Word-of-the-Day - tweets in all languages

The 11/4/09 issue of American Libraries Direct carried an item from Makeuseof.com that eventually directed me to the Transport.com website and Word of the Day in Spanish. The company offers a lot of language products for sale, but also a handful of free practical tools such as Word-of-the-Day. Spanish word-of-the-day twitter = @SpanishLanguage

School, academic, and public librarians could easily offer this educational tool as a resource for foreign or English language learners (ELL). To gradually learn or strengthen foreign language skills, it makes sense to incorporate everyday tools like Twitter, search engines, RSS feeds and such.

Footnote: Here is a NYT map of ELL titled "New to English". Visuals like this map make a lasting impression. Check it out.

Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2009

Each year since 2004, ECAR (EduCause Center for Applied Research) has surveyed college and university freshmen and sophomores on their use of technology. This is the 13-page key findings of "ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2009". Good number of charts.

Highlights for me include:

• Use of instant messages has declined, while text messaging and social networks have increased. See chart on page 5.
  
• Use of social networking software (SNS) has increased the most by older students. See chart on page 6. Use by students age 30-39 tripled, use by students age 40 and above quadrupled.
  
• Use of course management software (CMS) has increased significantly since 2004. In 2009, about 70.4% of students surveyed were in a class that used course management software (CMS) that quarter; an additional 18.5% have experienced CSM.
  
• Study identified and described 4 types of users of mobile Internet: power users, ocassional users, potential users, and non-users. Potential users (11.8%) indicated they probably would purchase a mobile device within the next 12 months. See page 10. Of note: about 35.4% of students who owned an Internet-capable handheld device said they never use that feature.
  
• Handhelds were used in class by about 32.2% of students for non-course use; 11% for course-related use.
• The study no longer asks about use of e-mail, assuming it is well-entrenched -- yet my college student rarely checks her e-mail and as a result has missed some important deadlines or communications from her college!
  
• Students like the use of technology, but want their academic experience balanced with the human touch. Apparently some professors overuse technology, while others avoid it.
  

The authors provide a proper citation for the longitudinal study:
Citation for this work: Smith, Shannon, Gail Salaway, and Judith Borreson Caruso, with an Introduction by Richard N. Katz. The ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2009 (Research Study, Vol. 6). Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2009, available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar.

25th Estate: this is Where We Live

Here is a video by Aptstudios called "25th Estate: This is Where We Live", created for HarperCollins. "Over a thousand books were used to make the film, which was shot over two weeks in a makeshift studio in North London. Twenty animators worked in shifts to get it made, often sleeping under the set itself." Open it full screen and enjoy.

This Is Where We Live from 4th Estate on Vimeo.

Book Seer - Fun Application for Recommending Books

Santa Barbara's Cold Spring School Librarian Janet Seer alerted me to Book Seer: "You just type in the title and author of a book you (or your students) liked and it will give you suggestions for other titles you might also like." See http://bookseer.com/ It compares recommendations from Amazon.com v.s. LibraryThing. Amazon is huge, but LibraryThing is cool. It also suggests: "Of course, you could go ask your local bookshop or your local library."

Fill in the blanks...
Child! I've just finished reading by . What should I read next?

This application is just one of many cool tools (literary web project) created by Aptstudio.com

Another new, cool application is Enhanced Edications for the Apple iPhone. Here is a promo for the Death of Bunny Munro:

The Death of Bunny Munro - Enhanced Edition Promo from Enhanced Editions on Vimeo.

GoAnimate

Teacher Librarian Marie Slim has been using a bucket full of different attention-getting web 2.0 tools to promote the California School Library Association conference in Ontario this November. See Marie's GoAnimate promo:

GoAnimate.com: CSLA Early Bird Sign-Ups by Oct. 30th by sraslim


Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!

TwitterFeed, RT, and other Twitter Tricks 'n' Tools

Read a free PDF book by Mark O'Neill on "The Complete Guide to Twitter". Learned of a way to promote my blog posts through registering them on Twitterfeed.com. Apparently, it is an effective way of promoting a blog or website, especially to those who rely on their handheld mobile devices rather than RSS feeds. Now to experiment with posting here and on my other blogs and see if they are sent to my twitter account, 4Libraries.

Retweeting a tweet (p.21) apparently is similar to sharing a blog post. Retweets are useful because if lots of other Tweeters retweet something, then a web link or an idea could go viral. Humm. Here are some examples to consider for California school librarians:

• If I tweeted about the California School Library Association's online web 2.0 tutorial Classroom Learning 2.0, and other CSLA members retweeted (RT) about it and mentioned the URL, visitor statistics for the site could jump, bigtime.
  
• If someone tweeted about new legislation or new draft school library standards for California, and school teacher librarians and advocates around the state retweeted (RT), this would raise the visibility and timing of the school library standards.
• If each CSLA member tweeted about each new library advocate or "Best Seller" for strong school libraries, then other CSLA members retweeted (RT) and congratulated or cheered about the newest "Best Seller", that would increase the awareness and significance of strong school libraries and academic achievement -- and potentially increase the number of new "Best Sellers" for this grassroots library advocacy campaign.
• Tweets and retweets would be useful for promoting workshops, conference programs, and all sorts of events -- especially as more of the target audience (i.e., librarians) used or followed Twitter.
  

Google Squared - in Google Labs

Google Labs has a bunch of cool tools to explore. One I just discovered is Google Squared. The idea is that you type in several words of a search or topic like school, library, teacher, books, database, California, CSLA and Google Squared extracts items from the web and puts them into a spreadsheet of sorts, which you can save as a CSV file or Google Spreadsheet.