Educational Information Sources Online

I've designed two new blogs, as companions to my Web Tools Workshop and my Educational Uses of Weblogs Workshop. Here they are:

Web Tools

Presentation Blog 

CLUSTY is the newest search engine idea, that goes beyond meta-searching (such as Dogpile, which offers results from multiple search engines in one query). The idea is to group your search results into clusters that are connected and in a heirarchal format. Try it. Very interesting. You can see your FAQs answered here.

I found this site, somehow, I can't remember now how I came across it. Oh, someone linked to my other site via this and I saw it in my stats. It's a search engine for grabbing archived (cached?) website information. Kind of a neat concept. Still experimenting with the Internet Archive WaybackMachine. Cool name in any case. I think it would be useful if you have a date or dates you viewed info but can't remember the URLs, etc.

Here's a great tool that I happened across today. If you're interested in doing podcasts or making your own (or editing) sound files for presentations, among other things, the Audacity Free Audio Sound Editor is perfect. It's a cross-platform application that is cost free as well as being open source. I've already downloaded it and it's very userfriendly and working great already. I've used at least three other costly programs that never worked correctly, didn't translate well to other platforms, and cost money that ended up being wasted. This is a great program. Try it :)

Popurls is a site that compiles headlines and "buzz" from numerous feeds across the web. It includes news, blog posts, photos, video, and more. The look of the page can be customized for easier reading (larger font and white background) by clicking on the top right hand buttons on the page. Lots going on here, but can be useful if you need the latest rumblings on the net.

Here is the list of blogging resources from the presentation:
Ways To Use Blogs In Education

Info On Blogging
Weblogs Compendium- Blog Hosting Resources

Weblogs In Education Article NITLE Newsletter

Examples of School Library Blogs
Berkeley High School Library Blogs - posting book reviews

Mabry Middle School Library Blog - posting library announcements

Bibliotalk Book Review

The Polar Bear's Classroom Online

EBSCO publishing company (one of the database companies in NOVEL) has free tools for librarians.

There are tools to assist in marketing which include printable flyers, bookmarks, posters, etc. as well as promotional tool kits for special events (check out the library scavenger hunt or the Reading Rave site to encourage teen reading).

You may also want to look at their success tools. For teachers there are lesson plans using EBSCO Host resources (again, part of NOVEL) and student resources on bibliographic citation and note-taking.

I've decided to start starring sites I think are extra useful. So now when you see the stars, it's a must see. 

A great bookmark site for those of you in multiple places is del.icio.us

You can add it to your toolbar and also post to it from your toolbar (you have to install it there but it is very easy to do--instructions on the site).

You organize your sites by adding tags, yours or ones that are suggested for you (very nice) which also link to other people's favorite sites, so you can browse the favorites of everyone on the site. You can also search the site for other people's favorites. For each bookmark you can add notes and there is a date that it was added (so when you look up a certain category, they are listed with most recent first).

I have a job category and I add the date the application is due and other interesting info about each job in the notes section and it is really helping in keeping track of my submissions. When I submit something, I add that to the notes. Very useful site. Try it.  

Over the summer I was lucky enough to be selected as a fellow for the Western New York Writing Project Summer Institute. It was a great experience, both for me as a teacher and as a creative writer. During the course of the project, fellows were required to develop and present a 90 minute teaching demonstration that incorporated writing. I developed one that included blogging, of course. Most of my presentation revolved around a group blog idea, and I utilized a blog I created just for the demonstration, as my mode of presentation. You can see the blog I used here. The description of the lesson is there as well as comments on the presentation from participants. There are also numerous links on the sidebar to other educational blogs and resources for persuasive writing (which my lesson centered on).

This site has a wealth of links to library and education-related weblogs. I'll be adding this to the sidebar at some point. This blog is also mentioned on her page.