On December 3rd at 7:00 PM Dr. Joyce Valenza will be hosting TL Virtual Cafe’s EdTech Smackdown Open Mic Night. The event is free and open to all.
Valenza will be sharing her trend list and some of her favorite tech discoveries. The event will be moderated by Gwyneth A. Jones, aka The Daring Librarian and Tiffany Whitehead, aka The Mighty Little Librarian.
Moderators encourage moving beyond listening to sharing during this Open Mic Night! If you’re interested in sharing your own exciting discoveries of the year, please grab a slide/slides and add to the crowd-sourced presentation/book in advance. Share your best recommendations for tips, resources, etc. and help build the interactive resource book.
Those interested in attending the event on December 3rd at 7:00 PM can use this Participant Link.
Laura Perenic writes: “As a self-confessed book-cover judger, displays of jacket art and themed book displays make my mental taste buds water. Imagine my delight when I realized that Pinterest, in addition to having loads of other content, is a veritable smorgasbord of fiction suggestions to please my young adult (YA) palate. As a fan of an author’s work, you can follow their page, boards, and pins for the latest news. Many teen authors use Pinterest to reach their audience; and YA Highway has a compiled list of YA authors using Pinterest.
Full blog post at YALSA The Hub, Nov. 12
Source of snippet: American Libraries Direct 11/14/2012
The theme of the 16th annual Internet Librarian Conference this year was Transformational Power of Internet Librarians: Promise & Prospect. As the conference planners point out, Internet librarians have been revolutionizing the Net for many years, and are poised to transform their communities in exciting new ways. Technologist keynote speaker David Weinberger said, we have to “build networks that make us smarter.” This event showcased leading-edge tools, strategies and techniques for transforming campuses, communities and organizations. One of the presentations that might interest you was given by Richard Le, SanRafael Public Library, and Tom Duffy, San Francisco Public Library. Together they shared the 50 mobile apps most useful to them as librarians. Its always interesting to compare your favorite tools to theirs to see how many are a match.
Go to their slideshare presentation at http://50apps.weebly.com/presentation.html and who knows, maybe you will pick up at least one new tool that perfectly suits your needs. I know I did!
Pearson Education, Inc. has developed a kid-friendly app for learning grammar usage and mechanics. The primary edition of this app promises “catchy animated songs and rhymes [to] make English language arts exciting!” Grammar Jammers Primary Edition includes unique animations and quiz questions on the following topics: adjectives, contractions, nouns, pronouns, punctuation, sentences, and verbs. The app is free and is compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.1.2 or later.
Check out this YouTube video for a nice sampling of what’s available on the app. I absolutely love the music and imagine that both kids and adults (parents & teachers) could enjoy listening to it (unlike some cartoon/kids music!).
Grammar Jammers is also available in Elementary and Middle Editions. However, these editions of the app typically cost around $2.99.
We can tell from our blog stats that many of you either already love or have an interest in Pinterest. Learnist is a website (app) that is similar to Pinterest and is designed for educators. Read about how English teacher Hauna Zaich uses Learnist in her eight and tenth grade classes. Zaich says, “This year, I wanted to incorporate elements of a flipped classroom into my teaching, and I found that Learnist was a great tool for that. In the classroom, I’ve used Learnist as a practical option for my lessons, and students were receptive to the Learnboards I created to teach grammar. (Here are two that I used to help teach tenth graders about passive and active voice and verb tense and verb agreement.) I think my students found the mix of reading, examples, videos and online practice activities to be helpful.” Read the full article at Edutopia.org/Hauna Zaich’s blog (11/12)
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Valenza will be sharing her trend list and some of her favorite tech discoveries. The event will be moderated by Gwyneth A. Jones, aka The Daring Librarian and Tiffany Whitehead, aka The Mighty Little Librarian.
