The Daring Librarian

This is reading promotion idea that's inexpensive, low-tech, includes student voice, and I totally nabbed it from the amazing Librarian Tiff five years ago and I still love it! It's kind of what you can call an oldie but a goodie. I don't put this display out at the beginning of the school year. I've found that it's good to bring it out mid-year or connected to a reading promotion lesson activity like Speed Dating with Books to generate interest. Shockingly, it seems that my middle schoolers respond to "new" things, so I bring this out in the lull between Winter and Spring break. But this can work at any time in a school library or ELA classroom. It's kinda like a low-tech YELP review for books! I was inspired by Librarian tiff because she also does this in her school library and created this amazing graphic below, made it Creative Commons, and gave it out to the world! I love beautiful signage that I don't have to make myself! Beca...

Brøderbund's Living Books Are Back for  the iPad & iPhone Thanks to Wanderful Books ! On Friday I was looking pensively at my boxed sets of the Living Books CD-ROM collection in my school library. I have resisted for YEARS (ok, like 10+) to weed them knowing how AMAZING & special these interactive stories can be for ESOL or special ed kiddos but alas - the sad weeding day has finally come.  Year after year when weeding time came around my sainted and patient assistant Robin Black (this is our 21st year together!) would take them off the shelf & and add them to the weeding book cart.  I then would go behind her with a furtive grin & and put them back on the shelf. But this year I tested them and they do NOT work on ANY of my computers. Not any of our iBooks, MacBook Pros, eMacs (2003), or brand spanking new iMacs.  We run an OSX school & these old CD-ROM's only run on classic. Noooooo! [shakes fist in air in mock fury] So, sniffing ...

GoAnimate.com : MHMS Media Center Adventures! by gwyneth Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com . It's free and fun! OK, so i'm getting better at GoAnimate!...and it really is a WAY cool, user friendly animation studio! (that will probably be blocked by my county next week...just as i do any prof dev on it it gets blocked...cause that seems to be the kiss of death for anything cool - like Twitter or Flickr - i share it with other teachers or media specialists and blammo!...blocked! /rant) ANYWAY...i also just created my own character ! this feature was just released LAST WEEK...you can now make a comic version of yourself to use in your videos....the first one is FREE... (& yeah it's a younger cartoon version of yours truly with rad glasses!) if you've ever made a Mii Character it's a lot like that..here's a helpful blog posting , the official blog , and some video tutorials to help! i got so jazzed about this site i made a Go! Animate Introduction wi...

I was very pleased and gratified to have Sir JJ Drinkwater of the Caledon Library bestow upon me a very special bookcase ((I later found out they were FREE for the asking! LOL))...using scripts provided by the esteemed code poet Sir ZenModo Wormser. This special bookcase is very interactive and actually gives out books that you can read in-world! (pray, gentle reader..click on any picture below for a Full Size version!) click on the bookcase to get a selection of titles: Keep the book that they offer to you as an object...the brilliant part is that the books are only 1 prim and they can be used as real clickable books! Scatter them around your house! Put them on a shelf or a table for the enjoyment of your guests! Read them at your leisure! Rez the object on a shelf or a table then click upon it and it will ask do you want to visit the Aetheric version of that book...choose Go to Page From here you can read the book, in its original form...clicking from page to page! Suc...