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suite of scholarly literature tools with a new release of the free ReadCube desktop application; ReadCube Pro, a premium add-on to the desktop version; ReadCube iOS apps; and SmartCite, a Word-compatible citation tool. Available free for both Mac and PC, ReadCube's desktop application allows researchers to organize and manage their scholarly article libraries, and discover new literature through searches and daily personalized recommendations.

Joyce Valenza and Kristen Swanson, have assembled a good collection of Web 2.0 tools and guides for teachers. The collection is part of STHS Library Guides. Their new tools catalog is organized by function (wikis, podcasting, etc) and topics related to technology use in schools (media literacy, fair use, privacy).  Applications for EducationIf you're the technology integration specialist or just the "techy" person that everyone goes to, the STHS Library New Tools is a good site to refer your colleagues to when they need a quick reference to learn about new tools.

This is a pretty decent collection of web tools and descriptions to pass along as references/resources of ed tech.

An amazing array of resources for education: digital storytelling, copyright/creative commons, tag clouds, mindmapping, digital citizenship and more.  Take 10 minutes to peruse this - impressive collection. Looks current, too.

A story has a beginning, a middle, and a cleanly wrapped-up ending. Whether told around a campfire, read from a book, or played on a DVD, a story goes from point A to B and then C. It follows a trajectory, a Freytag Pyramid-perhaps the line of a human life or the stages of the hero's journey. A story is told by one person or by a creative team to an audience that is usually quiet, even receptive. Or at least that's what a story used to be, and that's how a story used to be told. Today, with digital networks and social media, this pattern is changing. Stories now are open-ended, branching, hyperlinked, cross-media, participatory, exploratory, and unpredictable. And they are told in new ways: Web 2.0 storytelling picks up these new types of stories and runs with them, accelerating the pace of creation and participation while revealing new directions for narratives to flow.

Pennsylvania's new digital learning library. Click on Materials and Resources and search for lesson, web links, videos, resources and assesments by grade level, subject, keyword.

MIT recently announced a new STEM resource for high schools called BLOSSOMS. It contains online video lessons and free resources for teachers and students. There are also links to other STEM resources on the site

Great resource for CCSS-ELA. This site is geared for grades 5-12. The library is full of informational and literature text that can be found by lexile range, grade level, theme, genres, device or standards. You have the ability to get paired text, related media (videos), a teacher guide, and a parent guide. Assessment and discussion questions are included that asked students to prove their answers using passages from the text. Truly worth checking out.

"Joyce Valenza Ph.D On the librarian: What's the point . . ? The Twitter conversation April 30, 2009 @karlfisch: What's the point of having a media specialist if they aren't specialists in the media forms of the day? I was nearly finished copying and pasting, figuring out how best to post Tuesday's Twitter conversation, when I discovered that Karl Fisch (@karlfisch), who kinda started it all, already took care of that. (You likely know of Karl's very popular and provocative videos.) I am still not sure how best to frame this conversation on the place of the information/media specialist in today's school. What is clear is that a lot of smart people--people who are out there teaching, speaking, moving, and shaking--are disappointed in what they see when they see school librarians. Either we have a perception problem or we need to do some serious retooling. I'd say we have to deal with both. In a hurry. Being an information (or media) specialist today means being an expert in how information and media flow TODAY! It is about knowing how information and media are created and communicated. How to evalute, synthesize, and ethically use information and media in all their varied forms. It is about being able to communicate knowlege in new ways for new audiences using powerful new information and communication tools. Forgive me if it hurts. In my mind, if you are not an expert in new information and communication tools, you are NOT a media specialist for today. Tuesday's conversation happened in the open, on Twitter. We need to be aware that these conversations are happening where we cannot hear them--at conferences, at Board and cabinet meetings. We also need to make sure that our voices are heard and that we hear the voices of others in places like Twitter, where so many educational leaders and thinkers are chatting about us and many other things. I've selected the remarks that resonated loudest for me. (I've shuffled a bit, but you can visit Karl'

