Readability - clutter cutter

Readability is a powerful new cool tool by arc90 that eliminates website clutter when you want to just focus on the content and not the surrounding "stuff". It is meant for newspaper articles, not home pages. According to its website, it is a 2-step process select your settings; add your bookmarklet. It works like a charm! Try it on an article from the SF Chronicle on SFGate.
See the video:

Readability - Installation Video for Firefox, Safari & Chrome from Arc90 on Vimeo.

2009 Edublog Individual Educational Blog Winner

This year's winner of the Edublog Award for best individual education blog is Free Technology for Teachers.

"A review of free technology resources and how teachers can use them. Ideas for technology integration in education."

AudioPal widget

AudioPal - widget adds audio to your site

Add another layer of communication to your website, blog, or other web 2.0 tool with AudioPal. To order, you need to first call and add your voice by phone. Enter a passcode. Preview (listen). Then type in your e-mail address so you will get AudioPal e-mail with with link for your voice message. Could be useful for school or library websites or blogs. Could be used for an opening greeting or regular messages.

Features include:

• Record and use your OWN voice
• Select from a number of voices (TTS)
• Playback controls
• Update your audio anytime
• Free
  

AudioPal is a companion to SitePal, which lets you add talking avatars.

Wordle - a Fun and Powerful Image Generator

Debbie Stanley alerted us to Wordle, a fun and powerful image-making tool for making word clouds. Kudos go to Jonathan Feinberg, a Senior Software Engineer at IBM Research. Nice tool.

Create images with groups of words that appear in your text. Select fonts, colors to enhance your word image. Words that appear more frequently in your text appear larger or figure more prominently in your word cloud. Go ahead and play! Copy and paste your lesson plan or introductory description for "Information Literacy" or your school's rules. :)

Hit the "create" menu and either enter text or a URL. I experimented with several professional development and two retail-oriented urls:
Discovering Assistive Technology, School Library Learning 2.0, Classroom Learning 2.0 and Nonbook Gifts for Book Lovers.

You can add your image to the gallery, print the image, or get the html code for it. Below are Wordle images created for the Discovering Assistive Technology and School Library Learning 2.0 tutorials and the Gift Guide.

Hightlights of Mac World Exhibits

This blogger visited the Mac World exhibits for two days in a row -- lots of cool tools but also way too many fashion "skins" for computers, iPhones, iPods, and other technologies.

I have a stack of literature. Each have a url and notes. Hopefully, I'll get through them all this weekend. See posts on my 2CoolTools blog for more detail on highlights including:

• Storyist (software for novelists and screen writers)
• Delicious Librarian 2 by Delicious Monster
• AssistiveGaming and AssistiveWear

Enjoy!

- Jackie Siminitus, CSLA 2.0 Team project manager

Mobility @ Your Library

For the CSLA Conference program, "M-Learning", I created a list of TOP 10 categories of mobility applications for libraries and posted details on my 2CoolTools blog. Each category has a separate post, which makes it easier to comment or make suggestions. I'm always looking for examples of how libraries use technology.

Top 10 Categories
1- Reference and Research – anytime, anywhere
2- Language Translation Services
3- Disaster Planning/Emergency Preparedness
4- Assistive Technology
5- Administrative
6- Productivity Tools
7- Outreach/PR
8- Publishing – mobile blogging and more
9- Programs
10- M-Learning (educational)

The examples need compelling stories to go with them. Let us know how you use (or would use) mobile devices in your library.

**********************
Best wishes.

Jackie Siminitus
CSLA2Team@yahoo.com
http://2cooltools.pbwiki.com/
http://2cooltools.blogspot.com/

Discovering Assistive Technology - a tutorial

The California School Library Association has introduced another free, online professional development tutorial for its members and educators at large. Discovering Assistive Technology includes five (5) modules:

• Types of disabilities
• Hardware
• Software
• Etiquette and Awareness
• Curriculum Connections

About 20 CSLA members recommended books having characters with disabilities, resulting in a LibraryThing database on the topic. This tutorial is timely for celebrating Disability Awareness Month in October.

Special thanks go to the many CSLA members who contributed to the booklist, and to Jane Tong and her team at TransAccess.