I came across an interesting article from MindShift.  It gave instructions on how to create your own classroom textbook (with or without Apple). As the open education movement continues to grow and become an even more rich trove of resources, teachers can use the content to make their own interactive textbooks.  It might seem daunting, but ...

While some schools have fancy Madagascar hissing cockroaches, we made do with an American cockroach, the huge one found in norther Jersey. A child volunteered that she her dad had caught one at work, and wondered if she might bring it in. I loved the idea, most of the class groaned, and the next day she waltzed in with a margarine tub poked with ...

As the school year winds down, you might be thinking about what new or different books you hope to use in the fall.  If you are, I encourage you to check out Open Educational Resources (OER) textbooks.  OER or “Open Source” textbooks are digital, often customizable, textbooks published and available on the web.  Many of them are quite ...

The Internet Archive is a huge, well…archive.  Basically, it’s a collection of images, video, music, audio recordings, and texts.  Once you explore this massive digital library though, you’ll see that it’s hard to get your head around just how much is collected here.  For example, the audio section includes an archive of millions of recordings of ...

Hello fellow teachers and tech integration enthusiasts.  I’m back from a short break.  A major project in my graduate class has kept me away from blogging for nearly two weeks.  The good news is I’ve been developing an interactive Shakespeare website I’ll soon be able to introduce here.  For now, I’ve got another interactive text to tell you ...

November 23, 2010 It’s not hard to find Shakespeare resources on the internet.  In fact, in a way it’s too easy, so teachers are often left to sift through thousands of bland websites in search of a unique and useful one.  When I searched “Shakespeare Lesson Plans” on Google today, it garnered me more than 400,000 results.  It’s hard to know ...

Interactive whiteboards-SMARTboards, starboards, and the like-are the symbol of a new tech savvy age in teaching. Its a new level of interactive learning and teaching. It all sounds great, but man there is...

Recently, Penguin UK gave a stunning preview of its plans for iPad-based e-books. The video clip is short and well worth your time. Don’t miss these segments: -1:07 the anatomy textbook that zooms into a still of the human heart and then transition to a 3d, rotating model of the beating heart -2:49 the digital constellation guide [...]

Okay, I just realized the other day that I've been blogging for over a year now! In light of this, I figured it was a good time to review what some of my most popular blog posts have been during this last ''blog year''..... so, to start things off, the most popular post of last year for the Talking Books Librarian blog was: Free Audio books, ...

Check out this great link for free audio books, textbooks, and eBooks! http://librarianchick.pbwiki.com/ You can search for free books on the site at http://librarianchick.pbwiki.com/BookSearch