It is unbelievable what can be found on the web. It really is the "world wide web". I had so much fun exploring WPL, I lost track of time. I especially enjoyed the OLPC (one laptop per child) collection of 1000 eBooks for children. To be able to find illustrated text online by Kate Greenaway, Grimm's fairy tales and Baum's Wizard of Oz books is priceless. I have a number of the Oz books that were originally my dad's. Hard to believe they were written around 1916 - almost 100 years ago! And now I can view them on the web. Will wonders ever cease!?! I still don't think I want to curl up with a good ebook, but I can see their use in academic settings. My 6th graders were writing stories loosely based on existing fairy tales. WPL would be a great site to link to my website for that activity.
LibriVox was also fun. I was able to listen to "The Lost Princess of Oz" - at least the first chapter. I have a number of audio-books in the professional library. My teachers like to use the audio version for some of our core novels. I've also tried to encourage the special ed students to use audio books or download the audio file from iTunes. They just have to make sure they have the full version, not abridged. Apparently, if I download the file from iTunes (paying for it, of course) and share my account, the teachers at my school would be able to play my files in their classroom on their laptops. It's worth a try, I just have to figure out the copyright issues.
One more note regarding delivery of novels. This morning, on NPR, Liane Hansen was speaking with Scott Sigler. They were talking about podcast novels — books delivered first by audio, in serial form. Since I can't figure out how to embed the podcast of their discussion into this blog, follow this link to NPR to hear what they had to say.
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The concept of podcast novels is a great one -- how would you use the idea at your school? Could an ELL student in middle or high school record a chapter book for elementary school students -- over the course of two weeks or months? Would that be one way to increase the interest in reading by younger students while also increasing the reading confidence/fluency of older students?
Lots of ways for the library to drive student success through web 2.0 tools and curriculum connectiones.
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