Top Shelf » tools

Cool updates to Voicethread

Mary Woodard — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 02:07:21 +0000

Voicethread is one of the favorite tools that we introduce in our version of the 23 Things class. Joyce Valenza’s recent post in the Neverending Search blog describes Voicethread’s new relationships with New York Public Library and Flickr Creative Commons that give their users access to over 700,000 digitized images. Read the entire post for more details.

Wolfram|Alpha

Mary Woodard — Thu, 21 May 2009 14:25:33 +0000

The tech world has been buzzing recently about the newest information tool on the block – Wolfram|Alpha.

Named after its creator, Stephen Wolfram, Wolfram|Alpha is not a search engine like Google that helps you locate information. It is a “computational knowledge engine” that “generates output by doing computations from its own internal knowledge base, instead of searching the web and returning links.”

For more information on this amazing tool, read Joyce Valenza’s summary of Wolfram|Alpha’s features or watch Wolfram|Alpha’s creator do a demo.

Play around with Wolfram|Alpha. I think you will find a new tool to add to your information toolkit.

Using Web 2.0 for Professional Development with Kathy Schrock

Mary Woodard — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 19:27:08 +0000

I’m testing a live blogging tool called Cover It Live today with Kathy Schrock’s webinar on web 2.0 and professional development. If you are watching live, you can see the text come up as I type it, kind of like an instant message. If you come upon this post after the fact, click on the Replay button to see the updates from the webinar this afternoon.

Using Web 2.0 for Professional Development with Kathy Schrock

Glogster for educators

Mary Woodard — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 15:55:07 +0000

Right before school started this year, I learned about Glogster from a post on the Neverending Search blog. I visited the site, created an account and in less than an hour had a cool new home page for our Library Policies and Procedures wiki. (It took longer to create the custom images than it did to make the “glog” itself.)

****************************************************************************************************************

According to the web site, Glogster is a way to “mix graphics, photos, videos, music and text” into a poster-style format called a “glog.” Glogs can include links to other web sites and be embedded into any site that allows users to paste in JavaScript code.

Now Glogster has introduced Glogster for Educators and I can see this tool being used for all kinds of student projects. Take a look at these examples of student-created glogs:

What a great web 2.0 way to re-invent the traditional poster project!

Wordle Meets Dewey

Mary Woodard — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 02:34:06 +0000

Dewey poster created with Wordle inspired by the Neverending Search blog.

Print What You Like

Mary Woodard — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 01:47:30 +0000

School librarians everywhere deal with students (and others) who use reams of paper when printing information from the web. Many web sites don’t have a printer-friendly option and a lot of those printouts are taken up by ads, graphics and formatting that the student doesn’t need.

Enter PrintWhatYouLike, a “free web page editor that gives you control over how web pages look when printed” and has the following features:

Edit any public page in your browser – no installation required!
Change page font size and type, remove the background, and remove images
Edit any part of the page by clicking a page element or selecting text
Any selection can be removed, isolated or widened
All changes are undoable
Combine multiple web pages together – edit and print them as one document!

Looks like a really handy tool for those who want to save money paper, ink, and the environment.
Hat tip to Joyce Valenza for the link.