Book Lending on Kindle

In case you hadn't heard you can now lend and borrow books on your Kindle. For information on how to do this look here.

Multiple sites have quickly sprung up to connect people who want to lend and borrow Kindle books.


Here are three:

booklending.com

lendink.com

lendle.me

 
Each of these services works basically the same; you submit a request to borrow a book and if someone else on the service has it available for lending you can receive notification. Some of these require that you register (free) as a member in order to lend books, some also require that you put up your books for lending as well.

This should be a great tool for classroom, teachers, and students to have access to more books on the digital devices without having to fork out as much cash!

Happy Reading!

SnagFilms! Thousands of Free-to-Watch Documentaries.

I've heard of this site multiple times and heard that it was great, but I had never spent the time to take a look at it. They have an amazing number of documentary films, past to current on nearly every topic imaginable. I was able to find what looks like every National Geographic movie and all for free! It looks like they currently have over 2000 documentaries and they are adding more all of the time (at least weekly - I get an update about once a week of new SnagFilms being uploaded). There is even a SnagFilms iPad app where you can watch all of the movies. The videos can be found at www.snagfilms.com

Education Buzz Carnival

Education Buzz--Life's a Carnival New Year's Edition

Using Google Forms for Student Surveys and Quizzes/Tests

Google Docs includes an item known as a form. This is basically an online survey builder that

allows for all types of questions; multiple choice, select from a list, free response short, free response long, etc. The responses are collected in an automatically generated and populated spreadsheet as students complete their surveys. They can be easily emailed or shared with students or even posted as a url. There are even ways to give the questions on the iPod touches!

You can learn how to make these simple forms by looking here You can also look here and here for more ideas!

Google for Teachers I & II

Click to launch the full edition in a new window
Publisher Software from YUDU


Click to launch the full edition in a new window
Publisher Software from YUDU

These are two resources that walk you through many possible uses for Google in the classroom including creating a personalized search engine, Google sites, Google Alerts, Google Docs, Google Maps and a few others. Each resource includes step-by-step instructions and ideas for applications to education. Check it out!

Museum Box!

This is going to be something I do with SEEK students in the near future. It looks like a lot of fun. It did take a while to get signed up (10 days). I will let you know how it goes. I registered under RWE, so if you would like to add your name as a teacher so that you can manage your class, try clicking on the teacher tab at the top right of the site. If you can't sign up as a teacher... let me know and I can add you manually.

http://museumbox.e2bn.org

Welcome to Museum Box, This site provides the tools for you to build up an argument or description of an event, person or historical period by placing items in a virtual box. What items, for example, would you put in a box to describe your life; the life of a Victorian Servant or Roman soldier; or to show that slavery was wrong and unnecessary? You can display anything from a text file to a movie. You can also view and comment on the museum boxes submitted by others. More...

Our inspiration

Thomas Clarkson

The project was inspired by the anti-slavery campaigner - Thomas Clarkson, who did exactly as described above.

Thomas Clarkson's Box

He carried around a box of items (ranging from African produce to diagrams of transportation ships) to illustrate his arguments during his campaign.

Create your own
Museum Box

Click START above to begin creating your own Museum Box. You can add text, images, video and sound to the side of the cubes. To save your box you will need to register.

Teachers:

• Lesson guidance and instructions for use are available in the Teachers Area
• You can Register your school here.

Super Book of Web Tools for Education

This is a truly amazing resource. It is a ebook/PDF written by many of the leaders in education technology today. Each author has contributed what they think are the best FREE web resources for elementary, middle and high schools. Each resources includes and overview and description along with suggestions on how it might be used in the classroom. Each resource use the technologies students already know and love (and some that they might not know and love, yet, but we are here to learn, right?)

This resource is so loaded with value that I will add a poll where you can vote for a resource that you would like to hear more about. I will post about the resource and the suggestions for implementation provided by the authors (and any I might be able to come up with).

Please check it out! You can download it free here!