I've been thinking about change for quite some time now.  I knew, when I helped write the proposal more than three years ago, that our state's CFF program was going to permanently change the way the way our students learn, the way our teachers teach, and the way I do business.

Heck, that ball was already rolling and rolling fast.

This week it seems like the laptops finally hit the fan.

Both the state library listserve and the CFF listserve are abuzz.  It started when one librarian expressed surprise and dismay that the school's CFF (technology integrati...Read More

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It's a long-tail flea market for booklovers and it might be especially welcome in these especially tight times.

My daughter's boyfriend Jim introduced me to PaperBackSwap.com this morning.  I began to think about how this particular 2.0 social networking tool might change the way I shop for books for me and for my library and for booklovers at large.  The site allows you to trade books with readers across the country, offering more than 2.6 million books, traded by nearly 1700 members, at a rate of about 40,000 books a week.

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I thought it might be fun to hear each others' real voices.  Please join me in exchanging Thanksgiving greetings through a little Thanksgiving VoiceThread.  What are you thankful for?




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Ever tire of the process of group decision making?  Ever been been part of a simple creative project turned into a complicated mess by bureaucracy or well-intentioned committee work? 

My buddy, Ken, shared this video with me on Friday.  It's destined to be a YouTube classic.

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Somehow I lost perspective this week before Thanksgiving.  (Sorry to be just a little personal.)

With two funerals, it's been a tough week.  That stuff was real.

But sometimes I just lose perspective.  Last weekend, when my flight was forced to circle for an hour because tornados threatened the area around Philadelphia International, I arrived home super cranky.  I've been arriving home super cranky after nearly every trip, complaining about every little glitch in my plans.

I am grateful that several friends, aware of my growing travel crankiness and my tendency to take technology for granted, pointed me to Louis CK's Everything's Amazing appearance on the Conan show. 

If you find yourself a little cranky this season, you might this perspective adjustment useful too. 
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With a president-elect who gets the power of YouTube and social networking, with a campaign that demonstrated the power of effective communication and community-building in new landscapes, this is prime time for us to demonstrate the power of those tools for teaching and learning.

Yesterday, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills released its Transition Brief: Policy Recommendations on Preparing Americans for the Global Skills Race.

The 14-page PDF document

offers broad proposals for forging a workforce and creating an education system that will thrive in the 21st century.

It points to three reasons for change:

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(Image of wrap-up from Sara Kelly Johns)

The SLJ Summit (see our Ning) focused us on issues of collection.  I've been trying to pull ideas together and make meaning of many fascinating conversations.  I thought I'd take the temperature of a larger audience with a couple of polls. I'll keep you posted as results come in.

Let me start with one that began at our wrap-up session. The question was what to buy? 

With all the vendors present, and all those amazing new products we were hearing about, many of us were feeling a disconnect.

We are overwhelmed with desire. But our budgets are not ...Read More

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As we continue to redefine reference and authority and what tools to use when, enter Wordia.

I discovered Wordia yesterday through the remarkable Unquiet Library blog.  (Thanks, Buffy!) 

Who and what is Wordia?

Wordia has impressive Web pedigree and a bit of an English accent. 

With partners HarperCollins, the National Literacy Trust, the UK's Open University, and Michael Birc...Read More

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As we continue to redefine reference and authority and what tools to use when, enter Wordia.

I discovered Wordia yesterday through the remarkable Unquiet Library blog.  (Thanks, Buffy!) 

Who and what is Wordia?

Wordia has impressive Web pedigree and a bit of an English accent. 

With partners HarperCollins, the National Literacy Trust, the UK's Open University, and Michael Birch (founder of Bebo), Wordia is a 2.0, democratic-style dictionary built on user-produced videos. Official definitions are c...Read More

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It's been five years since the Edublog Awards first celebrated the best in educational blogging. 

Nominations recently opened for the 2008 awards. These awards regularly point to significant voices in the worlds of K12, academia, and the library universe.  The blogs we discover here are the ones we need to share with our colleagues and add to our own aggregators. 

Please get involved by either nominating or by merely tracking the progress.

Nominations will be open through the month of November and voting begins in the beginning of December. To nominate a blog, the Edublogs team suggests you:

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This post is an announcement.  It is also an important call to action.

Yesterday, I was honored to be included on one of the panels celebrating the release of the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education at the National Constitution Center.  (You may remember my post on the process last spring.)

A little background.
Yesterday's announcement represents the culmination of a year's work, a coordinated effort by the media literacy community facilitated by Peter Jaszi and Patricia Aufderheide of American University and Renee Hobbs of Temple University. Other partners included: the National Association...Read More

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I've been a longtime fan of Animoto. The digital storytelling tool allows you to gather images, add sound, and magically create an MTV-style music video.  

Ever since I discovered it, I've been fooling the tool into accepting text by saving PowerPoint slides as jpgs.  Yesterday, the Animoto folks announced an easier way to go. 

We can add text to our creations--main and subtitles--directly from the program--the way it's done in tv & film!  An insert text menu now appears on the right side of the screen in the image editing mode.

 Animoto shares an example of the new feature:
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