IF ONLY...

I saw a story on the news the other night about Bishop Hartley High School. The school gave PC Tablet laptops to all of their seniors. The school is wireless and their textbooks are already loaded on the laptop. As teachers are lecturing, they can push lecture notes and embedded videos to the students. And students can jot down notes with a stylus right onto the tablet screen. Cool!!

I realize that circumstances are different in PPS, but if only we had the money....

Check out this video!!

http://www.cdeducation.org/temp/bh/onn-tablets.wmv

Create virtual mixtapes with Muxtape.com!

We all did it. I know I did!! We took songs from different albums (and later DVDs) and put them on a cassette tape to listen to on long rides in the car, or better yet, give to friends.

Well now you can create your own virtual mixtapes online and share them with your friends!!

Just create an account, load up and organize your favorite songs. You can send the link to your friends, publish it on your website, it even gives you a RSS feed!!

Here is my muxtape: http://multimedialibrary.muxtape.com/

Adrienne

The Library of Congress Pilot Project on Flickr

A neat thing found by Melissa Lim of Instructional Technology fame!!


Back in June of 2007, we began our first collaboration with a civic institution to facilitate giving people a voice in describing the content of a publicly-held photography collection.
The key goals of this pilot project are to firstly give you a taste of the hidden treasures in the huge Library of Congress collection, and secondly to show how your input of a tag or two can make the collection even richer.
You're invited to help describe photographs in the Library of Congress' collection on Flickr, by adding tags or leaving comments.*

http://flickr.com/commons

Educational Oppourtunites from the Portland Water Bureau

Recently, I was asked if we had a video called "Conserving Portland's Water Supply". We didn't - so I poked around online abit and made contact with Briggy Thomas, the Education Program Manager with the Portland Water Bureau.

Briggy has sent us this video along with some literature, and it will be available for check-out from the Multimedia Library by the second week in January. The Water Bureau offers other educational and classroom resources including Field Trips and Lesson Plans. For more information contact:

Briggy Thomas - Education Program Manager
Phone: 503.823.7407
mylat@water.ci.portland.or.us
http://www.portlandonline.com/water/index.cfm?c=29590

WPA Art Treasures in PPS schools

Interesting article in the Oregonian about WPA murals in some PPS schools that need restoring. It's funny how communication is virtually non-existent in this District! I did not know that all the WPA art in the District had been cataloged back in 2005 - they missed a few pieces that we have here in the Multimedia Library. :)

http://www.oregonlive.com/oregonian/stories/index.ssf?/base/news/1198909512187930.xml&coll=7

Abraham Lincoln exhibit at the Oregon Historical Society

The Oregon Historical Society is proud to present this extraordinary selection of major Lincoln manuscripts and memorabilia from several public and private collections.

The exhibit’s focus is on Lincoln’s humanity, the emancipation of the slaves, and his assassination. Among the many manuscript items to be exhibited are a broadside of the Emancipation Proclamation; items related to his assassination and funeral; an early sum book; The Baltimore Address, one of the few remaining examples of a handwritten speech; hand casts and a face mask; and a letter written by Lincoln declining the territorial governorship of Oregon.

http://www.ohs.org/exhibits/A-House-Divided.cfm

Titles available from the Multimedia Library on Abraham Lincoln:
http://media2.pps.k12.or.us/display/192/wwk770?kw=lincoln&di=BTICK

Academic Skill Builders

I found this link on the "Shifted Librarian" website. It is a website of fun and challening web-based computer games. During the multiplication drag race I had to use my calculator.

"Our educational video games offer an innovative approach to teaching basic academic skills by incorporating features of arcade games and educational practices into fun online games that will motivate, intrigue, and teach your students."

http://www.arcademicskillbuilders.com/

Free media resources from Teaching Tolerance

Tolerance.org is a principal online destination for people interested in dismantling bigotry and creating, in hate's stead, communities that value diversity. Teaching Tolerance's educational kits and subscriptions to its magazine are FREE to: classroom teachers, school librarians, school counselors, school administrators, professors of education, leaders of homeschool networks, youth directors at houses of worship and employees of youth-serving nonprofit organizations.

http://www.tolerance.org/teach/resources/index.jsp

NOVA Judgement Day: Intelligent Design on Trial

The DVD is not for sale until Feb. 2008 - but the video is now available online for viewing!

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/id/program.html

This two-hour program is divided into 12 chapters. Choose any chapter below and select QuickTime or Windows Media Player to begin viewing the video. If you experience difficulty viewing, it may be due to high demand. We regret this and suggest you try back at another time.

Celestia - it's like Google Earth for the Universe!

Thanks to John in Mail Services for sending me this link. It downloads to every OS and it's really cool!!

"Celestia" (http://www.shatters.net/celestia/) is the free space simulation that lets you explore our universe in three dimensions. Celestia runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.

Unlike most planetarium software, Celestia doesn't confine you to the surface of the Earth. You can travel throughout the solar system, to any of over 100,000 stars, or even beyond the galaxy.

All movement in Celestia is seamless; the exponential zoom feature lets you explore space across a huge range of scales, from galaxy clusters down to spacecraft only a few meters across. A 'point-and-goto' interface makes it simple to navigate through the universe to the object you want to visit.

Celestia is expandable. Celestia comes with a large catalog of stars, galaxies, planets, moons, asteroids, comets, and spacecraft. If that's not enough, you can download dozens of easy to install add-ons with more objects.