Useful sites (weekly)

  by  lynetter 

The above quote is an interesting one as the debate about being open and free vs closed, freely sharing vs private (and/or pay for). Many cases are not 100% in either camp. Many services offer free versions for the basic (and tempting) formats but you pay for more advanced options. What will finally win – free or pay, open or private? Schools are very reluctant to be open for a variety of reasons, some more valid than others. It is an interesting time as the degrees of openness and “closedness” change daily whilst the old comes to terms with the new.

• PHYLO: THE TRADING CARD GAME  “an online initiative aimed at creating a Pokemon card type resource but with real creatures on display in full “artistic” wonder. Not only that – but we plan to have the scientific community weigh in to determine the content on such cards, as well as folks who love gaming to try to design interesting ways to use the cards. Then to top it all off, members of the teacher community will participate to see whether these cards have educational merit. Best of all, the hope is that this will all occur in a non-commercial open access open source because basically this is good for you your children and your planet sort of way.”

• Mozilla Labs » Gaming  Mozilla Labs Gaming is the latest project launched by Mozilla Labs, committed to providing the game developer community with the platform and tools they need to make innovative games on the Open Web.

• Greenshot – a free and open source screenshot tool for productivity  Greenshot is a light-weight screenshot software tool for Windows 

• LitWorld – The Nonprofit Cultivating Literacy Leaders Worldwide  Aiming to help 1 million children learn to read by 2014, LitWorld supports literacy and educational programs in communities from Harlem to Baghdad. “LitWorld’s mission is to cultivate literacy leaders worldwide through transformational literacy experiences that build connection, understanding, resilience and strength. We work with teachers, parents, community members, and children to support the development of literacy and the redemptive power of story in the world’s most vulnerable communities.”

• NASA – Classroom Some great free resources at the NASA site and offers student interactivity using real life NASA datafor classroom projects. Students have free access to the NASA Virtual Lab for example to use a scanning electron microscope. Users can zoom and focus into a variety of built-in microscopic samples. You can explore Earth’s geography, geology and more with global 3D viewer, View 2D graphs, Map hurricanes and much more

• newtoolsworkshop – home  An outstanding collection of tools from Joyce Valenza’s wiki page,

• The First Amendment First Aid Kit As a conclusion to Banned Books Week 2010, Random House USA has been posting author’s thoughts on censorship, along with much other useful material on their First Amendment First Aid Kit pages. ‘In their own words’ features Judy Blume, the late Robert Cormier, Zilpha Keatley Snyder and Lois Lowry commenting on censorship and their novels: 

• Agatha Christie: getting away with murder | Books | The Guardian Interesting article about why Agatha Christie’s books are so popular, even today

• Writer in Residence, insideadog.com.au  From insideadog site, writer-in-residence, fantasy author Kate Forsyth discusses the best fantasy covers

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