Group items tagged

a list of nonfiction books about the life and times of The Great Gatsby’s author, F. Scott Fitzgerald.

1. "The book is dead." Wrong: More books are produced in print each year than in the previous year. One million new titles will appear worldwide in 2011. In one day in Britain—"Super Thursday," last October 1—800 new works were published.

2. "We have entered the information age." This announcement is usually intoned solemnly, as if information did not exist in other ages. But every age is an age of information, each in its own way and according to the media available at the time.

3. "All information is now available online." The absurdity of this claim is obvious to anyone who has ever done research in archives. Only a tiny fraction of archival material has ever been read, much less digitized. Most judicial decisions and legislation, both state and federal, have never appeared on the Web. The vast output of regulations and reports by public bodies remains largely inaccessible to the citizens it affects. Google estimates that 129,864,880 different books exist in the world, and it claims to have digitized 15 million of them—or about 12 percent.

It’s also a question, as Mr. Lanier, 49, astutely points out in his new book, “You Are Not a Gadget,” of how online collectivism, social networking and popular software designs are changing the way people think and process information, a question of what becomes of originality and imagination in a world that prizes “metaness” and regards the mash-up as “more important than the sources who were mashed.”

Web 2.0 is creating a “digital forest of mediocrity” and substituting ill-informed speculation for genuine expertise;

Mr. Johnson added that the book’s migration to the digital realm will turn the solitary act of reading — “a direct exchange between author and reader” — into something far more social and suggested that as online chatter about books grows, “the unity of the book will disperse into a multitude of pages and paragraphs vying for Google’s attention.”

Reading Conferences

Mixbook (or Mixbook for Educators) is a photo-based creation platform that offers hundreds of layouts and backgrounds to choose from along with customizable frames and text to make your book beautiful. Just pick a layout, drag-and-drop your photos into the photo slots, and edit to your heart's content.

Though the site's examples suggest using the books to gather wedding, travel, and baby albums, this program can absolutely used to create stories around historic photographs and artifacts, original art, to produce a class yearbook, to share an oral or personal history or journey, to tell the story of a field trip.  Mixbook for Educators now offers a secure collaborative environment for sharing their ebooks, as well as discounts on printed products, should you choose to print.  (A similar option is Scrapblog.)

Storybird, a collaborative storybook building space designed for ages 3-13, inspires young writers to create text around the work of professional artists and the collection of art is growing. Two (or more) people create a Storybird in a round robin fashion by writing their own text and inserting pictures. They then have the option of sharing their Storybird privately or publicly on the network. The final product can be printed (soon), watched on screen, played with like a toy, or shared through a worldwide library. Storybird is also a simple publishing platform for writers and artists that allows them to experiment, publish their stories, and connect with their fans.

The public owns these works, not an individual author or artist. Anyone can use a public domain work without obtaining permission, but no one can ever own it.

Copyright has expired for all works published in the United States before 1923.

For works published after 1977, if the work was written by a single author, the copyright will not expire until 70 years after the author’s death. If a work was written by several authors and published after 1977, it will not expire until 70 years after the last surviving author dies.

« Thoughts on Collaboration and Developing Higher Level Questioning Skills Twittering with a Purpose: A Starter (or Restarter) Guide » Book In An Hour: A Classroom Strategy April 30, 2009 by Ellsbeth This past winter I had the opportunity to attend a workshop with Organization of American Historians distinguished lecturer, Dr. Lendol Calder.   This is the first place where I came across the strategy called Book In An Hour.  Since then I’ve tried to find additional internet resources on this strategy, but they appear to be few and far between.  I know other people would find it useful, so I decided to write up the strategy and post it here on the blog.  If you know of additional resources or ways to adapt this strategy, I would enjoy hearing from you. What: The Book In An Hour strategy is a jigsaw activity for chapter books.  While the strategy can take more than an hour depending on the reading and presentation method you choose. Why: While many teachers view this activity as a time saver, I view it as a way to expose students to more literary and historical materials than I might have been able to do otherwise.  There are many books that I would love my students to read, but I know that being able to do so is not always my reality.  This st

y gives me an avenue to expose them to additional literature and other important historical works without taking much time away from the other aspects of my courses.  It also provides opportunities for differentiation.  This strategy can be adapted to introduce a book that students will be reading in-depth.  Instead of j

ng to divide students up into groups or jigsaw with individual students.  If you are using groups, I recommend making them heterogeneous or creating them in a way that subtly facilitates differentiation.  I also encourage you to give each student in the grou