Little Bird Tales
Little Bird Tales http://littlebirdtales.com/ is a wonderful site for digital storytelling for young learners. Children can create and upload their artwork, narrate and record their voice, and add text to their story. The finished story can then be viewed online or emailed out.
Watch a demonstration video here.
Amazon Cloud Drive & Cloud Player
Amazon has introduced Cloud Drive and Cloud Player. The two services are connected, but distinct in capabilities and effects.
Amazon Cloud Drive, is similar to Dropbox or Windows SkyDrive. Amazon is giving everyone 5GB of space for free, with the ability to purchase additional storage for $1 per Gigabyte in chunks: 20, 50, 100, 200, 500, or 1000 GB levels are all available. While 5GB free is more than Dropbox's 2GB, and way less than SkyDrive's 25Gb, for raw storage in the cloud, Dropbox has everything else beat in usability. For Cloud Drive, you have to do all file interactions (uploading/downloading) within your browser.
The exciting thing here isn’t Cloud Drive by itself...it’s the associated Cloud Player and the model that Amazon is using for the connection between the two. Cloud Player is a web-based media player that has access to the files uploaded to your Cloud Drive. That is, if you use your Cloud Drive to hold MP3 or AAC encoded music files, those will be automatically available to Cloud Player, and can be streamed to nearly any browser. Cloud Player has the basic controls that you would expect from a music player, allowing you to view your collections by album, artist, or genre. It also allows you to build or import playlists, shuffle, and repeat songs in the same way that pretty much every music player does.
This means that with Cloud Storage + Cloud Player, I can take my own music, upload it to Amazon, and then listen to it anywhere I have a browser...or on the updated Amazon MP3 for Android app on any Android based phone or tablet. In a brilliant marketing move, Amazon is also letting you automatically cross-load any MP3 that you buy from the Amazon MP3 Store directly to your Cloud Drive...and anything that you buy from them doesn’t count against your storage limits. They are also offering a free upgrade to their 20GB storage level if you just buy any MP3 album from Amazon through the end of 2011. So you can purchase any amount of music from Amazon, and it will all be available for streaming to any computer or directly to your phone if you have an Android handset. For free.
Screen Reading
Do you need a screen reader? NonVisual Desktop Access NVDA is an Australian free and open source screen reader for the Microsoft Windows operating system. Providing feedback via synthetic speech and Braille, it enables blind or vision impaired people to access computers running Windows for no more cost than a sighted person. Major features include support for over 20 languages and the ability to run entirely from a USB drive with no installation. You can download the application to your computer and it will screen read with spoken or braille outputs. It even comes with a portable version, which you can keep on a memory stick and plug in anywhere you need to.
Why not put it on your public library terminals?
Give Away Some Ebooks
The Denver International Airport has some large advertisements up in the airport giving away free ebooks (see the pic in this post). All you need is a smartphone with a QR Code reader – aim and read the code, and you were directed to download a free ebook. The books are “free” out-of-print classics. For most people – people who are stuck at the airport with nothing much to do – what a cool idea! Give them a book (even if it’s freely available online), and brand it as your business.
How can this work for a library?
Why not copy this idea? Use a QR Code, put up a sign at your shopping centre or the local store, and offer a “free” ebook (perhaps something free from Project Gutenberg). Send the user to a mobile webpage, branded as your library – with a link to the ebook, and some info about your other cool services.
In essence, it looks like the library is giving away a free ebook – that works with multiple ereaders!
Create Your Own QR Codes
QR Codes are 2 dimensional barcodes that are easily scanned using any modern mobile phone. This code will then be converted (called "dequrified") into a piece of (interactive) text and/or link. For instance, you walk around in the city and notice a poster for an event that seems interesting. You take out your mobile phone, scan the QR Code and will instantly get more information and a link to a website where you can book your tickets. You don't have to type or remember anything and because QR Codes can be very small, this saves a lot of space on the product as well.
Here are some QR-Code Generators –
Simply add the URL, telephone number, text or SMS you want to link. Select what size you want and Generate.
· Type your message
· Click “Qurify”
· Download the QR Code image
· QR Code done
You can encode either a link to a website, a message to a friend, or your contact details. Then turn the information into a mobile barcode, one that can be printed on stationery, advertising or packaging, a t-shirt, or even built into a website or a Facebook page - and read by an i-nigma enabled mobile device.
LuLu
LuLu http://www.lulu.com/ is a site that meets all publishing needs. You can create books, ebooks, photobooks and calendars. Simply upload a file, choose a theme and create your ebook.
Watch a video demo here.
0 comments:
Post a Comment