Library Links

"Content that might be of interest to Teacher-Librarians..."


3.2.12

Spanish Resources for High school

Some online magazines for Spanish Instruction

El Gancho Magazine

Ahora Magazine (EBSCO) Scholastic
Grades 6–12 -Spanish Level 2

Qué Tal (EBSCO) Scholastic
Grades 6–12 - Spanish Level 1

Alma (magazine)
http://www.almamagazine.com/ediciones-anteriores
Click on covers to read digital version of this magazine.

People en Espanol
Website, not digital version of magazine

Toon Books, in Spanish

Tribuna Hispana
http://www.tribunahispanausa.com

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Spanish Magazine - El Gancho

Online and PDF magazine for Spanish Learners

Articles, videos, games, all in Spanish. While the target is hispanophone youth, it could be used with Spanish learners.

"ELGANCHO.es es el único periódico online infantil actualizado semanalmente y en el que se establece una comunicación directa con el público infantil mediante:- Encuestas mensuales.- Concursos promocionales. - Newsletters mensuales."

Archive of previous issues (Viewable in Flash - pages can be printed)



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Primary - game, clips, animations in French and ENglish

NFB Kids - ONF Jeunesse

The National film Board of Canada presents NFB kids, a safe place created for kids where they can play free games and learn with different pedagogical activities. Some good activities for vocabulary work at Primary in French and English.


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Web Evaluation Workshop for Teachers

WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO EVALUATE WEB PAGES?

"Because.... there is no one else doing it for you anymore.  Once you leave the land of books, you're not in Kansas anymore.  The web has no editors and fact checkers.  That is your job.  Much scarier - it's now your students' job too.

Because there are lots of web writers who are out to fool you and your students."

Some links, ideas and webforms to use...

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Watching films online

A dozen movie sites to explore

Here's a list of destinations for watching films online. All sites in the following list are free; only one requires you become a member.

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Making music for your animation

Tips from 2011 edition of Get Animated!

Quick tips for making music for animation films prepared by composer Luigi Allemano - his work has appeared in "Oscar-nominated animation films, television series, Juno-Award winning commercial recordings, jingles and film soundtracks."

The presentation is from a workshop Allemano gave during the 2011 edition of Get Animated!, NFB's yearly animation bash.

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2.2.12

Infotopia Newsletter and websavvy movie

Infotopia - A student friendly custom google search
A google custom search engine accessing only websites previously selected by librarians, teachers, and library and educational consortia. Infotopia was created by, and is maintained by Dr. Michael Bell, former chair of the Texas Association of School Librarians.

February Newsletter

It's a Jungle Out There (evaluating websites)

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Classic Literature VideoBooks

CCProse Channel
The CCProse channel on Youtube has many Classic Literature VideoBooks with synchronized text, interactive transcript, and closed captions in multiple languages. (Audio courtesy of Librivox.)
Video segments begin with a short ad that you can skip after about 3 seconds.


Explore these others [...playlists]
  • Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
  • Anne of Green Gables
  • Around the World in 80 Days
  • Jane Eyre
  • Moby Dick
  • Sense and Sensibility
  • Tess of the d'Urbervilles
  • The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
  • The Call of the Wild
  • The Jungle Book
  • The Metamorphosis
  • The Picture of Dorian Gray
  • The Red Badge of Courage
  • The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
  • Wuthering Heights


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iPad apps according to Bloom's Revised Taxonomy.

Bloomin' iPad by Kathy Schrock

Links to iPad applications that target the various levels of Bloom's Revised Taxonomy.

Kathy writes: "I only included free apps that were "content-neutral" to make them usable across the curriculum. I also tried to include apps for the iPad only, but a few iPhone apps may have snuck in!"

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Book Trailers and Author interviews

Scholastic Videos, Booktalks, Interviews and more.

Explore this site to see a wealth of video clips that you can use with students in the library or as a lit circle teaser in the classroom. Categories include: Featured Videos, Author Interviews, Exploring Books, Scholastic News, and Professional Development.

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1.2.12

View sites in a "Magazine" format

Surfboard = Flippable content viewing

Surfboard enables web-surfers to view content in a flippable, "human" format that's optimized for the iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch and even the desktop. Paste in the URL of the site you want to visit to see the results.

Here's an example:

(If you want your own website to appear in this format, this link explains how. )

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Sources of Usable Images

Looking for images to use in class?


