Noodle Tools Update at end of July

Looks like we'll start the new school year with teaching the MLA 7th ed. updates as Noodle Tools will be incorporating those changes at the end of July.

The following updates are scheduled for 7/31 - 8/2/09 (exact date/time TBD):

1. MLA 7th ed. update
2. Chicago/Turabian legal citation forms
3. Notecards update --see the Noodle Tools blog to view dramatic changes in the Notecards feature. Looks pretty slick and more student friendly. I think they will like the outline feature and the ability to "populate" the outline by dragging notecards.

Flashcard Exchange

With over 21 million flashcards, contributed by thousands, organized by tagging, these web-based tool has become a study aid to "absorb information efficiently and permanently".

View this Internet application where you can create, study, print and download flashcards.

Get down with DIRT - Digital Research Tools (DiRT)

This wiki collects information about tools and resources that can facilitate research more efficiently or creatively. It is a directory of tools organized by research activity, as well as reviews of select tools and their usefulness for research.

The end of top-down control of news is changing the nature of politics.

Watch this TED Talk: Clay Shirky: How Social Media Can Make History

Teachers Teaching Teachers

If sunny summer days have you thinking of the seashore and tongue twisters, try saying “Teachers Teaching Teachers” and take a look at the webcast which airs tonight, June 24th at 8pm Central time. High school and college educators will “share examples of their classroom practices to prompt a discussion about audience and writing using digital technology”. Here are more details about the program which is sponsored by the National Writing Project. A companion book, Teaching the New Writing, was just published in May, 2009 and contains more details and stories on how writing may be changing in the 21st century.

New Report on Impact of Climate Change

Of particular interest to next year's Integrated Global Studies School students will be a major report released today: "Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States." It was produced by a consortium of experts from thirteen government science agencies and from several major universities and research institutes.

The press release describes the report as "written in plain language to better inform members of the public and policymakers" ... and as a "science based report [which] is a consensus product spanning two Presidential administrations and [which] transcends political leanings or biases".

Go to the Full Report to see more fact sheets, slide show, and other information on national and regional impacts. Related blog postings include those from the White House and the New York Times.

Gale Widgets: Connect With Your Students

"Gale’s widgets are simple but powerful tools that generate short HTML code to be placed directly into any page on your Web site." See an example at the top of this page.

I look forward to experimenting with Gale Widgets to add to our New Trier Library Facebook page.

I am uncertain whether these will work directly on our library pathfinders with our new CMS400 web software. I will be sure to investigate that as well. Joyce Valenza is using them on her "wiki" pathfinders.

Firefox new feature: Add-on Collections

Add-on Collections: Overview from Justin Scott on Vimeo.

Graph your Twitter Stats

You may want to see your Twitter Stats including

* Tweets per hour
* Tweets per month
* Tweet timeline
* Reply statistics
Click on Twitter Stats to see both bar graphs and word clouds. This service has almost 24,000 twitter followers. It's fun to see who you re-tweet most.

The 2 top folks I re-tweet most are: Mashable (Pete Cashmore) and Joyce Valenza.

David Parry, a professor at the University of Texas at Dallas talks about using Twitter

Bottom line for me is that Twitter as a personal learning network is faster and easier than blog reading or blog posting. Twitter is experiential; you have to use it and use it frequently in order to understand the benefits.