Flip-It Have a look at the new way of using videos to teach. Create and customise a lesson using any video from YouTube.
Monthly Archives: April 2012
London Olympics 2012 – Websites and resources
Here are a number of key London 2012 Olympic and paralympic websites, collected on Delicious. Have a browse of the other categories too.
Wolfram Alpha have a webpage full of statistics from past Olympic Games.
This blog has useful links to Olympic websites which can be used in the curriculum. (not just for primary schools)
Harry Potter e-book fever
25th April: Daily Telegraph reports that Harry Potter ebook sales top 1m in three days
27th March Guardian article about Pottermore
“Although the titles feature on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, they can only be bought from Pottermore. By selling the books via her own website, Rowling will be able to keep much of the revenue rather than sharing it with the publishers.”
“The first three novels cost £4.99 in ebook form, compared with a cover price of £6.99 for print editions, while the final four are priced at £6.99 in ebook compared with £8.99 in print.”
(Guardian newspaper article by Alison Flood, 27.3.12)
It is worth mentioning that JK Rowling has agreed that the Harry Potter e-books can be loaned through the Overdrive software commonly used in British public libraries.
Happy Shakespeare’s Birthday and Happy World Book Night!
Today is the day Shakespeare was born and died. Here are some interesting videos with more information about the man and his life and work.
World Book is a celebration of reading and books which sees tens of thousands of people giving books within their communities to spread a love of reading on April 23rd. These are the 25 titles selected to be given out.
It is being celebrated in the UK, Ireland, Germany and USA.
American Digital Library promised for 2013
Guardian Article from 5th April 2012
American Digital Public Library
Two million books will be available in an online digital library to rival Google’s collection, according to Professor Robert Darnton, who promised the new database would overcome copyright hurdles by next year.
The British Library is constantly digitising its collections. Vast numbers of resources are available online including sounds, images and newspapers. Many are freely available, others are paid for.
Digital collections
International Dunhuang Project
Orange Prize Shortlist 2012 Announced
The UK’s only annual award for fiction written by women announced the shortlist today.
| Esi Edugyan | Half Blood Blues | Serpent’s Tail | Canadian | 2nd Novel |
| Anne Enright | The Forgotten | Waltz Jonathan Cape | Irish | 5th Novel |
| Georgina Harding | Painter of Silence | Bloomsbury | British | 3rd Novel |
| Madeline Miller | The Song of Achilles | Bloomsbury | American | 1st Novel |
| Cynthia Ozick | Foreign Bodies | Atlantic Books | American | 7th Novel |
| Ann Patchett | State of Wonder | Bloomsbury | American | 6th Novel |
Ann Patchett, won the Orange Prize for Fiction ten years ago for Bel Canto (2002). Bel Canto is a fantastic book – thoroughly recommended read.
Pinterest – Pinboards to promote good books.
Pinterest is a content sharing service that allows members to “pin” images, videos and other objects to their pinboard. A way of grabbing images and websites on themes. It’s also an attractive way to create recommended reading boards.
Here’s a pinboard I created for the Carnegie Children’s Book Award 2012 shortlisted books.
Here are thematic book boards put together by a school librarian in Kent.
Mashable suggests ways teachers can use pinterest to organise the web.
We will be creating more themed book boards in the near future and welcome suggestions. Next one will be film tie-ins.
E-books – the new reading
Here are some interesting articles from The Guardian about how e-books are changing the way we read, how we annotate books and what we read. Self-publishing is on the rise and short books are being written for e-readers – ideal for long haul flights: ebooks-the-new-reading
Includes a fascinating article – “Digital butchery makes a monster of Frankenstein -Mary Shelley’s classic horror story has been dismembered for the age of the app”