These images (for the most part) allow reuse and the creation of derivative works, but may need to be credited. (ie in a bibliography)

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Another great web photo editor

Fotoflexer

Very slick web-based interface. Easy to use, many great effects.

FotoFlexer touts itself as "the world's most advanced online digital photo editor." On its site it offers "advanced effects previously only available to professionals using expensive software."

FotoFlexer was founded by Arbor Labs, a team of graduate students and alumni from the Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology, University of California at Berkeley (and just one MIT/Stanford alum too).

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LunaPic Online Photo Editor -

Retouch, colourize, add effects, and more

This web-based photo editor is simple to use, and very powerful. Upload pics and apply all kinds of effects - turn photos into paintings, pencil drawings, charcoal sketches etc. Perfect for creating original illustrations for student stories or graphic novels. (Completed photos can be wasily imported into ComicLife on the Mac or Composer on the iPad.)

Use lunapic with iOS devices. The "Picup" iPhone/iPad app (free) allows you to upload camera roll pics to imgur.com, which gives you a URL that lunapic can use to import and edit. Save images back to your camera roll for use with other apps.

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31.1.12

Canadian Culture Videos Clips

Canadian Tourism Videos
View clips on the website - see a Google map of each setting.

iTunes Videos on parts of Canada (100)
(download to PC or iPad to show to class.)

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The iPad is a Learning Studio.

A slide show of ideas and apps for all subject areas:

"It's collaborative, compact and connects students to our "flat world". It is also a different approach to computing and learning. Each discipline can set up their own Learning Labs by folderizing Apps and sites.  Explore and expand on some of the ideas that follow..."

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Reading Power - resources

Black Line Worksheets

For classroom use only. Reproducibles are meant to be used with the Reading Power program and are grouped under the following categories: (each section has 8-9 handouts)

  • Connect
  • Question
  • Visualize
  • Infer
  • Transform
  • Zoom In
  • Lit Circles
  • Nonfiction Thinking Circles
Click below for RP suggested booklists

Preview "Reading Power: Teaching Students to Think While They Read"
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Web based Screen Sharing - free and no registration required

QuickScreenShare.com (thanks RG)

This must be the simplest way to share screens with anybody:

  • No registration required and completely free.
  • Nothing to install for sharer or sharee.
  • Works on Windows, Mac, and Linux.
  • Lets you remotely control mouse and keyboard!
Watch the demo video here:

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Books as design - Library Wallpaper

Decorate with a "book look"

Everyone loves a wall of books, so it's no surprise that book wallpapers are a decorating classic. There's a style for every room.

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Want to make ePubs on a Mac?

How to Create ePub Books from Word for Mac?
First of all, what is an ePub? This is the format preferred by many ebook readers, including the Nook, Kobo, and Sony, and it allows the reader to resize the font for more comfortable reading.  The Apple iBooks app that runs on iPhone, iPod touch and iPad also reads ePub.

IPad owners can use "DemiBooks Composer" to create sophisticated ePubs right on the device, but the options are different for a laptop or desktop machines. While the easiest and "feature-fullest" answer is to use Pages, many school labs only have the Office suite installed. In that case, Word + Calibre can provide a frills-free solution. Read on for the details. (Calibre is free, cross-platform program (Win, Mac , and Linux clients)

Step 1. Create your story in Word. Use a larger font size (ie 24) to keep pages from being too wordy. Insert pictures (ie Creative Commons images, or artwork your students have created) after or before blocks of text. NB: Don't allow the text to wrap around the image or this will cause formatting problems in your ePub. You can force new pages by inserting a page break, but do this sparingly.

Step 2. Save the Word document as an HTML file - ie. a webpage. (This will also create a folder with all the image files from your original Word document. If you are going to copy the html file to convert it on another machine, take a copy of the image folder as well.

Step 2. Run Calibre and import the HTML file created in Step 2 into Calibre (simply drag the HTML file into the Calibre open window. Calibre knows enough to find the images on its own - as long as the folder is in the same place as the source HTML file.)

Step 3. After importing, edit the Metadata on your book. (The blue circle icon with the "i") Here you can choose a cover image, input the actual title, author name and any comments you want to see associated with your ePub file.

Step 4. Select the "Convert Books" icon (a brown book cover with two arrows.) and choose ePub as the output format. There are a number of controls to tweak the output. Explore these if you are not happy with the final product.

