroom, the exemplar should be easy to adapt to a variety of classroom settings * must have an alternative – web based or application * must be linked to Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy and Sensory learning styles using VARK 

• iRubric: Home of free rubric tools: RCampus.com This online rubric maker has lots of premade rubrics by a variety of content areas and grade levels. While I wouldn’t use them as is, they can be a good place to start as you develop rubrics for a specific project.

• Clay Shirky: How Twitter can make history | Video on TED.com Clay Shirky shows how Facebook, Twitter and TXTs help citizens in repressive regimes to report on real news, bypassing censors (however briefly) re:The news from Iran. The end of top-down control of news is changing the nature of politics. A good overall presentation on how web 2.0 technology is revolutionizing the media landscape

• TheBrain – Mind Mapping Software, Brainstorming, GTD and Visual KM Software Mind Mapping Software. Simply type in your ideas. Drag and drop files and web pages. Any idea can be linked to anything else. Using your digital Brain is like cruising through a Web of your thinking. See new relationships. Discover connections. Go from the big picture of everything to a specific detail in seconds.  

• Diigo in Writing Class « What Else? 1DR Class collaboration 

• Welcome | Wordnik An ongoing project devoted to discovering all the words and everything about them. Wordnik wants to be a place for all the words, and everything known about them

• Wired for Books: poems, stories, plays, essays, lectures, and interviews for children and adults 

• Free Audio Books: Download Great Books for Free | Open Culture Download free MP3′s of great works of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Authors include Twain, Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Nietzsche, Asimov, HG Wells, Jules Verne, etc. Also see link to free audio and video downloads of university/college lectures on many different topics

• Modern Art 4 Kids tInteresting blog on all things art for students

• TAGmirror: An Educator’s Overview of Diigo [Geeky, Diigo] 

• The Philosophical Significance of Twitter: Consciousness Outfolding | techPresident In the larger picture, the most intriguing thing about Twitter is not how it is different from other online communication mechanisms, but how it is the same: one more technological innovation enabling the outfolding of consciousness – the collective turning-outward of human thought. 

• Wired Campus: Religion 101, in 140 Characters – Chronicle.com Stephen Prothero is helping world religions make their way onto Twitter this summer, one 140-character tweet at a time. The Boston University professor of religion is treating his account, sprothero, like a microcourse, posting several tweets on each of what he identifies as the eight major world religions: Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Daoism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and the Yoruba tradition, which Mr. Prothero calls the “neglected world religion” from West Africa

• Simon & Schuster Launches Teen Networking Site – 6/17/2009 12:40:00 PM – Publishers Weekly Offers those who join up a subcription to some of their ebooks

• The Book Seer A very easy to use book suggestions website – enter the title and author of a book you enjoyed, and it will suggest similar books 

• June 4 Webinar: “Engaging the Digital Generation: Insights from Kids, Teachers, and Parents” | Edutopia This page offers the useful links talked about in the webinar  

• Digital Youth Network: Empowering Youth Through Media ”Digital Youth Network gives students tools to be engaged, articulate, critical and collaborative. Facilitate the ability to become creators – designers, builders & innovators”

• The Digital Generation Project | Edutopia Keep track of the way digital learning is influencing the future of education.Today’s students are born into a media-rich, networked world of infinite possibilities. Their digital lifestyle is about more than just cool gadgets; it’s about engagement, self-directed learning, creativity, and empowerment. The Digital Generation Project tells their stories so that educators and parents can understand how kids learn, communicate, and socialize in very different ways than any previous generation. 

• SparkleBox – 1000s FREE printable Early Years and KS1 resources – phonics, posters, labels, signs, activities and more! The site offers a great many printables, posters, banners for classroom use Force unit it science 

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

Useful Links (weekly)

Uploaded to Flickr by CanadianAEh http://tiny.cc/nCepf

• Tom March :: Thesis Builders Great online tools (from Tom March) to help students develope a thesis, topic and outline for a paper. 

• Make Awesome Images With Your Photos – JPGfun.com Amazing effects for images online. Allows for the creation of exclusive avatars and pictures, using your personal photos. Online photoshop alternative, makes difficult photoshop effects in two clicks. 

• Hetemeel.com : Dynamic images You can change the text on this image to whatever you like. Change the text in the form below, then click on “preview image”. The text in the image will change accordingly. You can align the text with spaces and enters.

• piZap – free online photo editor – free photo effects online editor Pizap is a fun free photo editor that lets people easily create wacky images with their digital pictures. PiZap was created as a tool primarily for social networking users who want to post their images to their favorite social networking sites.

• FOTOCRIB | Online Photo Editor Fotocrib is a web based photo editing service. Fotocrib currently allows users to: Create montages, add 3D effects, encrypt photos, create rounded corners, convert between jpeg, png, gif, pdf and postscript formats, send photos to email recipients and lots more.

