NCS Library Blog: December 2010

Thursday, December 16, 2010

iPads at NCS: Teaching Tools on Your Time

Next semester, we are going to resume our Teaching Tools on Your Time training series by focusing on iPads! In addition, we will conduct a brief faculty/staff survey to solicit feedback about what you would like covered in future trainings.

iPads at NCS

Currently we have two iPads in the library that we hope teachers will consider using in the classroom. We've decided to kick this iPad training session off with a new portion of our library website devoted solely to iPads at NCS:

http://www.ncslibrary.org/ipad

On these pages we have listed useful apps (make sure to check both the "apps for teachers" and "apps for students" sections!) as well as a description about how the library is hoping to expand the iPad program next year.

We thought we would share these pages with you now in case any of you receive an iPad over the holidays. Make sure to check out this site to get our app recommendations and begin to brainstorm ways you might use your new iPad in the classroom!

"App"-solutely Fabulous

If you follow our NCS Library Blog, you may have noticed that we have a new series of posts where we list our favorite must-have apps. Make sure to check our blog periodically to see our new recommendations. Here are our first two "App"-solutely Fabulous posts:

Schedule a Training

To set up a time for training, email Chip Chase and list your available times. We are still training users on Glogster, Voicethread, Google Earth, and Jing, so if you'd like to learn how to use those resources, let us know. We are also still offering our hands-on service if you would like our help to implement a tech tool you just don't have the time for.

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Dropbox : "App"-solutely Fabulous!

Apps are changing the nature of how we interact with technology. In this blog series, we will highlight some great apps that are guaranteed to make your life a little easier. Consider downloading these apps onto your personal smart phone or tablet device, or come to see them in action in the MS/US library.

About Dropbox

Here in the library, we love Dropbox! And more and more, everyone with an iPad loves Dropbox too.

Dropbox is an ideal cloud-based solution for transfering files from one computer to another. Forget your USB drive, just create a Dropbox account and upload your files online. Even better than other cloud-based file-syncing sites, install Dropbox on your computer in order to easily drag and drop to a folder in order to sync your files.

Every time you change a file in dropbox, your file syncs online. So any computer that you have installed Dropbox will automatically refresh the file.

The Dropbox App

With the free Dropbox app, you can easily access all your files, and even more, you can use Dropbox to open your files in one of a variety of word-processing apps on the iPad. This means that you can create a file on your computer, save it to Dropbox, and then continue working on it in Dropbox.

Dropbox is an app-solutely essential app!

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Our Future...Matched

Last night, I finished the book Matched, written by Ally Condie, after being unable to put it down for the previous 24 hours! What surprised me the most about not being able to put the book down was there was never extreme action, explicit love scenes, harrowing characters. It was just so real – I was drawn in by the consistent pace, slightly building tension. The lives of the characters are so simply intertwined, carefully put together, and I was right there with them. The opening of the story is very ethereal; the reader was placed in a time in the future, in an undisclosed place, with no real connection to the society we were observing, except that I felt connected.

The main character, Cassia, moved along as though this could be one of us, projected in the future; this could be the lives of my great-great grandchildren, and the artifacts they hold so dear could be the ones I have in my home – given to me by MY grandmother. The commentary was there, subtle enough, though, to be woven in throughout the plot line. What kind of society is this? How real can it be? Are we headed to a place where no one stands out, but everyone has secrets that need to be washed away with colorful pills? The details of the traditions gone by and replaced by simpler ones were just enough that you could see why this society chose to be the way it is. But, you remain skeptical about how these people can really remain sane with little or no individualism.

But, there is not the perfect Utopia without dissent, people who don’t belong, characters who wanted to have choices. A general theme throughout the whole story was, “how much freedom do you have, without real choices, to live a full, happy life?” What is the cost of true equity?

The addition to the story of the complete distinction of the poems (and other art forms) that have changed so many of our lives, poems urging us to go forward be unique, challenge ourselves, was brilliant. The society had to choose 100 poems to represent the centuries of literature gone past. The underworld craved these poems and so you have a commodity by just knowing something written that has not only been destroyed, but erased. The author placed the characters in direct conflict with a piece of paper, a line from a poem, a drawing that is forbidden. I have not been so moved by a book, as I have by Matched, because ultimately, I believe that the author just might have our future pinned down to a pretty close projection of where we just might be heading.

Friday, December 3, 2010

Riveting Reads

Daniela Bailey, one of the new additions to the faculty this year, spoke about the books she is reading (or hoping to read, in the near future) and shared a little about her recent move to DC.

As of now, she is reading Disgrace, written by J. M. Coetzee, who among other achievements won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2003. The New Yorker reviewed the book and stated, "Disgrace is not a hard or obscure book-it is, among other things, compulsively readable-but what it may well be is an authentically spiritual document, a lament for the soul of a disgraced century." Bailey speaks of the novel in the same vein, in that she found the author has a nice style, readable, yet sophisticated. She chose the book not only because her mother had recommended it to her long ago, but she was looking for something new, an author who is from South Africa and writes about South Africa as well as topics that connect with many people from all different countries because of the possibility of new course offerings at NCS in the social sciences department. She would recommend this book to the juniors and seniors of this school because they would not only appreciate the brevity of his prose, but it is a different subject matter, not Western – highlighting the difficulty in race relations that have paralleled the race relation struggles in the US, in many ways.

In Disgrace, “an uninspired college teacher's affair with a student is discovered, and he seeks solace on his daughter's farm in South Africa. A violent attack launched by three black men alters how he perceives many things including his daughter and the rights of South Africa's aggrieved majority.”

Bailey also just moved to DC, and she has spent some time getting to know the restaurants and monuments, but she has two places she wants to visit for sure: Chef Geoff’s, because of the rave reviews and a refresher visit to the National Gallery that she toured over 10 years ago.

One of the books next on her list to read, though she is struggling to believe that she will have the time in the near future, is Like You’d Understand, Anyway, written by Jim Shepard, a professor she knew of while attending Williams College; it was highly recommended by a friend who was a student of his and a very accomplished writer. The Boston Globe wrote, “Shepard is a terrific mimic, and manages to give each one of his narrators a slightly different voice, wrinkling some stories with subtle irony, leading others the pomp and swagger of a professional boxer.” Sounds like something to pick up!

Another novel on her list is Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom. She had previously read Corrections and enjoyed it, so it seemed natural to want to read his next novel, but also she wanted to see what all the hype was about – reviews cover the spectrum, but there is a true vibe of “brilliance” mentioned about Franzen’s writing. On Amazon.com, “Franzen's new novel is both an amusing and tragic story of the breakdown of an American family struggling with their old-fashioned values set against our modern era of the quick fix, hands-off parenting, and globalized greed.”

Her lasting statement, “I hope everyone reads; reading is such a wonderful escape.”

Mobile Mouse : "App"-solutely Fabulous!

Mobile Mouse

For our first App of the Month, we are highlighting Mobile Mouse. This simple, but robust app can really change how you use your Smarboard in the classroom.

Mobile Mouse allows you to turn your smart phone or iPad into a virtual mouse for another computer. This is ideal for when you want to interact with your computer on the Smartboard, without being stuck to the front of the room, or to your desk.

With this app there's no more "Sage on the Stage;" you're free to walk about the classroom, while still using your projector to display important information.

Remember, the Tech department does have wireless keyboards to be used with Smartboard as well. This is another option if you don't have a personal iPad or iPhone.

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