SUNDAY, MAY 17, 2009 Creating a Wordsearch using Google Spreadsheets I'm a fan of alternative learning and testing techniques. Back when I was the teaching assistant for the "History of Video Games" class (yes, that's a real class), I gave the final exam as an illustrated crossword puzzle. It was surprisingly hard to find software for creating that crossword, so I hoped to make a Spreadsheets gadget to make it easier. Unfortunately, crossword-solving algorithms that run entirely in JavaScript are hard to find, and I gave up and went for second best: a wordsearch gadget. (A big thanks to Robert Klein for the wordsearch JavaScript library.) Here are steps for using the gadget: Create a new spreadsheet, and put a list of words in the first column. (Or, alternatively, use an existing spreadsheet that has a column of words you're interested in). My sample spreadsheet has a simple animals wordlist: Click on the "Insert" menu and then select "Gadget..." This presents you with various categories of gadgets to choose from (similar to the iGoogle directory). My gadget isn't yet in the gallery, so you'll need to select "Custom" and then type in the URL to the gadget: The gadget will appear embedded in the current worksheet, and it will prompt you to select a range of data to send to the gadget. Select all the cells that contain the desired words, and you should see the Range text field update with the range. If it doesn't work, you can always manually type it in. You can now customize the number of rows and columns. The default is 10 by 10, but if you have more words, you likely want a larger wordsearch. Click "Apply", and see the generated output. You have a few options for how you use the wordsearch. You can play with it immediately, inside that gadget, or you can use the option on the gadget menu to move the gadget to its own sheet and use it there. Note that each time you reload the spreadsheet, the wordsearch will be randomly generated with a new layout - so

The Top 200 Education Blogs All those interested in education-we've got you covered. From humor blogs on college life to one stop shops for school athletics to blogs all about education policy and new technologies, if there's a good education blog out there, you can bet it made our list. We've also mixed in a handful of exceptional web tools and sites that we thought deserved a spot in the top 200. News & Trends  -  Teaching  -  Learning  -  Professor Blogs  -  College  -  Campus Life  -  School Athletics  -  International & Study Abroad  -  E-Learning  -  Administrators and Departments  -  Technology & Innovation  -  Admissions & Rankings  -  Internet Culture  -  Education Policy  -  Specialty  -  Library & Research  -  Librarian Blogs  -  Miscellaneous

As librarians everywhere will attest, fake news is not new; fabricated stories have been presented as truth for centuries. But take a divided electorate and add a social media landscape where misinformation is shared with a click, and interest in the topic has soared.

What if every student (and educator) was a good online researcher?  I know, you don't have the time to teach information fluency skills.  What if you could get a significant advance is skills with just a 2 -3  hour time commitment?  Here's a great Prezi 'fly by" of the new Information Investigator 3.1 online self paced class.  Watch the presentation carefully to find the link to a free code to take the class for evaluation purposes. 

Of course you could always have you school librarian/media specialist teach information skills to your students! That's what they do!

I couldn't agree more. Library Media Specialists, especially when they can collaborate with classroom teachers, are the best resource for teaching these skills. However the problem of access to a Librarian and the issue of scale are real barriers. I've been creating content for Librarians for a decade. They are the best! You'll find years of free resources at: http://21cif.com This resource will help them reach more students. We had 1000 teens take this course at the Center for Talent Development. It really does work. We're hoping to reach teachers and librarians everywhere so we can pass along the skills and the opportunity. If American education was marginally rational there would be professionally staffed library media centers in every school. Since that isn't the case, I hope Internet based resources can keep the lights on for a new generation that really needs information fluency.

I've been thinking a lot about Tapscott's comments about this particular expectation of Net Gen workers, because I believe that not only are we seeing Net Gen students in our classrooms and libraries, we are seeing Net Gen employees in our new(and sometimes in our experienced) staff as well.