Anyone who knows me, knows that I LOVE my Kindle (the e-reader from Amazon). At first I was a little worried because I really enjoy physical books, I can't give up my subscription to the newspaper etc. but the Kindle is so light and small, the font so easy to read, it automatically bookmarks your spot, and whenever I get stuck on a metro delay I always have a few books to read.
So I was really excited to see this announcement from Amazon:
"We are excited to announce that a new feature, Kindle Library Lending, will be coming later this year. Kindle customers will be able to borrow Kindle books from over 11,000 public libraries in the United States.
Kindle Library Lending will provide the same unique features customers love about Kindle and Kindle books, including the ability to read on any Kindle or free Kindle app, Whispersync technology that synchronizes your notes, highlights and last page read, real page numbers, and more. After a library book expires, if you ever decide to check it out again or purchase it from Amazon, all of your annotations and bookmarks will be preserved.
We are partnering with OverDrive, the leading provider of digital solutions to libraries, to bring a seamless library borrowing experience to Kindle. We will announce more information on Kindle Library Lending later this year."
Hopefully, this will give libraries enough time to prepare themselves for the onslaught of e-book readers who will want to virtually borrow books!
And Amazon is offering a special deal on the Kindle 3G - if you purchase it between now and May 8th, you will receive a "free" $25 Amazon gift card! Just check the box that says "add a $25 Amazon.com gift card at no extra cost" before adding the Kindle to your cart.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Finally a new digital camera!
After browsing digital cameras for a while, yesterday I finally gave in and bought the Canon PowerShot SD1300IS 12.1 MP Digital Camera with 4x Wide Angle Optical Image Stabilized Zoom and 2.7-Inch LCD (Blue)
. This is a massive improvement from my Olympus camera that has served me quite well for probably ten years but is almost twice the size of my new camera. Embarrassingly, I noticed that my old Olympus is 3MP and has a memory card of 128MB (and probably cost a lot more than my new camera).
So if you thought the pictures on my blog were kind of fuzzy my picture taking skills were only partly to blame! Hopefully I can add a real review once I have had a chance to play with my new toy some more, and you will get to see some better quality pictures very soon!
. This is a massive improvement from my Olympus camera that has served me quite well for probably ten years but is almost twice the size of my new camera. Embarrassingly, I noticed that my old Olympus is 3MP and has a memory card of 128MB (and probably cost a lot more than my new camera). So if you thought the pictures on my blog were kind of fuzzy my picture taking skills were only partly to blame! Hopefully I can add a real review once I have had a chance to play with my new toy some more, and you will get to see some better quality pictures very soon!
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Please offer suggestions for my blog.....
I've had a blog for about a month and a half and really appreciate everyone who stopped by and read it. So far, I seem to be writing about a mixture of things that I enjoy - living in Washington D.C., trip reports, books I've read, and some education policy stuff. Also, you may notice small design changes every once in a while as I tweak it.
So my questions whether you are an experienced blogger or someone who just stumbled upon my blog, please comment with any thoughts:
So my questions whether you are an experienced blogger or someone who just stumbled upon my blog, please comment with any thoughts:
- Any suggestions on design?
- What topics do you enjoy reading about the most?
- Are there other topics you would like me to cover?
- Any lessons learned from when you first started blogging?
- Anything else you'd like to say about my blog?
Donor's Choose Gift Card Giveaway!
I used a random number generator to select the two projects submitted that will receive a $25 gift card to Donor's Choose:
The first winner is...... Allison for one of her projects listed here
The second winner is ..... Mariam for "Glam up our Nook - Now we Need Books"
CONGRATULATIONS!!!! I have emailed both of you the gift card codes to the e-mail address you listed in your comment. I hope that it helps get you closer to your goal!
And I have more exciting news ......I really loved reading about the projects people took the time to submit, so I randomly selected 5 additional projects to which I will personally donate $10 each. I decided each person could only win once so more projects could be highlighted. I just made these donations directly at Donor's Choose. Those winners are:
1) Jennifer for "Literacy learning at our level"
"I am requesting hands on literacy based materials including alphabet manipulatives, "hot dot" activities, and skill based puzzles. These materials will make it so that my literacy centers will be accessible to my struggling learners as well as my stronger students."
2) Helen for "The King School Series for serious first grade readers"
"While some classrooms receive parental donations, this is not the case with most high poverty neighborhoods. The public library is over a mile away, which is far for families without a car. My students need more reading practice! These 22 new and carefully selected book titles will definitely help my first graders develop of love of reading at a young age."
3) Mrs. M for "Never enough books! Part 2 - Character Building"
"I have a fairly large classroom library (mostly purchased with my own money) but I always find that I am lacking books on certain subjects, such as character education, manners, and accepting others' differences. So, I am requesting 7 different book sets to help fill these gaps in my classroom library."
This project was fully funded by the time I got to it! So I donated to one of the teacher's other projects: "Never enough books! Part 4 - All about where we live".
4) Liz for "Challenging Students Everywhere 2"
"Gifted students need to be challenged, not only in the classroom, but also at recess. The variety this playground equipment presents will give them a lot of choices, allow them to be creative with their activities, and help keep them physically active."
5) Jerri Ann for "Elmo makes a huge difference"
"My students attend a Title I school, grades K-8 and are much like fourth grade students nationwide, curious, anxious and excited about learning. The students have the ability to work in small groups but currently the logistics behind providing them with proper equipment is difficult without wasting a great deal of time. I would like to have an ELMO in my classroom so that we could easily move about, work as a class or move the ELMO quickly and without wasted time so that we can work in small groups in various places in the room."
