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joycevalenza

Joyce is the teacher-librarian at Springfield Township High School, a technology writer, and a blogger.


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Recent Posts

Google’s Solve for X

February 10th, 2012 No Comments

On Monday, Google launched its Solve for X project–a forum to encourage and amplify technology-based moonshot thinking and teamwork.

Solve for X talks address three criteria.

They must

  • highlight a huge problem
  • present a concrete solution that could make a radical impact
  • explain breakthrough science and technology

EUscreen debuts

February 8th, 2012 No Comments

Your history and language teachers will be very interested in the recently launched EUscreen.

The new multimedia, multilingual portal reaches back to the early 1900s and offers free online access to videos, stills, texts and audio from European broadcasters and audiovisual archives.


The… Read More

Adventures in ESL (part 1): Picture book project

February 8th, 2012 No Comments

We’re trying something a little different with our ESL class this week.  The new semester brought us two new students from Korea with limited English.  We wanted to get to know them and encourage them to get to know us better.  So we thought we try picture books.

Our Picture Book activity asked learners to:

  • Select a book in your first language using one of the

Test-driving instaGrok

February 3rd, 2012 No Comments

I had a wonderful chat with the co-founders of instaGrok, a new search tool designed to help users learn about a topic by facilitating the finding of context and educational content. Still in Beta, InstaGrok is nurtured by Imagine K12, an incubator program devoted to supporting early stage ed-tech startups through a funding and mentorship program.

instaGrok is not a manually-created directory; it… Read More

Super Bowl as a learning opportunity

February 1st, 2012 No Comments

Each year I point to Frank Baker’s remarkable aggregation of media literacy resources.  Frank makes it easy for us to use Super Bowl ads as tools for deeper thinking about media messages.

His general questions for discussing the game are kind of timeless and his list of links are super helpful:

New code of practice for Academic and Research Libraries

January 30th, 2012 No Comments

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) recently released its own Code of Best Practice in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries.  Supported by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the code:
enhances the ability of librarians to rely on fair use by documenting the considered views of the library community about best practices in

Quixey and other app finding tools

January 30th, 2012 1 Comment »

I am adding another search engine to my search toolkit.

Quixey has been around since 2009, but it’s new to me.  The search was designed to

solve a problem – millions of apps were being created, but there was no simple way to find them. App discovery was limited to categories, top ten lists, directories and basic

Hooray, we’re mobile! Our new app.

January 24th, 2012 Comments(5)

A couple of weeks ago, I shared my intense desire to become an app.  To ensure that our library was a portable and accessible as my learners’ favorite game.  Here’s a peek at our first attempt.
So, we used a trial version of LibGuides Mobile Site Builder as our platform.  (I also played around with WebMobi

“Every survivor has a story to tell.” Introducing IWitness & its 1000 stories

January 21st, 2012 1 Comment »

Imagine that you could have 1,000 survivors in your classroom . . .

The University of Southern California Shoah Foundation recently launched the BETA version of a truly important gift–a searchable, interactive archive of more than 1000 video testimonies of Holocaust survivors and other witnesses.

It is simply one of the most elegant and thoughtfully designed portals I… Read More

Wikipedia to go dark tomorrow in opposition to SOPA/PIPA

January 17th, 2012 No Comments

You may want to warn the kids about this. You may want to chat with them about it too. 

(Read Digital Shift, ALA’s PIPA, SOPA and the OPEN Act Quick Reference Guide, and my previous post for background.)

The official release from the Wikimedia Foundation:
English Wikipedia to go dark January 18 in opposition to SOPA/PIPA

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