The Daring Librarian

100% Street Cred! I get emails every week from startups, apps, & companies wanting me to blog about their products to which I always (99%) nicely say "no thanks" and that my street cred and integrity on this blog is important!  But when I fall in love with something that's fun and FREE - I just HAVE to share it! You have to try this in your life! From the Bitstrips People The Bitmoji app , brought to you by the people of Bitstrips (which I shared more than 4 years ago on my 21+ Avatar Generator & Creators page!) is available in both iOs and on Google Play for the Android OS. Create your face, bod, hairstyle, dress it up, & BOOM! They're put into these fun cartoon stickers that are an alternate emoji keyboard! Even my 75 year old Mom & Dad have them, and we use them with each other ALL the time. It's hilarious and a blast! I re-read this blog post early this morning and realized I used the word FUN....way too many times! Cool, ...

Teaching tech in isolation never works. When a reluctant tech user learns how to do something with a project about which they're personally passionate, they're gonna be instantly engaged, work hard at it, and feel super exultant when it works!  For example, when I teach iPhoto , I have the teachers bring in 10-15 pictures of their vacations, hobbies, pets, or yeah...their families and kids. OR if they didn't bring them in, I hand them a digital camera with a grin and say "Go take a 15 min digital safari - lay down, lean over, step on chairs, and take pics of your classroom or the school from freaky angles and come right back!"   From there we teach how to import, edit, crop, enhance, adjust, and then export those photos in different sizes. That way when they email that photo of "little Johnnie on the pottie" the recipient doesn't have to scroll to see one eye...then the other, etc.  In the second session we use those same pics to make an iPhoto s...

Anyone who knows me knows i'm a Mac grrl.... from way back. From my first apple classic, apple IIe, apple IIgs,my first Internet computer Apple LC3 with a 14.4k modem, to what i helped to furnish my first new school in 97 by ordering for every classroom the Mac5200 which featured the S-Video out to connect to the TV before the LCD projector was invented (and cheaper to run!)to my beloved MacBook...heck, i'm head over heels in geek love with Jonathan Ive ! so when apple announced a new tablet i was so freakin STOKED! but....i'm now a little let down. "A list of the iPad non-features and let downs came to light and spread through the interweb community, "Apple shares reacted, dropping 3.5 per cent after gaining one per cent just prior to the launch. In contrast, Amazon - the manufacturer of the Kindle, iPad's main e-book competitior - gained one per cent." i want a tablet that i can take to ISTE10 Denver !...lightweight to carry, able to do presos, twe...