Step 5. The conversion may take few moments then the newly converted ePub book will be placed into the folder that you setup when you first opened the program. (There is a "path" link that will show you the location of the ePub if you need it.)

Step 6. Read and share your creation! Use Adobe Digital Editions or Calibre itself on the Mac to view, or upload, link or email the ePub and view it on your eReader Device (kobo, iPad, iPod, etc.) Welcome to the world of publishing!



Media Literacy newsletter

Activities and Resources for Media Education

Each issue of the Consortium for Media Literacy newsletter offers Research Highlights, Resources withTeaching Tips, CML News, and MediaLit Moments for teachers, parents, administrators and policy makers. (MediaLit Moments are downloable classroom activities that provide teachable 'AHA' moments to illustrate one of the Five Key Questions for media literacy.)  

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30.1.12

Brainstorming techniques for student writing

Here is a list of 10 brainstorming techniques you can use to jump start student writing.

1. Change the Time. Reimagine your story in a different time period? 10 years ago? 100 years ago? 1,000 years ago? How about in the future? 10 years later? 100 years later? 1,000 years later? What would be the same, what would be different?

2. Change the Place: What if you were re-writing this story in a different place? Different country? Different geographic region? Different universe? How would you handle it?

3. Change an Attribute: How would the story change if the main characters were a different gender? Age? Race? Intellect? Height? Weight? Nationality?

4. Change a Parameter: What can you change?
#1: Genre: make the romance into a detective story.
#2: Length: Why must it be a novel? Can it be a short story? A series of books? Graphic Novel?
#3: Medium: Why must be it in a book format? Can it be an ebook? Mp3? Video?

5. Use a Big Name: What if you were to insert an iconic figure of the past? Albert Einstein? Marie Curie? Mother Theresa? Princess Diana? Julius Cesar? How about the present? Barack Obama? Steve Jobs? Bill Gates? Queen Elizabeth? Steven Spielberg? Etc?

6. Superpowers: What if a character suddenly has superpowers? Like Superman? or Spiderman? or Wonderwoman? or the X-Men? The Hulk? One of the Fantastic Four?

7. Copycat: Are there any commonalities from another story that you can apply to your idea? An updated "Great Expectations?" A reworked Cinderella?

8. Exaggeration. Exaggerate some aspect of your scenario and see how you will deal with it now. Enlarge it: What if it is 10 times its current size? 100 times? Shrink it: What if it is 1/10 its current size? 1/100?

9. Get Random Input. Get a random stimuli and try to see how you can fit it into your situation. Get a random word/image from a dictionary/ webpage/ book/ magazine/ newspaper/ TV/ etc., a random object from your house/ classroom/ neighborhood/ etc. and so on.

10. Just Write: Write an opening paragraph of 101 words. Go wild and write whatever you can think of without restricting yourself. Do not stop until you have at least 101.


Creating Graphic Novels | Connect!

An inquiry project in graphic novel format!

"In this inquiry project students are asked to take on the role of a writer who has been commissioned to take a short story/novella and put it into graphic comic form. As part of this process, they must take on a perspective different from the one the novel is in (first person, limited omniscient, omniscient) and then choose ten central moments in the narrative structure of the story to represent within their graphic novel."

All steps and downloadables are provided in this googledoc: [LINK]

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An interactive on-line student art literary mag - TAG

Tag Magazine : showcasing writing and creativity from K-12

"Tag Magazine is an interactive on-line student art literary magazine showcasing writing and creativity from K-12. Tag's interactive online format engages students, celebrates their creativity and captures a 21st century approach to literacy.  Writing and art can be blogged, downloaded to an e-reader, printed, listened to, or even translated into different languages."

Available online in a digital "emag" format. The latest issue is also viewable via iPod, iPad, iPhone. Tag is published on-line two times annually. View current and archived issues.

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Love Your Library - February Event

Love Your Library Poster for February

The Feb. 14 poster is up on the BCTLA website for downloading and printing. 
  • Read!
  • Visit your library!
  • Thank a teacher-librarian!
  • Donate a book!
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US National Archives

Teaching with primary documents

"Teaching with primary documents encourages a varied learning environment for teachers and students alike.

This section contains reproducible copies of primary documents from the holdings of the National Archives of the United States, teaching activities correlated to the National History Standards and National Standards for Civics and Government, and cross-curricular connections."

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