• WriteOnIt – Fake pictures Online photo editing web site, easily create your fake pictures, captions and fake magazines and other funny jokes for you and your friends.

• LoonaPix.com. Make Funny Pictures and Add Photo Frames Online. This is a free photo editing online service. Add photo effects or photo frames to your photos online. LoonaPix.com is a photo processing online service, that lets you make your photos funny and unique.

• MagMyPic.com – Fake Magazine Covers with your Photo! Novelty Magazines and Novelty Gifts! There are 30 different magazines to choose from for now. You can select any of them and make an impressive, unique, custom fake magazine with ease.

• Effects – PhotoFunia PhotoFunia is a free, online photo editing tool and very easy to use. Just select an effect you like from over 100 different effects, upload your photo, and PhotoFunia will handle the rest for you. You upload any photo and just wait to see the magic. “Our proprietary technology automatically identifies the face in the photo and let’s you add cool photo effects and create funny face photo montages.”

• Digital Photo Effects – Photo505. Online Phoshop Effects. Photo Fun Huge collection of photo templates.

• PicArtia-:-Create photo mosaic Online and Free!(Free online Photo Collage Maker) This site is a powerful photo collage maker. Create your photo montage in 3 easy steps and than 2 minutes! 

• FunPhotoBox – funny pictures, funny photo effects. Make fun with your photos online. This site offers a free photo editing online service that allows you to add special effects to your photos.

• Huge list of free icons download links tags:freeware,

• AudioBoo Interesting app that allows for mobile podcasting. You can use an iPhone and this free application/web service AudioBoo to share some observations from the field! This is live-blogging at its best. You can insert an image and it also creates a google map of location where audioboo is recorded.

• PodcastAlley.com — The place to find Podcasts Podcast Alley is the best site to find all your Podcasts, podcast feeds, podcast definitions, podcast software and best podcast directory.

• Free Audio Books: Download Great Books for Free | Open Culture Download free MP3′s of great works of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Authors include Twain, Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Nietzsche, Asimov, HG Wells, Jules Verne, etc. Also see link to free audio and video downloads of university/college lectures on many different topics 

• Podiobooks.com – Serialized audio books in podcast form Free audio books delivered as podcasts. Subscribe for free to any book and start from chapter one

• BooksFairy.com: Best Places to Download Free Science Fiction Books The list of some very good collections of science fiction novels, short stories, ezines, and other sf related stuff. All ebooks are available for online reading and/or free download in various formats.

• Web 2.0 Backpack: Web Apps for Students – ReadWriteWeb 

• TypeNavigator An interactive visual font search tool.

• Pupils to study Twitter and blogs in primary shake-up | Education | The Guardian Guardian article about the proposal that UK children should leave primary school familiar with blogging, podcasts, Wikipedia and Twitter as sources of information and forms of communication.

• The Art of Writing Great Twitter Headlines – Copyblogger A long article about creating the best short tweets. Your headlines must: 1. Be useful to the reader, 2. Provide him with a sense of urgency, 3. Convey the idea that the main benefit is somehow unique; and 4. Do all of the above in an ultra-specific way.

• 13 Tutorials & Resources for a Perfect Twitter Background | Design Reviver The popularity of the website means that you get to connect with tons of other users, but it also means that you’ll have to stand out to do so. For that, having a great Twitter background is recommended to make a great first impression. Learn how to do this with the following collection of tutorials. 

• Digital Storytelling – Ms. McGraw’s English Wiki Digital storytelling on Ms. McGraw’s English Wiki. This is very comprehensive wiki.

• MLEARNING-WORLD.COM Education For The iPod Generation 

• Skype in Schools / FrontPage 

• Twitter for Professional Development A Google Docs spreadsheet of educators using Twitter for their own professional development, and stating why.

• Multicolr Search Lab – Idée Inc. Search for photos according to colors you choose.

• ktitraci – home How to make glogster files within google earth 

• Wallwisher.com :: Words that stick A great way for teachers/students to collaborate and exchange ideas as it creates a virtual bulletin board in which students could place notes, links, videos for class projects.  collaborative

• Be Very Afraid Each year a selection of ingenious students using web2.0 tools – from primary to university age – are invited along to BAFTA in London’s Piccadilly to show and talk about the extraordinary things they are doing with new technologies in their learning. 

• Educators’ Guide to Innovation – Connecting Innovators A ning that will connect educational innovators from all over Victoria to share their amazing practice. This year, for the first time, six outstanding sessions will be offered live online and face-to-face simultaneously. This event will also connect you up to an active community of innovators in this Ning as part of Making Connections – a series of online events, facilitated and open conversations, collboration stories, and networks focused on education innovation. 

