Thing 9: E-books

I purchased 11 Nooks for the library this past Fall.  It took us awhile to get all the kinks worked out, but once we did it was great.  It was truly a collaborative effort with the librarians in our BOCES sharing the many forms they created for their library’s e-book program.  Amy Carpenter, Stillwater HS librarian, created a wiki to store all the forms and other relevant information.  It can be found at: http://ereaderresources.wikispaces.com/.   I also purchased Overdrive Advantage, so that my students would have access to more e-book, then just the general Overdrive collection.

I took a look at Joyce Valenza’s eBook portal and there is a ton of great stuff.  I just sent the link to a kindergarten teacher that is going to have an ipad center next year. 

Post 10: Tools for creating websites, pathfinders, portfolios and more

My school district does use a canned website, but I have been exploring other tools for pathfinders, class projects etc.  I actually feel I have good grip on these types of tools. For my pathfinders/class projects I’ve used wikispaces, basically because it is so simply!  I also like it because when I use a wiki for a class project we have the discussion option that the students can use to communicate with the other students and teachers.  We’ve used the discussion feature for a number of different literary discussions. For my seniors we use Google sites to keep a research log, my ninth graders used Weebly to create business website  for their Greek god,  and my Science and Society class also usesGoogle sites to create academic e-portfolios.

I’ve purchased LibGuides to migrate my website to this summer.  I like the fact you can get permission to use another library’s guide and just tweak it to your needs.  I just need more hours in a day to get it done.

Polly, I hope you are going to keep this Cool Tools Site.  I know I’ll refer back to it for all the great resources, articles, and other “stuff.”