All posts by Kate

Recommend App… Frog Dissection

Frog Dissection offers a scientifically accurate and greener alternative for teaching dissection in the classroom. It’s suitable for middle school students (and up) who are learning about organs and organ systems as part of their life science curriculum. This app offers 3D imaging, step-by-step instructions with voice over, and information about frogs’ organs, organ cycle, classification, lifecycle. This app is available on iPad for around $3.99. Find more information at http://frogvirtualdissection.com/.

Recommended App: GeoBee Challenge

From National Geographic comes the GeoBee Challenge App! Available for iPhone®, iPod touch®, iPad®, Android™, and NOOK Color™ this app allows students to try their hand at answering geography questions from around the globe! Complete with beautiful maps, students will have a multiple choice round, a map challenge round, and a bonus round! Some of the very same questions that are asked during the National Geographic Bee contest are on this app! This app generally costs around $1.99. Find it at http://www.nationalgeographic.com/geobee/apps/ or in your app store!

Interest in Pinterest?

At least week’s MLA Conference, I had the privilege of presenting with Minnesota School of Business Librarian, Krista Jacobson, on using Pinterest to market your library. This seems to be a topic of interest to a fair number of people as the session was pretty well attended! If you’re interested in using Pinterest to market your library, you may consider viewing our conference handout materials at http://mnlibraryassociation.org/uploads/conf12/handouts/B8.pdf. Here, you’ll get a nice sampling of the topics we covered. We hope to also present on this topic at the LibTech Conference in March, so if Pinterest catches your fancy, be sure to checkout the LibTech Conference program to see if our presentation made the cut! Oh, and between you and me, I’d love to just talk about Pinterest with you too!  — Kate Bessey

Recommended App: Splashtop Whiteboard

Splashtop Whiteboard allows teachers and students to turn their Android tablet or iPad into an interactive whiteboard. Once connected to their computer over Wi-Fi, they can watch Flash media with fully synchronized video and audio, control PC and Mac applications, then annotate lesson content from an Android tablet or iPad. Splashtop Whiteboard offers users of existing interactive whiteboards—such as Mimeo, Mobi, Promethean, Polyvision, or SMART Technologies—a way to extend their investment by accessing their tools from anywhere in the class (all four corners of the room!) without using wireless slates. This app costs anywhere from $2.99 to $9.99 and can be used with iPad iOS 4.0 & up and Android 3.1 & up.

What Should I Read Next?

Have you checked out the all new “What Should I Read Next?” http://whatshouldireadnext.com site? Fresh for fall 2012, this is a fun way to get your reading list in order for all that cozy reading time you’re planning! Type in the title or author of your choice (preferably one you loved!) and up pops a list of suggested titles. The list of suggested titles populates from user’s favorites lists – and the more times the titles appear together on user’s lists, the higher the title moves up on the recommendation list. Pretty nifty… but, will never beat reader’s advisory or book talks! 😉 Use it with your patrons and students, too!