Game changer

It isn't about the device. I am lucky enough to have both a Kindle and an iPad. They are synched which makes digital reading easy and a joy. Truth be told though, I was a little frustrated. The iPad still felt more like a consumption device.


At the MassCUE Conference last week I went to a session on the iPad. I knew it was possible to get free ePub books for the iPad, but I still wasn't sold on its role in schools. I walked out of the session room a convert. 


Why? Because of ePub.  After a 1 hour session I was able to convert my conference notes into an ebook and by synching with my laptop iTunes account, download a beautiful ebook rich with links and embedded video. It was easy, intuitive and fast.


Think of the ramifications! Curriculum that is currently paper based can be copy/pasted into an ebook and pushed out through a district network as an alternate textbook. Teachers can collaborate and keep materials updated with all the ease of simple word processing.


The iPad, or whatever the digital reading device turns out to be, is a pipeline for delivering teacher created content to students. Content that has text to speech and other accessibility features built right into the format.


What a great way to showcase student work. This has fascinating implications for student publishing. Our student literary magazine could be published this way, and expanded to include rich media resources. These are dynamic skills for Humanities students.


This is something I can champion, promote, and support through professional development. We are nowhere near ready for an initiative like this, but seeing what is possible will help us prepare for this future, which isn't too far off.


At this stage in the game you need to use Pages, which is a Mac word processing platform. Things are evolving so quickly that very soon it won't matter if you are Mac or Windows based. The important thing is talking about it and getting tech directors, administrators and teachers to see the potential. Laying the groundwork for rolling out the capacity for digital publishing in the next couple if years is important work, and has jumped to the top of my planning.


ePub Best Practices





























Day 6 NaNoWriMo
(Not writing a novel. Using this as a prompt to blog daily for a month.)


Photo Credit:
Flickr Creative Commons
eBook Readers Galore

By librarymanMichael Porter

BLC

The BLC 2010 Conference starts tomorrow, and I am raring to go!  Passionate teachers gathering to discuss/share/collaborate/plan to deliver a cutting edge, student-centered education for their students; it is an electric environment that charges me for the entire year. I will be part of a team of 20  K-12 educators attending from our schools, and am deeply grateful to work for a district that supports teachers in attending learning opportunities like this.

Usually conference going entails my laptop and a mad scramble for a seat by the LCD projector. Where there is a projector there is electricity, and there will also be people digging around under the table cloth looking for an outlet. I tend to live blog my notes, inserting links as I go, and then posting, errors and all. This really works for me, keeps me hyper-engaged in the speaker, and captures all the resources highlighted during the session. My conference posts support me all year as I cycle back for ideas and clarification from the conference.

This year I'll be bringing my iPad, and am a little nervous. Embedding links on the fly might be a little tougher. As much as I have explored the iPad, this might require me to do more in the way of post-production editing for posts. This will be akin to jumping off the dock.

Oddly, my trusty laptop died yesterday. I can't count the conferences, meetings, countries and digital adventures we went through together. It was actually tough to say goodbye. The white palm plate was grey and cracked. The keys as well. But the toolbar, bookmarks and Firefox extensions were perfection. I spent today with my new, pristine, shiny white laptop, rebuilding, reloading.  I switched from Firefox to Google Chrome. The changes have me a little less sure-footed, but that is OK. It was time to shake things up a little.

Feeling good, and ready to learn. Can't ask for more than that!

BLC Conference | November Learning

Phot credit:
Flickr Creative Commons
Cannonball!
Uploaded on July 20, 2007
by luna.nik

iNTEGRATION, baby!

Put an "i" in front of it and there I am, sprinting to our Mac Store. (That is me with the red umbrella - naw, it isn't.)  It is the only time I get exercise.


i need an intervention (get it?). There is, however, method to my, ummm, madness.

As I play with my MacBook, iPhone4, iPad and Kindle, and also juggle my stack of summer reading books and professional journals, the real point of it all is trying to understand how it functions together. I am looking for perfect integration across devices (digital and analog) to mainstream my learning needs, my teaching needs, and my professional needs. Tech lust aside, it is about efficiency.

My RSS feed was particularly abundant today, and among the treasures was Top Ten iPad Apps for Librarians | Information Tyrannosaur.  Please, open a new tab and check it out. When you finish come back here. I'll wait....

Good stuff, right? I already had a number of the suggested (excellent) apps and checked out all the others. After playing around with DropBox (free) I added it to all my devices. I'm going to evaluate and compare it to GoogleDocs, Diigo and Evernote. Finding the most efficient, web-based integration tool is, to my mind, the Holy Grail for school librarians right now.

Observations:

• iPad - I can't edit docs easily. Great reading functionality, but I keep tap, tap, tapping at the screen waiting for the keyboard to pop up. It will come with time and updates, but I really need it and want it now.
• iPhone4 - This is my first iPhone, and I got it because my husband was appalled that I wanted a new digital camera. He said ours was fine and I replied, in dulcet tones "NO IT ISN'T!!!!" Snakes may have shot out of my head. He responded with specs for the new iPhone camera and...he had a point! I lovelovelove the iPhone camera because of the amazing integration. 
• iMovie - This $4.99 app is flat out amazing. I tested it out on the 4th of July, which is epic in Boston. Editing was intuitive and painless, but moving it off the camera was frustrating. I videoed my nephew and wasn't comfortable uploading to YouTube, and the email options had size restrictions. I need to play some more to figure this piece out. Uploading to DropBox or Vimeo would be perfect, but either the functionality - or me - just aren't there yet.
• I'd also love to know if it is possible to upload photos and video directly to my blog or other web-based platform. Again, I have to figure this out.
• By the way, the-most-patient-man-in-the-world also found me an iPhone case that has a little pocket big enough for a drivers license and a credit card. Really and truly I grab my phone and walk out the door. Hopefully the next iteration will have a side pouch for Chapstick. Then the world will be perfect.
• Note of interest - my previous phone was a little brick we got on eBay. It was a phone with texting, and that was it, and that was fine. When we got it the texting was pre-set to Portugese because it came from Brazil. The first time I texted I thought I had had a stroke and lost the language section of my brain. But I digress...
• Kindle - Really great functionality for sharing across devices, if you are willing to play with the settings. However the proprietorship will ultimately prove to be too restrictive. Ergonimically I just love reading on the Kindle.

At the end of the day (epically rainy in the Boston area today) what I am looking for is a triangulation of functionality. Our students and teachers need web-based platforms that will function irrespective of device. They need a portable device that will synch accounts while simultaneously allow for collaboration and editing on the live web.

We are getting there, and devices and platforms are evolving by the minute. Playing, testing, reading about it all is more fun than I ever imagined.

I'm so glad it rained today! I stayed in and played.

Photo credit:
(Essdras M Suarez/ Globe Staff)

Laugh it up, New Yorker

I know you have to power down your Kindle along with other electronic devices during take off and landing. You know what? I don't care! 

During a recent trip to Japan (chaperone for the Concert Band - more on that later) I packed as lightly as possible for the 10 day trip, but had a massive suitcase stuffed with technology to record, blog, video, and digitally capture the whole shebang.

Perhaps the most crucial bit of tech I brought along was the Kindle in my carry on. I had it loaded, and in the course of the flights, bus trips, jet lag induced insomnia and down time in rehearsal halls, I made my way through old classics by Edith Wharton, Henry James, and even Shogun by James Clavell.  It would have been physically impossible to lug that many books. So make fun of us Kindle readers all you want, New Yorker. Me? I'm just looking for a place to plug in my charger.

From the New Yorker:
"In preparation for landing, please turn off your books."