The Challenge Comes To A Close

Week 4: Levels 3 & 4

These past 4 weeks have motivated me to explore lots of interesting websites I hope to use in the future.  I learned a little about blogging & how to use a few tools.

It has been fun & a great learning experience.

As for Week 4, I have viewed the NJ Talking Book and Braille Center website in the past.  Our library has a designated computer, Outspoken Library,  provided by the center.

http://njsltbbc.org/

Unfortunately due to limited staff  & a very busy schedule, I was unable to attend the meeting today.  I do hope in the future to visit & take a tour.

Thanks, CSS for creating this challenge!

Week 4 - Level 2: Games, Games, Games....

                                             A typical afternoon in the Children's Room.

I scanned the game websites listed in level 2, but would need to spend more time than I have right now to review these sites thoroughly.  Here is my brief review of these sites.

Guys Read provides recommended books for boys and young adults.

The site was very easy to navigate and provided lists by author, subject and age.

I may refer to this site when looking for additional purchases for our collection.

I will be going back to explore this site further.

Project Noah is an website that allows you to locate and document wildlife in your area. The site provides an opportunity to view wildlife around the world also.  I may keep it in mind to pass on to our teachers who visit the library, but it is unlikely that I will be using it.

Acapela.tv had many games available to play if you download adobe flash player.

Since our library computers do not always work well with downloaded games, I prefer recommending game sites that do not need a download before playing.  This may be a fun site for home use, but I wouldn't be promoting it for our library game players.

Talking Pets lets you choose a preset pet, background, message, etc…. to save and send to a friend, just for the fun of it.  You can also upload a picture of your own favorite pet.  I have to admit the guilty pleasure of playing with this site, myself.

I own a dog, can upload her picture, add a talking mouth, create my own message and send the "talking dog" with a spoken message (a few voices to choose from) to a friend.  This is just silly fun, but yes, it is fun.

Pandora was a site I was already familiar with.  It provides the opportunity to type in any artist or song and a personalized radio station will be created for you with similar music. You can then listen to your music on the computer or most mobile devices.  This is a great site & very popular.  I have used it before.

Imbee seems to have many games & activities.  I just skimmed over it, so at this time, I will just say it looked interesting , but I am not sure how easy it is to navigate. I would have to spend more time reviewing it before I would recommend it to our young patrons.

Speekaboos was a good website for children ages 2 - 8 years old.  There is plenty of free stuff including  a few nursery rhymes & stories read aloud.  There are several on line activities and worksheets to print out.  There is a search filter which allows you to locate free books (read aloud) by subject & reader (some famous). Young children may enjoy listening to the stories read aloud on this site.

To fully use this website there is a monthly fee of $4.99 per month or $49.99 per year. 

Meddybemps is a good reinforcement site for young children to practice skills through simple games.  The site provides a parent & teacher guide to locate appropriate activities for the skill desired.  I would recommend this site to parents of young children because it is easy to use, and the activities are simple.

Museum Box appears to be a site that can be used in a classroom setting.  Teachers could create an assignment for students to create a cube containing text & pictures related to a particular subject or person. I can see this being used as a reinforcement activity.

TeacherVision does have a few free items.  The site is visually very busy and almost everything I randomly clicked on had an advertisement attached, or offered me so much more if I only subscribed for $49.95 per year.  There was a free DK clip art section that could be useful , but overall,  did not enjoy clicking around on this site.

Kidopo is a website I have seen in the past. It does have lots of games that are popular with young children through grammar school age. This site is loaded with advertisements, many which are geared for a more mature audience (say PG / PG13 crowd).  I would want to alert parents about the advertisements prior to introducing this site to children.

Week 4 - Level 1... Time To Play Games

Web Challenge 2.0 poster

I'll start by saying that I don't play online games, so my skill level is pretty poor, especially with all the timed games.  Everyday after school, I have a group of young boys who are on the interent computers playing on line games for hours.  We have a one hour time limit before their turn is up and they wait for the next available computer, just to continue playing their games.  With my limited time, I briefly tried one or more games on each of the recommended sites.  There are a few sites I would recommend to either children or their families.

I am familiar with Nick Jr and often recommend this website to parents who are looking for fun and easy games for their children to play.  The games are related to familiar shows from Nickelodeon, and most young children enjoy playing them.

Whyville wanted you to sign up for a free account, but required your email address. I was not comfortable recommending this to my patrons. I would prefer to recommend websites that let you play games without giving any personal information.  I did not sign up to try any of their games.

I like the Prongo.com site.  It offered many educational games with grade levels and activities which could be completed at a child's own speed. This is a website I would recommend to parents who want an interactive educational game to play with their child at the library or at home.

I attempted a few of the games on the Orisinal site.  Each one that I tried involved a timed activity.  Since I am not very good at timed games, I was not loving this site.  The game concepts seemed simple, so if a child has excellent eye hand coordination, this may be fun for them. 

