The Daring Librarian

  This just popped out of my mouth when I was doing the question & answer portion of my keynote last week at the AISL Baltimore conference. And I like it! What do you think? Librarians are the Key  to Information Mastery! There's a lot of talk out there that it's the end of librarianship because of Google and the Interwebs.  I know other states getting rid of their school librarians - but I gotta say Nay, Nay! Let us not give up the good fight! things are seemingly dire and bleak for our profession, what with California & Now, is when the world needs librarians the most! With SO much information out there who else better than a librarian to decode it, curate it, interpret it, organize it, authenticate it, and integrate it? Who else but the librarian is going to teach attribution and Creative Commons? Who else but the librarian is going to be able to filter through millions of research results, then curate and create a playlist of amazing resources i...

The Task: "You've moved to the upscale neighborhood of Mt. Olympus, rubbing elbows with the big shots, the wealthy, the divine - yes the Greek Gods. To fit in you better know who your neighbors are! This playlist will help you find out all about their habits, attitudes, and yes...their powers!" During testing season we have a challenge to support student research with limited access to our computer labs and mobile labs. So, teaming with my 7th grade English teachers, we've re-worked our usual Greek Mythology research unit & adding a Reality TV hook for engagement. (Confession: 2 of my 3 seventh grade English teachers & I are also all huge Bravo fans & and our shared guilty pleasure is the Real Housewives franchise) Since we didn't want to do "Real Housewives of Mt. Olympus" for fear that our guy students would be turned off by that, we thought Big Rich would do the trick! PS. This lesson also would work for our good friends in the S...

It's been about 3 years since I've blogged about FREE digital image editing & fun sites... So I thought I would update it! Thanks to my dear friend @ Linda Dougherty ‏ who Tweeted & Scooped to me about Ribbet which made me give it close look comparing it to my beloved PicMonkey.  I thought I owed you, my dear readers,  an unbiased review of these fab photo editing sites. Last time I talked about 5 of them - this year I'm giving you 10! (Plus a link to my Sqworl gallery with 66+ links) 1. What makes PicMonkey Made of Win? Features Galore! PicMonkey , is MADE of WIN! This beloved site with happy hipster styling beautifully filled in when Picknik went away . [pours some Diet Coke out for my fallen homey] Really, for 94% of what you need to do with images this site can do & WAY easier than Photoshop. I even thought of making a Comic Tutorial for it - but it really is SO easy and intuitive I don't think you need one! PicMonkey is a creation ...

as seen through the eyes of a curated MentorMob playlist! Create your own Playlist on MentorMob! What is MentoMob Mentor Mob Features You can easily  add steps to your Playlist. A curated & vetted web link, including a YouTube video (make sure to grab the "share" link not the "watch" link) a file, you can write an article card with a preset headline, subhead, & you can add extra text or a graphic. You can also add a Pop Quiz! (I haven't tried this yet!) Pretty cool, huh? Anatomy of a Pla ylist Once you have your steps you can drag & drop to change their order. You can easily add more steps inserting them before or after other steps. You can share by embedding or sharing the direct link with your usual social networks.   Embed I t , Baby! Did you see way above how you can embed a playlist on a blog? Neato, right?! Love me some widgets to add to my Wikispaces page or blog!  I also like how you can get a custom embed size. Read m...

There's a new tablet & smart phone browser in town, it's for both Apple & Android, it's wicked fast, and it's FREE! (But honestly, I paid for it, keep reading to find out why!)  Puffin is a Beta cloud accelerated web browser for mobile devices.  With the free version you get the FLASH cloud enabled player for 14 days only....UNLESS you use this link and you gotta enter this secret code jembifpahhkka then you get DOUBLE! Or you could scan this QR code! It's Worth the Money, Honey! But I went ahead and splurged and bought the $2.99 version (search the App store for Puffin Browser) so I'll have cloud enabled FLASH  all the time and Nom nom is it ever SWEET! If you don't believe me, download the FREE version first, use my secret code to get double the days of FLASH, and try it for yourself. Then let me know what you think via Twitter or comments below: I think you'll like it, too! How Fast is Wicked Fast? The promotional verbage for thi...