bookreeader

I was ready to post an entry about the other fun and useful products that I am drooling over at Isn't This Clever , but then...... I was given the chance to choose one --just one -- Finders Key Purse as a prize!  How lucky can I get?!?  But wait -- how do I choose JUST ONE??!?! I could choose the Teacher's Pet - cute little book and pencil , since I am a teacher, after all.. .But my son plays baseball, and our world revolves around the baseball diamond, so to speak, so Homerun would be a great choice....I love the stylish Buckle..... and The Key To Everything is just PERFECT for keeping my keys handy!  But, in the end, I decided that I would but these for my friends and family, and choose SYMPHONY for myself, in honor of the wonderfully talented young ladies who were brought into our circle by my clever sons! 

 This is another of the cool goodies that I received from Alexx, Inc. - Isn't This Clever .   I think that this FANtastic Pop-Up Fan is one of the coolest (no pun intended!) gifts I have ever seen, for a couple of reasons: My son plays baseball.  Baseball games are always played on the hottest and coldest days of the year, it seems!  This pocket-sized fan expands to a a very respectable size, and managed to keep me cool, even in August heat! Yet, it folds into its own pouch, about 3 inches square!  Tiny enough to tuck into a jeans pocket! But -- It can be clipped to my Finders Key Purse, and hung over the edge of my Baseball Tote Bag, so that I can find it quickly, even when I carry snacks, drinks, crafts, books, make-up, books, score sheets, sun hats....well, basically everything I need to survive an afternoon on a barren ball field! This is another awesome gift that some of my friends and family will be finding in their Christmas stockings this ye...

 A little while ago I received a terrific little bag full of wonderful and useful products from Finders Key Purse!   Since I am already a fan, I decided to share a terrific idea with you!  First, let me introduce you to the coolest little tool that makes my life SO much easier every day! This is my favorite Finders Key Purse .  I say "favorite", because I have a few of them!  This one holds my house keys at the ready, hanging over the edge of my purse, so that I never need to dig around searching for them!  Imagine how handy that would be if, say, you were trying to get three small children into the house quickly in the rain, or you heard the phone ringing just as you got to the door, or you were juggling three bags of groceries!  I have another Finders Key Purse just for my work keys, and they can hang over the edge of my briefcase or tote bag, so that I can always be sure that I have them when I get to work!  A third Finders Key Purse h...

So I broke down some real reluctance barriers, and decided to try some new ways of using tools that I had tasted before, and, like Brussels sprouts, had decided that I really didn't like or need!  Although I have Evernote on my iPad - (hey - it was free!) - and love tools that I can access on all devices, I hadn't really seen a need or want for it.  I am a Devoted Delicious user, and can pop a bookmark into Delicious with the touch of a button.  But I tried Penultimate, and it allowed me to store and index handwritten notes, and add pictures, and have them at my fingertips in Evernote, so I explored some more... By linking Delicious and Evernote through ifttt (If This Then That) - I sent my current Delicious bookmarks to Evernote.  Where my notes are.  Writing a review with the links handy and in the same place was a little easier, I will admit.   And I can see how, if I were a student just starting out, I would want to use Evernote to collect, ind...

Today my brilliant son introduced me to Penultimate -- an app that reads handwriting, and syncs with Evernote.  You can write, draw, erase, move things around the page, search handwritten notes...and all will appear in Evernote on any device you choose.  Really cool -- and I thought this was perfectly timed.  I am off to use Evernote, which I have been ignoring for a while.   Now it looks SO much more fun!

I have yet to explore the Search Tools portion of this assignment, but I had to stop and post this comment. After exploring NovelNY and the Gale and Ebsco Databases, I decided to add a few more search tools -- and maybe a cool widget -- to our Library Databases page. LIttle did I know that this would turn out to be an all-day activity!! First I had to make room in the grid of databases.  Our web page tool (SchoolCenter) apparently did not like me messing with the pretty layout, as it added more cells than I did, rearranged them, and resized them.   When adding a widget, once must edit in html.  This then changes a SchoolCenter page to always being edited in html. When attempting to add some text to the page in Advanced Editor (non-html), the new widgets decided that this was apparently an affront to their code, and reformatted to elimate the search boxes. I tried to add a Gale widget, but this really threw everything out of kilter. Back to step one. I now h...

For this week's activity, I had a hard time pulling myself away from Google Tools. I really find that they are a fine collaboration, creation and archival tool, and I wonder if I will find any tools to replace Google Drive. I tried TitanPad, and created an account for our School Library. I like that it does not require an email, and that it can be shared so easily and instantly. Still, I miss the templates, the tools that all work together, and the brand recognition of Google Tools. I can see using it with students for collaborations, but wonder if they will use it outside of school. SlideShare and DropBox already have my loyalty. We have sent videos across the country, shared files with librarians across the state, and created departmental folders for collaboration with DropBox. We are so fond of it that a colleague and I requested that the District put a shortcut to DropBox on every desktop in the District. Since we are a District of SMART Boards and SMART technology, ...

I am afraid that I approached this Thing with a little less enthusiasm than I should. You see, I am familiar with, and love ScreenR, ever since it helped me publish ALL of the 3rd graders' Blabberize Biography projects on one, easy to view page . I tried AudioBoo this week, as a test for an upcoming project: listen to ‘Test’ on Audioboo I am excited about the project, but not about AudioBoo. The students will be recording Book Reviews, and we will try to link them to the Online Library Catalog. With AudioBoo, they can only post one picture. Last year we used GarageBand to record reviews with 4th graders, and the result was less than satisfactory. The students spent more time struggling with the technology than they did learning about the book, or enjoying the project. The process strangled the project. We have decided this year to go low-tech, and use PhotoStory for this project. The students can post a few pictures about the book (the teacher wants 5 or mo...

Curation! was the title of Joyce Valenza's keynote address and workshop at the 2012 NYLA/SSL Conference, and she introduced the word to hundreds of librarians in one swoop! I have to admit, I was feeling pretty self-satisfied at the time; after all, I had a fat and happy Delicious file, full of handy sites for all occasions. Why, I even searched for useful links through Delicious, adding and sharing with colleagues. Now I see that I am like the old librarian who collects hundreds of back issues of magazines, certain that they will "come in handy some day!". Curation is so much more of a Web3.0 tool: creating web content more than gathering it. So I gave Scoop.It another try. Diigo had scared me away with its daily updates in my email, and Pinterest is my guilty pleasure/personal-rather-than-educational site. I began following other Scoop-ers, three topics, and added a button to my toolbar. I even connected it to my Twitter feed, so that I can post Scoops there...