Not sure you want to buy the latest book by (fill in the blank.) Well if it’s a Harper Collins publication you just might be able to “browse inside,” just click on the browse inside link and you can read the first few chapters (and sometimes the entire book) online. American Gods by Neil Gaimen is available in its entirety online!

Bibliomania has made available free classics, drama, poetry, short stories, study guides, references, teacher resources, and more.

MIT has made some of their courses and some instructional videos available for free on the web. They have resources for high school teachers and students, too.

The Encyclopedia of Life, and ongoing project, has already posted 30,000 entries to its site. After first being reported, the site received so many hits that it crashed. It was back up and running at the time of this posting.

For Mrs. Shaffer, MSNBC posted this Sunday (2/24/08): “Photo is of boy loved by Anne Frank”

I’m excited, but slightly bummed, about tomorrows Book Club Luncheon. Once a semester I host a book club luncheon where students have to read the same book and then we meet during club period to discuss the book. Our school has a designated 1/2 hour club period twice a month on Fridays to give various clubs a chance to meet with their members, host guest speakers, plan activities, etc. For the book club, I provide the food and the only rule is that everyone has to participate in the discussion.

I’m excited about tomorrow because I’m always charged about discussing books, but especially because it’s Bloody Jack by L. A. Meyer and one of my new favorite authors. Bummed because unlike the last book club for Twilight by Stephenie Meyer which had over 25 students participating, only 8 students will be participating this time. It was really hard to get students to give Bloody Jack a try, and most only checked it out because I was so enthusiastic about it or another student recommended it. Surprisingly, I got lots of replies of “I don’t want to read about pirates!” I would have thought with the popularity of The Pirates of the Caribbean movie I wouldn’t have gotten that response. But even when I explained it wasn’t about pirates at all, they still didn’t want to give it a try.

Oh, well, I guess on the bright side, with so few students we can have a more intimate discussion rather than the hectic one we had for Twilight. I’ll let you know how it goes.

The library has been hopping lately, what with English III research papers and what seems like every teacher needing to schedule research or computer time. This is by no means a complaint; the more use of the library the better! I’d much rather stay busy than be twiddling my thumbs. But if I seem a bit distracted lately, I’d like to share with you two tech projects that have taken over my mind, heart, and time:

The first is the Mayan documentary collaboration project with our Spanish teacher, Ms. Andrews. This isn’t exactly a new project as we tried it out last year with mediocre success. We’ve tweaked it this year and things seem to be going much better. We adjusted the grading rubric and gave students specific deadlines for turning in sections. Students have the option to work alone or in groups. They have to have a minimum of three topics per documentary (if more than 3 members to a group, each member has to contribute at least one topic). Topics cover such areas as religion, daily life, agriculture, architecture, sports, astronomy, writing, etc. Their first task is to research their assigned topic. I created a StreamlineSC assignment builder with images and video clips that the students could use in their project. I created a Mayan pathfinder listing books in the library as well as useful websites. Ms. Andrews also brought in additional books from the public library for students to choose images that I then scanned into the computer.

After they have gathered all of their “stuff” and have documented it on a citation page, they have to then plan out their section using a storyboard. This was a difficult concept for them to grasp and took much explaining on our parts. They kept comparing this to PowerPoint and didn’t understand that we aren’t allowing text except for titles and credits! Many of the students freaked out when we told them that they would be narrating their movies! The storyboard forced them to look at what they were gathering, determine relevance, and plan what they felt was important to say about their topic. At this point, I showed them the basics of using Windows Movie Maker and how to add narration to their sections. They have a few weeks to complete their sections and then I will instruct them on how to finalize their individual sections and combine them into one final documentary/movie.

While we know there will be some students who choose not to participate or will turn in shoddy work; that there are some who will do the bare minimum and are only grudgingly participating; it’s the ones who are excited about doing something different that I find a joy to watch. The ones who are finding WMM cool and who have a “we can do that!” fascination and attitude that make this project one I hope we continue to offer from year to year. If you are interested in the project outline and grading rubric, leave a message in the comments section and I’ll email them to you.

