Useful links (Weekly)

  by  Jeannine St. Amand 

• The Harvard Library Innovation Laboratory at Harvard Law School LibraryCloud aggregates collection and usage metadata from a number of different libraries and feed them into Shelflife, a sample front end for how this kind of information might be viewed and used by library patrons. Main features of the interface include: *use of the visual metaphor of a book shelf (Stackview) to help people browse popular titles trending at libraries across America. *all books appear in context and have their own page with recommendations and tags. At this stage Shelflife is a testing environment which is best introduced by taking the online tutorial, although you can also explore the site independently

• Kno – Save 30-50% Off On Over 150,000 eTextbook Titles That You Can Read On the Web & iPad Ebooks downloaded through Kno offer capabilities like 3D diagrams and a “Quiz Me” button that tests readers on portions in the textbook. By utilizing its search mechanism, readers will be able to find certain words and sections with a simple click. Other than its interactive elements, ebooks are up to 50% off their market price.

• Zinio – The World’s Largest Newsstand Keeping up with its “Read Anywhere, Anytime” slogan, this site offers digitized magazines, which are offered interchangeably on iPad, iPhone, Android and computer devices. By either subscribing for a year or purchasing a single month’s copy, Zinio makes it easy to access the thousands of titles in its database.

• Infographics & Data Visualizations | Visual.ly You can earch through Visual.ly’s infographic database to see examples and data galore. What is an infographic? It is a visual way to show data and content using engaging photos and images

• Source for Learning, Inc: Home page A collection of learning resources. Compiled and reviewed by education professionals, the resources cover countless subjects and support diverse learning styles.

• Springpad: a free app that helps you remember This is a collaborative/cross platform tool that can accommodate all of the sources you are trying to utilize. projects can either be private (by invitation) or public

• Design & Make A Book With Our Simple Free Guide | Bookemon.com Check the edcenter area at Bookemon. Makes nice looking interactive “books” –and you do NOT need to pay or print them. (Here is a review: http://www.teachersfirst.com/single.cfm?id=10404). I think multiple students can collaborate. I don’t like the commercial “look” of the site, but the tool itself is easy and free.

• HOWTO fight cheating by promoting authentic learning – Boing Boing Cory Doctorow discusses cheating in education. “Jonathan Martin offers up a thoughtful response to the “plague of cheating” in secondary and postsecondary education. The right way to reduce cheating is to make education about more than test-scores and extrinsic measures, he argues. Cheating will only go down when students are told that they are in education to accomplish the satisfaction of mastery, and when they trust their teachers to be fair and honest”

• Beating the Cheating: Five Ways to Combat the Plague « 21k12

• thedaringlibrarian – QR_Code_Quest A lesson plan for a library scavenger hunt using QR codes

• The Underground Railroad – National Geographic Education (beta) One part of the amazing National Geographic website, this offers some great resources about the underground railroad, including an interactive journey through the eyes of a slave.

• Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1938 Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1938 contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers’ Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and assembled and microfilmed in 1941.This online collection is a joint presentation of the Manuscript and Prints and Photographs Divisions of the Library of Congress and includes more than 200 photographs. Born in Slavery was made possible by a major gift from the Citigroup Foundation.

• Digital History List many facts about slavery worldwide as well as US

• The 11 Best Science Books of 2011 | Brain Pickings A look at 2011′s most compelling science books, spanning everything from medicine to physics to quantum mechanics

• The Why and How of Using Facebook For Educators – No Need to be Friends At All! | The Edublogger A thorough guide to using Facebook in education, with different tips and hints for using a secure Facebook site in the classroom

• How iBooks Author Stacks Up to the Competition [CHART] An iBook converter comparison

• Policies for Staff use of Social Media and Social Networks – eLearning Blog Dont Waste Your Time  Does your employer / Institution have a policy for the accepted use, by staff, for how they can use Social Media (Twitter, Facebook, SlideShare, YouTube, WordPress, etc)? Is it limited to how you can use it for work, or in work, or does it cover your usage outside of work and how you talk/post about what you do at work? Are you allowed to use images/logo of your employer/Institution in your work?

• The Educator’s Guide to Copyright, Fair Use, and Creative Commons | The Edublogger The legal jargon with respect to digital copyrights can be confusing – especially since different countries have their own laws and regulations. With this post, Sue Waters and Ronnie Burt hope to dispel a few myths and pull together a complete list of resources for teachers and students to use when blogging and working with content online.

• iPad, therefore I am, and keeping a wired open mind At Albert Park College (Melbourne) students submit assignments and tests by email, and each subject has a web portal with homework, lesson plans.

• Inkling Habitat – Scalable digital publishing for professionals

• The 100 ‘Greatest Books for Kids’ – USATODAY.com The 100 “Greatest Books for Kids,” ranked by Scholastic Parent & Child magazine:

• Amazon.com: Kindle Direct Publishing: Help From Amazon: “In order to provide the best possible user experience, we’ve designed Kindle Direct Publishing to work with industry-standard Internet browsers that support Javascript.To publish with Kindle Direct Publishing, please enable Javascript in your browser options:”

• Craig Watkins: What Schools Are Really Blocking When They Block Social Media

• How to Judge if Research is Trustworthy | MindShift PBS article on how to examine if research is valid and reliable with some rules set out to aid in deciding if research is trustworthy. It offers some specific examples to illustrate the points.

• 8 Unexpected Downsides of the Switch to E-books | Cracked.com Humourous look at e-books andf e-book readers

• Inquiring About Teacher Inquiry | Powerful Learning Practice An article that tries to answer why more teachers aren’t eager to inquire into the impact of their practice.

• E-readers decline – is lack of features the problem? Should Amazon worry?

• My 10 books to help boost young peoples reading – Bev Humphrey The post by Bev Humphrey, a Literacy, School Libraries and Technology Consultant, to the Guardian’s children’s books pages article by a former librarian, Ellen Ainsworth, entitled 10 books to help boost young boys’ reading. They are good suggestions, (Harry Potter, Alex Rider etc.) but Bev considers them somewhat obvious and has countered with her own post My 10 books to help boost young people’s reading.(NB She also took issue with the restriction to just boys.)

• Internet Archive : The Net’s Digital Library | Media Tapper A good explanation about the Internet Archive from a post on the Media Tapper blog

• Welcome to Random House’s Teen Book Community: Random Buzzers This website offers forums and advance copies of books from the publisher, Random House

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