Wednesday Web of the Week: www.storyplace.org

web address: http://www.storyplace.org

Today it is becoming increasingly useful to accomodate Spanish Language resources.  StoryPlace helps do that and it greatly enhances English reading skills as well.  StoryPlace has two portal one in English and one in Spanish.  Both list and review excellent children's books and have games, printable activities and resources for teaching literacy.  Check out the "Cuentas Divertidos" to listen to a story about you!

Tech Tip Tuesday: Get more out of your textbook

In today's digital age there is often a desire to move away from textbooks, but textbook companies are learning that.  If you have a good textbook chances are it has a good website and online resources to back it up.

Check for your textbooks website and learn what resources are available.  Often you can find online videos, audio files, even worksheets, and tests.  Some textbook companies also offer the complete text of their books online and self tests for evaluating understanding.

Another great tip regarding textbooks is to use competing textbooks websites.  Often the book your school purchased will have a competitor that will have some of their materials available online for free.  Reviewing those can be a great help and provide another perspective on topics you are teaching.

UEN hosts the State Core Curriculum and attached to each course is a list of textbooks that have been suggested for use.  Try it out here: http://www.uen.org/core/

Or to learn more about the textbook adoption process watch Faculty Lounge episode all about it.

Tech Tip Tuesday: 21st Century Digital Literature

Nope, not digital literacy, but this will be a lesson in that as well, today we are talking about Digital Literature.  My first device for reading was an eminently portable, inexpensive and 100% recyclable device called: a book.  Now, the problem was that I soon had many of these portable devices, ones that I liked to refer back to and read again.  Sort of like getting together with old friends.



Fast forward 20 some odd years.  I got my first PDA (no, not Public Display of Affection, I am a techie, I didn't even know that meaning until someone told me about it.  I am talking about a Personal Digital Assistant) I had a PalmPilot IIIxe.I tinkered and toyed with getting my books onto this device and found a few things that worked but nowadays there are a vast jungle of options for reading books digitally.

When you go down to the store to buy a new appliance, you never stop to think about whether it will work with your electricity at home.  Why not?  There are different ways electricity can be delivered and if you have traveled out of the United States, you know that plugs aren't the same everywhere in the world.  Why don't we worry?  Because of standardization.  Someone somewhere (or probably a group of someone's in a meeting) decided that one style of plug was going to be required either by law or by consensus.  This is slowly happening with cell phone adapters, among other things.

It however hasn't happened with books.  Why does that matter?  Well, if you are deciding on a device that is dedicated to reading books, or you are decided to buy books that you want to use with multiple devices it's worthwhile to know what you are looking at it.  With books, there are still a bunch of different widely adopted formats of eBooks.  Below are three and where you are most likely to encounter them.

.azw

This is the file format for the Amazon Kindle.  You probably won't ever see it because if you have a Kindle your books are delivered via Cell phone or Wi-Fi and they live on Amazon.com and your device.  But it's good to know it exists.  Also, since Amazon is interested in selling books, the software needed to read the .azw format is widely available on multiple platforms.

.ePub

This is the format of choice for iBooks on the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch.  It is an open format that while a little heavy on resource use, it is still a very good format that is being supported.  The fact that it is the format chosen for the iBooks app means that it will be strong for as log as Apple is strong and supports it.

.prc/.mobi

These two file formats are variations of each other.  The .prc format was created for the Palm™ devices.  MobiPocket is a reader you can still use on many portable devices and the .mobi format is still commonly used.

To learn more you can start with the really great wikipedia article on eBook formats: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_e-book_formats

The Kindle App for iPod Touch and iPhone

I have been very reluctant to take a $359.00 chunk out of my pocket to get a Kindle. despite the fact that I absolutely love the idea of having a whole library in my hands. I have used multiple other eBook formats on both a computer and handheld devices. My first PalmPilot had decent resources for eBooks. My first Windows Mobile with Microsoft's Reader was my favorite for years. Mainly because I was able to have the same books on my mobile device and on my desktop/laptop.

The Kindle was touted as the iPod for readers, and it is undeniably doing well. I simply haven't been able to justify buying another dedicated device. So I was pleasantly surprised a few weeks back when the Kindle App for the iPod Touch and iPhone was launched. I downloaded it immediately but waited until I had finished a couple of paper and ink books before downloading my first book. I am a bit behind the times, but I bought Twilight by Stephanie Meyer.

The app worked very well. As soon as I had purchased it and opened the App on my iPod it downloaded in seconds. I was able to send the book to another device too with no trouble at all. Activating and Deactivating devices is all done on Amazon.com. Books must be purchased there too. That is one place the Kindle Hardware beats out the iPod app. My two biggest challenges with it were:

• Battery Life- When I started reading, I was on a bus with Wi-Fi access, and listening to music. The Kindle App allows these process to continue in the background and Whispersync keeps your book 'synced' while online. But this ate up my battery life. It took me a few days of reading to figure it out, but while sitting at home yesterday, I turned off the music, and shut off the Wi-Fi and read for 4 hours without putting to much of a dent in the battery. Half that time with music and Wi-Fi was enough to completely eat through the battery
• Navigating- Turning pages is about as intuitive as it gets. Easier by some counts than the awkwardly placed buttons on the Kindle Hardware, but I found myself hitting the home button to try and get the navigation tools to open. There was something almost too clean about the reading frame. A simple info button like so many other apps have would have been useful, but I think it would detract from the clean look Amazon was obviously going for.
  

Considering the two faults I had with the App, I realize they are both user issues that just require me to relearn a little. I would definitely give this app two thumbs up.

Good Reads

I have been wanting to blog about this for a bit, but haven't had the time until today. I have used it a bunch and found it to be very useful. It has a social-networking aspect, which some may not like, but it does allow you to view what others have done and there is a section specifically for Librarians. Like many other new Web 2.0 tools it allows you to create a widget that is exportable.

Literacy- Old school???

Jared suggested that I am pretty animated about the literature resources on the web and that I ought to blog about them here. So if you like this I need to thank Jared for the suggestion, if you don't then it's Jared's fault and blame him. But, seriously. There are some really phenomenal web resources for bibliophiles out there. I want to highlight just one. It is multi-media in the way we usually think of it, but it does use multiple mediums. Many books that are no longer covered by copyright, ie: public domain, are now being digitized by multiple entities and in mutliple ways. One of those is Project Gutenburg, named after the famous inventor of the printing press. You can look up literally thousands and thousands of books and read them on your computer or with just a small learning curve and a portable device you can take them with you to read anywhere you go. Visit Project Gutenburg here: http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page