All posts by John

General, Public, School Media Specialist

AASL Recommended App: Seesaw

seesawThe American Association of School Librarians (AASL) came out with their 25 Best Apps for Teaching & Learning. The apps were chosen because they foster innovation, creativity, active participation, and collaboration.

This week we highlight Seesaw, a “student-driven digital portfolio that empowers students (as young as 5!) to independently create, capture, and store artifacts of learning.” Students can even add text and voice recordings to their journal items. Seesaw has a great teacher resources section on their site.

The app is FREE and available on iOS and Google Play. Check out the overview video below:

Academic, General, Public, School Media Specialist, Special

Open eBooks: free eBooks for children from in-need households

Open eBooksWhat an exciting time for educators, program leaders, and librarians! With a broad partnership across government, developers, publishers, and libraries, Open eBooks, a service that allows in-need children access to eBooks without incurring any costs, has been announced to the public. Check out Open eBooks now or read more about the service below.

If you work with in-need youth in libraries, schools, shelters, clinics, out-of-school time programs, military family programs, early childhood programs, and other capacities you can access Open eBooks by registering with First Book. Learn how to get started now!

“Open eBooks is an app containing thousands of popular and award-winning titles that are free for children from in-need households. These eBooks can be read without checkouts or holds. The goal of Open eBooks is to encourage a love of reading and serve as a gateway to children reading even more often, whether in school, at libraries, or through other eBook reading apps.”

Finally, check out the announcement from none-other than Michelle Obama!

Academic, General, Public, School Media Specialist, Special

5 staggering factoids about email

sumall_email_stack_campaignWhether you love it or you hate, you can’t deny that email is a part of life. But did you know that there are about 2.4 million emails sent every single second? That’s just one of the mind-blowing facts MakeUseOf recently dished out about email. Here’s the list:

1. Approximately 205 billion emails are sent every day.
2. 91% of all email users check their inbox at least once a day.
3. At least 72% of U.S. adults manage personal emails by smartphone.
4. Gmail has close to 1 billion active users.
5. Skilled email marketing returns around $44 for every $1 spent.

And the great thing about the article is that when you click into each fact, you get documentation on the source of the information!

Check out the whole article now!

Image credit: from SumAll - Free Marketing Images
General, Public, School Media Specialist

AASL Recommended App: Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)

dplaThe American Association of School Librarians (AASL) came out with their 25 Best Apps for Teaching & Learning earlier this year. The apps were chosen because they foster innovation, creativity, active participation, and collaboration.

The DPLA suite of apps “brings together the riches of America’s libraries, archives, museums, and cultural heritage sites making them freely available to students and teachers.” What better place to find free, quality content for your students! Looking for more ideas? AASL suggests getting students to develop their own apps. You could even hold a DPLA Hackathon!

The app is available on iOS and Android devices. AASL recommends it for Middle and High School students.

Academic, General, Public, School Media Specialist, Special

The top 25 idiotic passwords

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mediawiki_1.25_sign_in_form.pngIf you’re using “123456” or “password” for your password, Gizmodo has some news for you: you need to change your password! Their recent post pulled the 25 most popular passwords of 2015 and it contains some great examples of what NOT to use as your password. Interestingly, there are some changes on the list from last year that point to changes in popular culture. “starwars” and “princess” have joined the ranks but even though they might be clever, they really shouldn’t be used as passwords.

Check out the whole list of bad passwords.

Or, learn how to create a strong password: