5 Favorite Apps & eReaders

My favorite web 2.0 apps are:


1. Wikis---wikispaces.com is a great site, very user friendly and I believe many students would like to contribute and edit their work for an assignment.

2. Flickr---photosharing at its best. Students could look up photos related to their topic and then discuss why they chose those photos in either.

3. Blogs---you can incorporate so much into blogs---photos, text, videos---it really is the catch-all for many wonderful things plus you can get feedback from your readers.

4. Evernote---I love this tool! It makes the web seem less intimidating and overwhelming. Knowing I can copy, save and tag all of my web searches is so helpful. I still need to check out pageflake but I think either of these tools would be helpful to teach faculty and students.

5. YouTube/TeacherTube----love these sites! So much great content and I like how students/faculty can be the creator with these tools. Having a $100 Flip Video to loan out from the library, groups of students could create some very interesting content to upload and show their classmates. Great for the visual learners.

eReaders

Like most people, I was skeptical when I read and heard about the digital book Kindle. Being a die-hard book fan, I thought I would never even consider purchasing one. However, I have since changed my tune and am now thinking about purchasing one (iPod Touch vs. Kindle? Kindle or iTouch? Hmmmm. Gotta start saving!)

One of my friends in my Book Club has had a Kindle for quite some time (2+ years?). She got it when it first came out and she loves it! I could not meet up with her and play with it this past week nor could I go to B & N and check out their eReader.

However, I did watch the promo video on Amazon and I was quite impressed! I had heard that it is light and I was quite surprised its battery lasted like 5 days. I had thought it was short-lived. The template seems really easy to use and the buttons to push the pages up (or turn the page) look to be quite user friendly and the internal dictionary is a great feature.

I had heard that the special text and lighting technology made reading easy on the eyes and most people claim that it s great. So that for sure is a big factor for me and seems to be OK. Another big thing for me is that I like to write in my books and highlight passages etc. You are now able to annotate on the Kindle so I am now completely sold! :)

I only know one person who owns a Kindle. I went to a library conference recently and one of the presenters said her school just received 3 Kindles I think (maybe even more!) and that the students in her Book Club were downloading the books they liked. I can't imagine being in that position in our library. That would be so cool yet I feel like that would be ions away because of budget cuts and funding issues. However, I can see how the argument should be made to have these readers in schools so students can be familiar with them.

And oh, I loved the newer feature of the text reader---how cool is that?

I am sold on eReaders and it seems like Kindle has set the standard, just like the iPod is the best MP3 player.

***I'm getting better with placing the images! Yeah!