ZOHO writer goes offline!

As reported on Lifhacker, Zoho Writer is now capable of downloading files to your computer for editing while OFFLINE! Wow! They are making good use of Google Gears in order to make this happen. I'm thinking I really won't buy another word processing software....see below!

She's at it again!

I found another interview with Joyce Valenza. Brian Mull from November Learning interviewed Joyce about libraries. This is a great podcast that once again- inspires the rest of us to "keep it up!". I took notes and will be using information like this when I talk to my principal next! Enjoy the listen!

Listen to the podcast

Our Senior Class

We're starting school today and I'm thinking about teaching mini-lessons on plagiarism, verifying sources and copyright issues (among other things!) I have been thinking about they level of these students I'm working with.

Teacher Librarian Joyce Valenza had a wonderful chart she constructed with recollections on how life has changed for librarians through the years on her blog NeverEnding Search.

Plus, I'm thinking about our seniors that will be graduating this year. I'm hoping that we are preparing them for that "ever changing world" giving them skills that they need to be successful. My perspective was enhanced when I took a look at the Beloit College list regarding the mindset of these kids. Hmmm remember Pogs and Duck Tails?

When you look at the lives of 12-24 year olds, in a study/article that appeared in the Los Angeles Times. Thanks to Michael Casey's Library Crunch- I have some better ideas of what they have been thinking...here are a few quotes from Michael -

• IM use is almost equal to email use in the 12-17 age group.
• "Social networking websites such as MySpace.com are very popular...just under half of girls and 43% of boys reported visiting such sites, joined by 56% of young women and 41% of men. The older adults were less likely to spend time on social sites -- 66% of men over 21 said they do not visit such sites, along with 52% of women."
• "Fifteen percent of girls 12-14 who visit such [social networking] sites said they spend more than four hours a day doing so."

Finally: Karl Fisch has a terrific presesntation that he started the year to get his teachers thinking. If you haven't yet seen "Did You Know?," you've GOT to watch it- WOW!

I would love to see what you think! Let me know!

Writely is Back!

I have been waiting a long time to share this. Google bought a collaborative word processing program quite a while ago, and has been working the kinks out. It is called Writely and is a free program which may be quite a hit with educators. The interface is very similar to popular word processing programs, and documents can be saved as HTML, WORD, OpenOffice, or even PDF's! When you save the document to Writely, you can invite others to share (edit) or view the document.

It is nice, because it keeps all previous revisions and you can review any or all of those when you feel like it. It even has RSS so you can set it up on your aggregator to be informed when there are changes! Nice.

Enjoy playing with it. If you want to send a document to someone- try me! I'd love to try.
~pg

Ghosts in the library!

Here is some fun to start your week- looks like ghost of a man and his dog at the 100 year old Phoenixville Library has been getting kind of crabby. According to NBC Channel 10 flying books have been captured on the security tape and they even brought in ghostbuster equipment! Wow!

Enjoy!

Best Practices for Social Software

Michael Stephens has a very nice article with ideas about what social software can do for libraries at ALA TechSource. It is interesting reading, and would make a great discussion piece - especially with our public school buddies. In fact...take it right to your principal before you have that first of the year appointment! Take a look- and you will see what I mean!

New Blogging Browsers

OK, I'm probably the last one to know but posting to your blogs is only one click away from most browsers. By downloading and installing an extension in Firefox you can using a tool called Performancing . When you click on the pencil icon, it allows you to create a blog post and submit it to a variety of blog hosting services out there. Performancing also allows you to post links to your Delicious account, keeps user statistics (hits) and has a limited uploading capability.

Now, on the other hand there is a free web browser called FLOCK.
It is very BLOGGER friendly ...once you download and install it, it allows to you highlight portions of the web that you are
reading, right click and choose a portion of that data to post to your
blog. You can even post pictures on that temporary space and have them upload to your blog.

FLOCK can be associated with online photo editors like FLICKR and social bookmarks like del.icio.us
in dynamic ways. This means that if your friends have FLICKR accounts
and post pictures...they can show up on the masthead of your browser.
You can use Flock as an aggregator too making it easy to subscribe and view your feeds without another application.

By the way, I composed this whole entry while I was in Performancing and then published it to my blog without ever opening it! Check it out!

School Librarians rejoice!

If you haven’t had the opportunity to listen to the most recent podcast #53 Ed Tech Talk - LibraryFest, take the chance. Joyce Valenza was the guest and provides great information for your principals and teachers to listen to. For example if you need to put together a unit on biography, or civil rights or how to form your upper level BLOOMS questions with your staff or kids!

Check out the podcast runs - it runs about 45 minutes and the show notes have tons of excellent links worth checking out! Take some time and listen it or download soon- then think about how you might use the ideas it has in your own work!