At-a-Glance Comic Tutorials

This are awesome. Big thanks to Gwyneth Jones, the Daring Librarian, for creating these very cool Web 2.0 tutorials!
She has several available on her Flickr page and has given them Creative Commons, Attribution, Non-Commercial and Sharelike" licenses so they can be shared and embedded in your blog, wiki, etc.

Check them out!

Here is a closer look at the Xtranormal tutorial:

See how cool it is!!

Please Vote!

Tubechop

Tubechop is a site that "allows you to easily chop a funny or interesting section from any YouTube video and share it."

Sharing options include embedding, emailing, linking, and sharing on social media sites including Twitter, delicious, and Facebook.

Here is a clip "chopped" from the YouTube video Social Media in Plain English:

Internet Searching

As you may have noticed, I'm a HUGE fan of Google, but I recently found a new search engine for students. Often Google is overwhelming for students who are search for the best, most reliable information.

It's called Sweet Search and is located at http://www.sweetsearch.com

Sweet Search searches only the 35,000 web sites that their staff of research experts and librarians and teachers have evaluated and approved. They constantly evaluate search results and "fine-tune" them, by increasing the ranking of Web sites from organizations such as the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, PBS and university Web sites.

Sweet Search was created by the team at Finding Dulcinea (http://www.findingdulcinea.com) which presents only credible, high-quality and trustworthy Web sites, saving time for the novice and the experienced user alike.

Try it out and let me know what you think!

Wondersay

made on Wondersay - Animate text with style

The animation above was created using Wondersay, a free online tool for generating text animations. You can customize with various fonts and colors or simply use "random." Obviously, "wondersays" can be embedded on blogs and other HTML-code friendly sites.

Wiffiti

Wiffiti: "publishes real time messages to screens in thousands of locations from jumbotrons to jukeboxes, bars to bowling alleys and cafes to colleges. You can interact with Wiffiti from your mobile phone or the web."



If you want to share what you've been reading, following the directions at the top of the Wiffiti. (If you have a limited number of texts/month, use them responsibly.) Also, please keep your responses school appropriate!

Teachers, here are some ideas for use Wiffiti in the classroom:

• brainstorming
• receive answers to homework questions
• receive answers to in-class questions
• field trip or museum visit observations
• create sentences in foreign languages classes using target vocabulary or grammatical structure
• Imagine the possibilities!

Here is a nice disclaimer about cell phone use that I found on the JoeWoodOnline blog:

"I believe students can use cell phones as a learning tool. Think of a teacher you know who hates cell phones. If you post inappropriate or off-topic messages, you will be proving that person right and me wrong...and your phones will be disappearing forever in your pockets."

Waiting on Wednesday

Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by the Breaking the Spine blog, that spotlights upcoming releases that are eagerly anticipating.

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

The Dark and Hollow Places

by Carrie Ryan

Publication Date: March 22, 2011

From Amazon.com:

"Annah knows she has a twin sister, but she forgot her long ago. Back when they went to play in the Forest of Hands and Teeth, she and Elias lost her, and after that there was no going back to the village.
Life's been hard, but Elias has taken care of her, and living in the Dark City can help one to forget the horror of the Unconsecrated—if you try hard enough.
But when Elias disappears, Annah's world crumbles. To her, life isn't worth much more than the walking dead who roam the wasted world she lives in. It's not until she meets Catcher that she cares to start living again.
Yet Catcher has secrets. Dark, terrifying secrets that link him to a past she's longed to forget and to a future too deadly to consider.
Annah must decide: Can she continue to live a world covered in the blood of the living?
Or is death the answer to all her problems?"

What book are you waiting for?