What an inspiration! I have definitely bookmarked www.gutenberg.net. What a terrific resource. Of course I checked to see if my brother's new book, The Cactus Eaters is an eBook yet (it's not), but there are so many others. I was surprised that the top 100 list is mainly comprised of classics like Ulysses and Beowulf, not popular fiction. I haven't been a fan of the idea of ebooks, being from the old-school where we love to curl up with a book in our laps, but I opened the eBook for Emma, which one of my students is reading over the summer, and found myself happily reading away! I'll have to keep an open mind about eBooks; in our Independent Studies program we have been consistently adding to our collection of Audio books, which are great for English learners, or special ed students or just kids who think they don't like to read or aren't as fluent at it.
The notion that Project Gutenberg has 25,000 free books in its online catalogue is amazing.
This, and the World Public Library, are great resources for librarians, teachers, students and readers in general!
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Week #9 Thing #21
I had a lot of trouble getting things to load, for some reason. Finally had some success with Podcast Alley. Their layout was easy to navigate and I found lots of podcasts with book reviews; the hard part, as usual, is sorting through what's good and what's not. That would just mean tagging podcasts that I hear are good from colleagues and friends and starting a file.
I like having the rss feed on my blog!
I like having the rss feed on my blog!
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Week #9 Thing #20
I can see why the kids are glued to this site! It's wonderful...
Being the animal lover I am, I watched the video of Uno the Beagle winning the Westminster Dog Show and a few horse jumping videos from the National Horse Show and Pebble Beach Classic. I know I will be sharing these with friends... and that's what I want to learn how to do next.
As far as how I can apply this to school, I can easily imagine asking the students to (as an option for those who have the skills) to make a video and put it to music; for example, when we're studying civil rights in history, they can interview people about their feelings on this issue and find examples on campus and in their community that reflect civil rights in action (or being limited).
Being the animal lover I am, I watched the video of Uno the Beagle winning the Westminster Dog Show and a few horse jumping videos from the National Horse Show and Pebble Beach Classic. I know I will be sharing these with friends... and that's what I want to learn how to do next.
As far as how I can apply this to school, I can easily imagine asking the students to (as an option for those who have the skills) to make a video and put it to music; for example, when we're studying civil rights in history, they can interview people about their feelings on this issue and find examples on campus and in their community that reflect civil rights in action (or being limited).
Week #8 Thing #19
This is an excellent tool! I love it!
I put the libary widget on my blog so that it shows 3 of the books randomly chosen from my catalogue. I know I will continue adding to my catalogue and sharing groups, such as the YA groups, with my students.
I was especially pleased that my brother's new memoir, The Cactus Eaters, was already featured with 12 members and I read a fantastic review of the book (which I agree with entirely!).
I put the libary widget on my blog so that it shows 3 of the books randomly chosen from my catalogue. I know I will continue adding to my catalogue and sharing groups, such as the YA groups, with my students.
I was especially pleased that my brother's new memoir, The Cactus Eaters, was already featured with 12 members and I read a fantastic review of the book (which I agree with entirely!).
Week #8 Thing 18
Zoho Writer looks like a lot of fun; on my little laptop at home things were slow to load, but I like the idea that so much word processing could be done without having a certain company's software. And I also like the idea of sharing documents and being able to comment on one another's documents. While I'm not certain that my students are sophisticated enough to comment constructively one their peers' papers, I might still try to find a way to try to integrate this tool.
Week #7 Thing #17
The sandox was fun! My favorite part was starting to read all the Curriculum Connection ideas and then realizing I should just cut and paste them into a folder so that I can peruse them at my leisure and share them with others (and not get too overwhelmed at once!). I especially liked the CC ideas for the Wiki section... I think I added Idea #57! A popular tool, that wiki!
Week #7 Thing #16
Exhilarating and overwhelming at once! In my exploring of the wiki sources, I tried to focus on classroom oriented wikis. I really liked the AP World Studies wiki and the one from the English 10 teacher's class... great Google Doc slideshow on the theme of isolation after reading A Separate Peace and Frankenstein. I'm going to try to do a similar one with my English 11 students who read Catcher in the Rye. I also enjoyed the Flatclass wiki project, although it's soooo amazingly multi-layered that I know I couldn't incorporate it into my program. Very inspiring, though.
The Curriculum Connections for this "thing" are great, however, much more adaptable to my program (I hope!). I like the idea of collaborative note-taking; I can see incorporating this into several of my English and history classes. Of course the idea of compiling a wiki of famous writers or historical figures is GREAT! I will definitely be doing that! And I love the Top 10 list and trading cards, too....I'm going to try both.
My own ideas... well, I'd love to have my students keep an "Efolio" of their work; students must also be able to view others' efolios and comment on them, etc. I'd like to have students create a product together using Google Docs... in Independent Studies we're always looking for ways for our students to collaborate or at least converse. And I think creating a resource wiki might be a good idea; students would get credit for adding valid/useful sources to the ongoing list.
The Curriculum Connections for this "thing" are great, however, much more adaptable to my program (I hope!). I like the idea of collaborative note-taking; I can see incorporating this into several of my English and history classes. Of course the idea of compiling a wiki of famous writers or historical figures is GREAT! I will definitely be doing that! And I love the Top 10 list and trading cards, too....I'm going to try both.
My own ideas... well, I'd love to have my students keep an "Efolio" of their work; students must also be able to view others' efolios and comment on them, etc. I'd like to have students create a product together using Google Docs... in Independent Studies we're always looking for ways for our students to collaborate or at least converse. And I think creating a resource wiki might be a good idea; students would get credit for adding valid/useful sources to the ongoing list.
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