pafa.net

I have to admit, I haven’t been keeping up on search tools for kids. So when a colleague popped GoGooligans into my del.icio.us account I thought I’d take a look.

The first thing that I noticed was a note saying they were keeping track of all my searches and matching it to my IP address. Supposed to scare our kids into behaving? I don’t know, it probably would have worked on me as a 5 year old, (more…)

Top Tools for Learning is an invaluable list of 100 learning tools compiled from the contributions of over 150 educators who each submitted their top 10 tools for learning. The top tools include del.icio.us, Firefox, Google Reader, Skype, Wordpress and Audacity. From the list, click on the names of the tools for useful comments from the contributors.

While you’re at this site, be sure to check out 25 Tools: A Free Toolset for Learning 2008, which includes a page of learning activities for each tool.

As if that wasn’t enough good stuff, there’s also the Directory of Learning Tools with information on more than 2,000 tools organized into 40+ categories.

All of these are from Jane Hart who blogs at: Jane’s E-Learning Pick of the Day.

Flip Video has committed to giving away 1 million Flip Video cams to qualified non-profits to help them tell their stories. Check their guidelines to see if your library or organization qualifies.

Pure Digital Technologies announced the Flip Video Spotlight program in September 2007 at the annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative. We imagine the impact that video would make if every nonprofit organization had a camcorder to tell the world about problems that need to be solved, opportunities that need to be seized, abuses that need to be corrected, and people who need to be extolled.

The Program will distribute Flip Video Ultra camcorders. These are easy-to-use, high-quality devices with on-board software to enable editing, organizing, and video publishing through AOL, YouTube, MySpace, and other popular video sharing sites.

Those of you who teach workshops will understand this. I love teaching, I love seeing all the projects that get started in classes and all the ideas that get shared, but I miss not seeing what comes of the learning and the ideas. I try to keep track of what is started in class, but often those projects are ’sandboxes’ and the real outcomes are elsewhere. I really appreciate it when someone contacts me and says “look at we’re doing!” So if you’re out there and have something you’re proud of, please let me know, so I can be proud of you too!

Here are a few projects that I have been following:

• Conan the Librarian’s Weblog - Carol Ansel started this blog for her library at the Pine Point School in Stonington CT. She got most of it running during our workshop and even went right home and did more work on it! When a school administrator saw it, he was inspired to try blogging too. After a recent podcasting workshop, Carol followed right up and has added some great booktalks. Another thing I love about this blog, she chronicles the challenges she has trying things out. We all know it’s not always smooth sailing adding new features, but she gets there in the end and tells us what did and didn’t work in the process!
• 1Person - Vicky Chase is “One person trying to make a difference in the world. One person hoping to volunteer with the Peace Corps.” Ok, this one didn’t really start in one of my classes, but Vicky did work on it during a workshop. And I’ll never forget the goosebumps of excitement I got when I looked over her shoulder and realized what she was blogging about. She leaves for Ghana soon and will be teaching technology. When I see how she has used the Internet to connect with others in the Peace Corps and to keep her family and friends in the loop, well, I get those goosebumps all over again. I’ll never be able to be a Peace Corps volunteer, but I’m looking forward to following Vicky’s amazing adventure.
• Al’s List of Books to Read When You Don’t Want To Reas - Suggestions for Picky Reader Kids - Al is 9 years old. Al is a self professed picky reader. Al’s mom saw an opportunity! She’d been blogging herself and suggested he share his pickiest picks with other kids through his own blog. Al is exercising his reading, thinking and writing skills. But shhh… don’t tell Al that! He just thinks it’s pretty cool to have his own voice being read by others. Al’s mom is one of an amazing group of school librarians that I’ve had the privilege to work with over the last few years. I’m grateful for all they’ve taught me about educating our children.

How’d I forget flickrCC in the last post? This is another terrific flickr search tool that just searches for Creative Commons licensed flickr photos and has some really handy editing features.

• Search for a keyword and you get a nice mosaic of thumbnails from flickr.
• Pick the one you want and you can select which size you want view. (Larger images tend to bleed off to the right on smaller monitors.)
• My favorite feature is “in house” editing. This gives you a screen where you can add credits to the picture, additional text, a border and more.
• When you’re all done, right click and save to your hard drive or copy and pop it right into your presentation software.

(reminded of this via HeyJude)

Do you use flickr to find photos for presentations, reports and projects? It’s truly a treasure trove of photos, images and screenshots.

You can search for images of types of objects (apples, sailboats, panda bears) or specific places (Mt. Everest, Iguazu Falls) and even photos that evoke a certain emotion or concept (cheerful, speak no evil).

And by using flickr’s advanced searching option and limiting to Creative Commons licensed photos, you’ll find images that you can use without copyright worries.

But if you use flickr for this sort of search often, you’ll soon get tired of plowing through tons of images and downloading photos one by one. This is where some 3rd party tools come in handy.

• flickrstorm - Enter search terms to retrieve photos matching that term. In addition, flickrstorm retrieves a set of related photos as well. Best of all, you can save individual photos to a “photo tray” and download them all to your computer at one go. This is a great time saver. (via Librarian in Black)
• PicLens - This handy browser add-on lets you fly through a set of photos and zoom in on the one’s that look interesting. You’ll still need to select each photo individually for download, but you can preview hundreds of photos in a flash. Works with YouTube, Picasa, Photobucket and other image rich web sites. (via TheShiftedLibrarian)