Learning in the Lou

So many books... make more time! Too many great books to read and so little time. I started to listen to books at the gym and in the car because there was just too much down time. I used to buy tons of books on tape and CD but after a few months all that starts to add up to serious money. Did you know that you can download all kinds of audiobooks on your mobile devices? All you need is a St. Louis County Library card and a little storage space on your device. I'm also pretty sure every single student was just issued a new card just last week, why not get them listening before break! Getting Started Download and log into Hoopla . Also check out Libby, the newer version of OverDrive, for additional audiobooks from the county library. Download and click hoopla. It should ask you to login with your county library account. Click the search button or you can choose a category below. I searched for Freakonomics and this is what I found. I then clicked o...

I'm sure you are reading something this summer, why not join this program offered by the St. Louis County Library ? Signing up for the Summer Reading Club  is just a few clicks. You can even track everything online, no need for the paper forms. Can it get any better? You bet. Check out the calendar for a bunch of fun activities at the surrounding libraries. Some of these require you to register for the free classes. Examples: Story Time/Lap Time - story time for the youngest readers Art Experiences - from crafts to sewing Minecraft - have your kids go and play on the library server

This is a small selection of books I collected over the past few months with the intention of reading them all this summer. I am super pumped about it! New books offer so many new ideas to think about. Did you know the county library offers a summer reading program? It is 100% free and offers some pretty cool prizes. I kinda have my eye on that iPad mini. It would make a sweet dashboard computer for the car. Last night the kids and I signed up. Why not give it a shot? Visit the site and sign up! Ages 0 to infinity!

Creativity.  Expression.  Emotion.  Imagination.  Immersion...and sound effects. What am I talking about?  Reading and writing, of course! Did you say sound effects?   Yes, I did. Booktrack Classroom  empowers students to add soundscapes to their stories or those from a free, classical ebook collection.  Highlighting text they would like to enhance, students insert layers of music, ambient sounds, and sound effects.  After publishing, readers can adjust the timing of the story's embedded soundscape to fit their reading speed. The result is an immersive reading and writing experience that engages students deeply in their story.  Check one out before reading on: Teachers can create classes on Booktrack Classroom to manage and share student work.  Accounts are free and created with the push of a Google login button.  Published stories can be curated and searched for on the website or pushed ou...

Issue You have some chunk of text online you really want your kids to read.  Some of these articles are slightly above their reading level but you still really want them to understand the context. Solution Find the link to the article and dump it into the app/site. Presto! An audio clip of the article is created! http://soundgecko.com/ Sample from Time for Kids I cut/pasted the link to this article into the Soundgecko site and this is what was created.   Click to image to hear the clip.  It appears some sound clips will have an accent and some do not. 

Check out these text to self connections as students created a video of themselves discussing key elements of the book to then show to the rest of the class. Using student devices allows students to record, edit, and publish from a single device.  Create a youtube account and get started today! Check out this blog post for more ideas on what students can actually DO with devices.

Here is another great site where celebrities read aloud books to kiddos.  Uses Adobe flash to play the books.

Looking for a fun way to engage your younger readers?  TumbleBooks has it all!  To access the site, head to the St. Louis County Library site.   There you will click eMedia.  Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the TumbleBooks link. In the Story Book section, readers can sit back and listen or read along at their own speed to entertaining and amusing picture books.  The Read-Along books combine adjustable text and color with complete narration and sentence by sentence highlighting.  The Puzzles and Games section has interactive activities to accompany the books.