If anyone is reading this wondering how to use a gift card to donor's choose or want to try out the organization with a small donation, it is super easy. Just go to www.donorschoose.org and search for a project either in your area or in a subject that interests you OR if you see a project that sounds interesting in this post, just click on any of the links and it will take you directly to that project with more information and an opportunity to donate. When the project is fully funded you will receive a thank you note from the teacher showing how you helped make a difference.
Thank you to everyone who came to my blog and took the time to enter, I hope this helped spread the word about Donor's Choose and will get some projects closer to being funded and into classrooms!
The first winner is...... Allison for one of her projects listed here
The second winner is ..... Mariam for "Glam up our Nook - Now we Need Books"
CONGRATULATIONS!!!! I have emailed both of you the gift card codes to the e-mail address you listed in your comment. I hope that it helps get you closer to your goal!
And I have more exciting news ......I really loved reading about the projects people took the time to submit, so I randomly selected 5 additional projects to which I will personally donate $10 each. I decided each person could only win once so more projects could be highlighted. I just made these donations directly at Donor's Choose. Those winners are:
1) Jennifer for "Literacy learning at our level"
"I am requesting hands on literacy based materials including alphabet manipulatives, "hot dot" activities, and skill based puzzles. These materials will make it so that my literacy centers will be accessible to my struggling learners as well as my stronger students."
2) Helen for "The King School Series for serious first grade readers"
"While some classrooms receive parental donations, this is not the case with most high poverty neighborhoods. The public library is over a mile away, which is far for families without a car. My students need more reading practice! These 22 new and carefully selected book titles will definitely help my first graders develop of love of reading at a young age."
3) Mrs. M for "Never enough books! Part 2 - Character Building"
"I have a fairly large classroom library (mostly purchased with my own money) but I always find that I am lacking books on certain subjects, such as character education, manners, and accepting others' differences. So, I am requesting 7 different book sets to help fill these gaps in my classroom library."
This project was fully funded by the time I got to it! So I donated to one of the teacher's other projects: "Never enough books! Part 4 - All about where we live".
4) Liz for "Challenging Students Everywhere 2"
"Gifted students need to be challenged, not only in the classroom, but also at recess. The variety this playground equipment presents will give them a lot of choices, allow them to be creative with their activities, and help keep them physically active."
5) Jerri Ann for "Elmo makes a huge difference"
"My students attend a Title I school, grades K-8 and are much like fourth grade students nationwide, curious, anxious and excited about learning. The students have the ability to work in small groups but currently the logistics behind providing them with proper equipment is difficult without wasting a great deal of time. I would like to have an ELMO in my classroom so that we could easily move about, work as a class or move the ELMO quickly and without wasted time so that we can work in small groups in various places in the room."
If anyone is reading this wondering how to use a gift card to donor's choose or want to try out the organization with a small donation, it is super easy. Just go to www.donorschoose.org and search for a project either in your area or in a subject that interests you OR if you see a project that sounds interesting in this post, just click on any of the links and it will take you directly to that project with more information and an opportunity to donate. When the project is fully funded you will receive a thank you note from the teacher showing how you helped make a difference.
Thank you to everyone who came to my blog and took the time to enter, I hope this helped spread the word about Donor's Choose and will get some projects closer to being funded and into classrooms!
Thursday, March 31, 2011
More Donor's Choose Gift Cards...
The three gift certificates from Donors Choose that I gave away on Tuesday were able to fund three exciting classroom projects. I was shocked that they were gone in 30 minutes so this time I want to give a chance to people who don't happen to be sitting at their computer at the right moment. I have two $25 gift certificates (thanks to the Donor's Choose Board of Directors) that you can use to help fund important projects in classrooms across America. If you are interested, from now until Saturday at noon (eastern time) please leave one comment to this post with your email and a link to a project at Donor's Choose that you would like to help fund. Please make sure to leave your e-mail so that I can send you the giftcard. I will randomly select two entries to each receive a $25 gift card! I hope that you are enjoying the giveaways as much as I am :)
For more information about the awesome non-profit Donor's Choose and how even $5 can make a difference, please see my earlier blog post.
And for examples of the types of projects you can help fund, please see below for the three that were partially funded with the first three gift certificates (and could use some more help). I've included a very short synopsis but I encourage you to visit their pages for more information.
The first project: (I think these look so cool and I would have loved using them in school!)
"I'm requesting a classroom set of Boogie Board paperless LCD writing tablets. I've been doing reading on these boards and have found that they would be perfect in my classroom. They are small enough to not take up a lot of storage space. They don't use up the battery except when you erase what you have on your screen. But, probably the best part is that they will keep my students engaged as they respond to questions and use them to write their spelling words and math problems."
The second project:
"I teach the most wonderful group of special needs Pre-K and Kindergarten students. My goal is to create a "World Class" Early Learning Environment that encourages reading through a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) Curriculum. I want to marry the latest book by Dick Vitale which teaches children their basic ABCs and 123s with the Think Bugs Alphabet Curriculum. Think Bugs encourages children to learn their alphabet by building each letter with specialized building blocks and curriculum cards...There are no A is for Apple cliches here. A is for Awesome-of course, and B is for Baby. C is for Cheer, and D is for Dunk. Every page also has a collection of other words that start with that letter. Along the bottom are colorful basketballs to count out the page number...Wacky little illustrations of Vitale dancing, broadcasting, getting an X-ray add humor and humanity...Paired with Think Bugs ABC Curriculum my students will be able to practice their letters over and over with custom-designed big bricks that make it easy for small children to build their letters in a hands on way...a win-win situation!"
The third project has now been fully funded after the gift card helped the teacher get closer to the amount needed. The students will soon be receiving copies of "Keesha's House" so they can start reading! The same teacher still has another project that needs to be funded, dry erase markers for the students.
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