I visited the Star Wars website, and although I am not a Star Wars fan, I could see this being a fun site for those who are.  Some games required the player to download internet tools such as Unity before you could play. There were several games that could be played without installing any prior program on your computer. The graphics were great and there were games for all ages.There was even something for the little ones, an online coloring site consisting of all the Star Wars characters.  

Poptropica offered games & activities for ages 6- 15 years old. There are several games for various ages. Some of the games I tried were Crash down (click on groups of same colored cubes with the goal of removing all the cubes before your time is up.)  For young children, there was Sleigh Shot (shooting Santa through the air on his sleigh) and Candy & Clyde (assist characters in completing various chores). There was Hoops (keeping a tennis racket balanced while avoiding falling balls).  I was not very good at any of these games & didn’t feel compelled to keep trying them.The site also had games played with interactive characters.Characters can be personalized for gender, race & additional features. I did like that feature.  I think this looks like a fun site, but there was way too much to explore in my limited time.  I may want to go back and look at this site again.



Back to the Challenge... Week 3

I have viewed the CSS website in the past, and now reviewed it to locate wikis that have been posted by others. I will try to add a wiki in the near future when I have more time, but I did look into how I can create a book page.    If I was to update a wiki on the CSS site, I would want to create a relevant contribution. If I chose to contribute a book review, I would first need to choose the book I want to present, then add details including bibliographic data, summary and reviews.  Below is the link that I will use when I am ready to create a book page.

http://www.childlit.info/index.php?title=Creating_a_New_Article

BOOK EXPO 2011

For the third year in a row, I had the good fortune to spend one day at Book Expo! Anyone who loves books and their authors will understand this is really a thrill. From the moment I entered the Jacob Javitz Center, I felt that rush pushing me to seek out my favorite authors, and collect as many books as I could. It felt a bit like trick or treating in a very high end neighborhood.  I love meeting people from all over the country while waiting (on very long lines) to get a favorite author to sign my book. One of the first people I saw was Jimmy Fallon. I was too late to receive an autographed copy of his book, but was able to take a quick picture during his book signing.



 Jimmy Fallon at Book Expo

As the day progressed, I was able to have books signed by several authors including Jan Brett, Eoin Colfer and Chuck Palahniuk.  I visited with lots of fun characters, including Olivia, and the Books for Dummies character.

Books for Dummies Character                        Olivia

Chuck Palahniuk was really great. His book signing could have turned into a dangerous situation, since the publishers were not prepared for the throngs of fans wanting an autographed book.  A line was not allowed to form until 15 minutes prior to the signing, and some people had already been circling for about 2 hours.  When the publishers finally allowed a line to form, the people waiting the longest were not necessarily in the beginning of the line. If the fans had been a different population, (say, teamsters), there may have been bloodshed over this poorly planned event.  Lucky for the publishers, "book people" are very kind, and accepted this very unfair situation with tremendous grace! 

Me & Chuck Palahniuk

Overall, it was a great day. I brought back many fantastic books for our library. Some will be added to our collection, and others will be used as summer reading club prizes. I'm hoping Book Expo will be in NYC next year!



Exploring Delicious.com - Week 3

I have signed on to Delicious.com and added World Craft to this website.  World Craft has both the option to make all kinds of crafts yourself, or the option to buy kits.
There are many multicultural craft ideas in this site that can be used along with our summer reading club theme.  I really liked the plant crafts from around the world, including the cactus plant craft.
It is easy to make and is one of many plants found in different parts of the world.  In this post, I included a snap shot of the site I added to Delicious.com and a picture of the cactus craft with directions.

craft

Looking at Listen NJ & Book Trailers

Our library has a link on the home page for Listen NJ.  I have previously downloaded books from this site.  There is a very long wait for most best sellers and new releases. This can be very frustrating for patrons.  Currently, our library is part of the LMXAC system, which does not have enough copies of books to meet the demand of most  patrons. It is not the easiest system to access for the general population, and most patrons will need assistance to initially use this application.  This is definitely the future, but with more user friendly programs, and certainly a shorter wait for those best sellers!

Book trailers are a great way to introduce our young readers (especially reluctant readers) to some really great books.
I added the book trailer for 11 Birthdays by Wendy Maas to this blog. It is a good example of  a popular junior fiction book that would motivate a young patron to check it out.
Children and young adults are always on their computers, or mobile devices (ie: iPhones, iPad Touch...).  If a library blog was designed to present only book trailers of the newest releases and high interest books, this might be something our patrons would consider viewing.  That would be an easy blog to create, and adding book trailers could increase interest in reading.

Youtube video:  11 Birthdays By: Wendy Maas
Check out this book trailer....then read the book!