Project Play lives on

I just got the go-ahead to create a blog for this summer's Teen's Choice book awards program. At the top I'm hoping to make a mashup with all of the Teen's Choice review book covers for this year - made with One True Media - it can include music, so I'll also look for music in public domain that would work. I'm also envisioning one post per book with links on the sidebar to each book's post. Each post will include the book summary, the book cover as a live link to the catalog for holds placing purposes, and then some audio or video content - I found an amazing video of Tamora Pierce talking about writing and about her book "Terrier" on YouTube, for example, so one of the TCA review book's authors speaking or promoting the particular book would be cool, as well as some podcasts of booktalks by teens. Oh yeah, posts will invite comments and voting. By the way, my assignment re: curiosity is two posts below - but don't miss the YouTube just below of Canine Freestyle.

What's the big "to-do?"

Here's my favorite video of a high-ranking competetive canine freestyle team. By the way, scroll down to see my comments re: weeks 11/12 assignment - curiosity.

Curiosity

I like to think that librarians are a pretty curious bunch. After all, it's not so much what we know, but what we are able to discover and create that makes us so valuable to the community. I have to admit, though, my risk-taking threshold is very low. So, in some ways I have to push myself to stay curious. I do like the quote from Albert Einstein, "Imagination is more important than knowledge." I tend to pick and choose my areas of intense interest or exploration, which border on obsession,like my curiosity about dogs and dog behaviors. So if obsessive exploration counts as curiosity then I must have some - though I doubt it's going to make me rich in anything other than experience.

Thanks so much for the project play curriculum, for all of the web links - I now have photos posted to flickr and built my own radio station on Pandora and have created slide shows and wikis and am looking forward to creating widgets for potential use on Teen Topix book blog. It's been an incredible course!!

More Mashups

I've added two sites - both mashups - to Chelsea's Favorites in the sidebar. For those of us who like to travel with our dogs, one is a dog park locator and the other is a dog-friendly hotel finder.

Mash-ups

It's so wierd to realize that while I've definitely used mash-ups created by others, I could actually make one myself??? I put Sequoya on the project play mapbuilder. I've also used mash-ups to create a really cool slide show at slide.com
Have a look. It's a combination of flickr.com and slide.com Also, as I watch it I think - wow, it'd be even cooler if I could attach old-time piano music to it so just like a silent movie it would play piano music simultaneously - mash-up again? I'll also just add that Lee LeFever and the Common Craft Show is a bit more plain English than this week's video creator. I visited some library mash-ups, and I'll visit some more and have a look at the instructions for making mash-ups. My favorite library mash-up was the one with the book covers carousel that link people to the catalog entry with summary - that's a really nice way to display a topical bibliography or, come to think of it, it would be a great way to highlight the book discussion kits for 4th through 9th graders that we have at MPL. A carousel of book covers with a link to a summary and directions for checking out the kit...hmm. Gotta learn more about this.

YouTube and Screencasts

Well, thanks to that handy Screencast, embedding the YouTube video was easy! I've put off the Screencast assignement because I'm not coming up with many ideas about how to use it other than as a great way to provide directions- but it might be handy for people who don't know how to sign up for free email services at the library as we do get questions about that still.

I can tell it's time for me to start getting some short video footage of Chelsea and Barney and posting on my blog, and on YouTube. What a great way to share information. Not only could teens create podcasts of booktalks for Teen Topix, but they could create videos that we could post as well. I think Teen Topix would get many more hits and comments if kids could see and hear other kids on the site.

Puppy-Fix Flick

Here's 2 minutes and 37 seconds worth of pure puppy cuteness!!