• hugin – Panorama photo stitcher An opensource tool to create panorama photos. Thegoal: an easy to use cross-platform panoramic imaging toolchain based on Panorama Tools. With hugin you can assemble a mosaic of photographs into a complete immersive panorama, stitch any series of overlapping pictures and much more. 

• GoView™ Beta : Home Capture your computer’s screen, add audio, and embed into your website. 

• Top Visual Search Engines: The Most Interesting Ways To Visually Explore Search Engine Results – Robin Good’s Latest News Robin Goods’ post on the most interesting ways to visually explore search engine results

• Twitlonger – When you talk too much for Twitter Twitlonger is a simple service that lets you post those tricky messages that really do need more than 140 characters and send them to Twitter.

• World Digital Library Home National libraries from more than a dozen countries, in coordination with the United Nations’ education agency, put some of humanity’s earliest written works online April 21 with their launch of the World Digital Library, a web site in seven languages — English, Arabic, Chinese, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian — that leads readers through a trove of rare finds. 

• TwHistory ”We believe that history is filled with exciting stories. We also believe that these stories can be told through Twitter; through the people who lived and experienced them. We go through journals, diaries, letters, and other original sources to deliver the day-to-day lives of people who lived through some of histories most exciting times. We broadcast this information through Twitter, and feel this is a new and exciting approach to understanding history. Instead of reading about a month-long campaign in a few hours, you experience it over the course of a month, in small, 140 character ‘Tweets’”

• TwitIQ.com – Smarter Twitter Web Application TwitIQ is an enhanced Twitter interface that provides insight into your Twitter stream and Twitter followers.

• moonflowerdragon: How to cite Twitter posts in APA style A useful description on how to cite tweets and blog entries using APA style guide.

• Twitter Toolbox: 70+ Awesome Twitter Apps, Mash-Ups, Plugins And Services « Websites, Internet, Software Tips And Reviews Twitter Toolbox: 70 Twitter Apps, Mash-Ups, Plugins And Services « Websites, Internet, Software Tips And Reviews

• QuizEgg – Online Quiz Maker for Educators QuizEgg is a free, powerful and easy to use, quiz maker that enables educators to quiz their students online. lIt allows you to quickly and easily make sophisticated quizzes that can be published online, completed by your students (online) and then results viewed in easy-to-read reports

• TwitZap ”TwitZap lets you slice Twitter into channels of stuff that matters to you. Once your channels are set they will update in real-time, all in a familiar interface.”

• Twitterfall Twitterfall is a way of viewing the latest ‘tweets’ of upcoming trends and custom searches on the micro-blogging site Twitter. Updates fall from the top of the page in near-realtime. 

• TweetChat A great way to monitor your favorite hashtag through a chat like interface – somewhat like creating private chat room within twitter.

• Animations in the Classroom This free software allows you to create stick figure animations easily and without any artistic skills. Includes Pivot. Offers examples.

• The Hyperwords Company With Hyperwords for Firefox you can select any word on any web page and do useful things. (via Stephen Fry)This is a useful extension for Firefox and it even twitters! 

• ARKive Education – Homepage ARKive Education is a free-to-us. It provides downloadable, ready to use modules on a wide range of curriculum topics, suitable for geography, biology, environmental education and citizenship lessonse, multi-media resource bank for teachers and other educators.

• Visual Understanding Environment ”The Visual Understanding Environment (VUE) is an Open Source project based at Tufts University. The project is focused on creating flexible tools for managing and integrating digital resources in support of teaching, learning and research. It provides a flexible visual environment for structuring, presenting, and sharing digital information. “

• Creative Commons: A Quick Overview The Official Guide to Copyright Issues for Australian Schools and TAFE

• Classroom 2.0 LIVE!

• Copyright and Creative Commons-Special Guest Kristin Hokanson - 

• Addictomatic: Inhale the Web Find news, videos, photos, blogposts and more. Set out by source 

• ONLINE GRAPHS AND CHARTS | create and design your own graphs and charts online | INDEX Design and share your own graphs online and for free. A number of different chart types like: bar charts, pie charts, line charts, bubble charts and radar plots supported 

• amCharts: flash charts, stock charting software Flash charts for your websites and Web-based products. Download for free. 

• Many Eyes A collection of data visualizations and a new social kind of data analysis. View and discuss, or create visualizations from data sets. 

• Create free online charts with online chart builder ChartGizmo.com – Use our chart software for visualizing your data. Create stunning charts online. Create charts for your website, blog and social network profiles. Useful for visualizing financial, scientific or other type of data. 

• cooltoolsforschools – Graphing Tools A collection of 12 tools on the Cool Tools for Schools wiki

• Newsmap# Useful when discussing cultures as you can compare the leading news stories in various countries. Good for searching for current events and to see the emerging news. This offers meta analysis of the news. It is a good place to START research

• Oddcast – PhotoFace Portrait editor that allows you to make a Voki like animation from your own image 

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