For my second favorite new project, you may not be aware that I’m a member of the South Carolina Young Adult Book Award program. The committee reads 75 consideration titles and narrows them down to 20 nominee titles for student to read and vote on their favorite. The committee decided that this year we’d like to produce podcasts for the individual nominee titles using the booktalks from our activity guide and make them available on the South Carolina Association of School Librarians (SCASL) webpage. Well, me being such a jump on board kinda gal and loving anything tech related immediately nominated my drama club kids to record the podcasts. Thankfully, the drama kids have been excited about this project, too. What we didn’t realize was how difficult it could be to simply read a booktalk into a microphone without any errors! I’ve only had one student successfully complete a one-take recording. Most have to start and stop over and over again and not always because of their mistakes. Because we have no studio or quiet room, the students keep getting interrupted by the intercom, the class change bell, students coming in and out of the library, etc. Originally I gave them this past Friday as the deadline, but with so many more left to record I’m going to have to see about recruiting additional students to help with the recording process. Otherwise, I’m going to have to record the rest of them myself, and while I don’t mind doing that (kinda fun actually) the whole point was to have teens recording them. Maybe a miracle will happen and we’ll get the rest of them recorded Monday! BTW, the podcasts will not be publicly posted until after the Young Adult Book Award booktalk session March 14th at the SCASL annual conference. Sorry.

Speaking of books, here is a site that I came across while searching for audiobooks: LibriVox provides free audiobooks of titles in the public domain. I only listened to a little of part 1 for Peter Pan (one of my all time favorite stories) and it is a pretty good recording so far.

Lifehacker (which is unfortunately blocked at school) recently posted Top 10 Obscure Google Search Tricks. Here are three I thought would be useful for you and our students:

• What time is it in __________ (fill in the blank with the city/county to find the current time)

• Converter calculator, not just for money, but things like: “Find out how many teaspoons are in a quarter cup (quarter cup in teaspoons) or how many seconds there are in a year (seconds in a year) or how many euros there are to five dollars (5 USD in Euro).”

• Use Google image search to show you foreign language words and phrases. For example type in “jicama” which is a Mexican potato and you will see what one looks like.

CopyrightWatch recently posted a listing of works that have now passed into the Public Domain, includes such authors as Laura Ingalls Wilder (Little House on the Prairie); Jean de Brunhoff (Babar); J.M. Barrie (Peter Pan); and lots, lots more!

World Maths Day – “Join us in a celebration of numbers as children from across the globe unite in their quest to set a world record in answering mental arithmetic questions.” For ages 5 – 18.

And finally, here is the Commoncraft tutorial for RSS that I mentioned in the last Tech Tuesday newsletter.

The blog is here and “Tech Tuesday” the newsletter is no more. I hope you all will appreciate the change, I know I will. If I’m honest, I’m extremely happy to no longer use the newsletter format. This is soooo much easier and information is distributed faster and more efficiently. In addition, the blog should decrease the number of emails you will receive from me, since I’ll need the content for the blog! I can hear the sighs of relief now! In addition, while the “Tech Tuesday” newsletter was mostly for technical issues, I would like this blog to cover any issues related to education, information, and technology you’d like to see covered. I hope this will also be a place to collaborate and share teaching methods.

Please take a moment to subscribe to the blog so that you’ll receive either emails when new posts are added and/or RSS feeds in your reader. Remember, if you need help setting up a reader, all you have to do is stop in and see me! I also expect you to comment on the posts. The whole point of the blog is to start a discussion. If you liked a link I posted or need more like it, comment. If you disagree/agree with what I say, comment. If you have something you want to share, send it to me and I’ll post it. This blog is for all of us, not just to “listen” to myself “speak!”