LibraryRemix

• Powerpoint (film short)…http://bit.ly/qrY5qa Maybe we SHOULD expand our toolboxes? #
• Predicit that libs give way to info centers? Many of us have been making this shift progressively for years! http://t.co/4Y0RLVoJ #
• How Teenagers Are Using Technology in Their Social Lives http://t.co/fwN6FinI Interesting, even if sponsorship potentially colors findings. #

• Media Literacy Appealing! Checkout the Fotoshop for Adobe Informercial http://t.co/1FE4pfDl #

• Awesome photo…light reading! http://t.co/dKI3wcHB #

• Announcing http://t.co/8plJMgxd http://t.co/EW8HanMb #

• Doodling…An Essential Skill to Develop & Support in our Students? http://t.co/EuZnKtdY #
• Art Profs, Librarians, Curators Get Their Fair Use Code http://t.co/N8wAQ2NK #

• Crash #
• Testng iPad TweetDeck….keeps crashing…arghhhh! #
• RT @pfanderson: “@kzelnio: The Four Types of Scientists http://t.co/PFLJJLbJ by @virginiahughes” lots of thought in this (CHUCKLE) #
• RT @butwait: What is “scholarly” in the age of the internet? http://t.co/aJga3hyK Worth discussing this piece by @dkorfhage #
• DOWNLOAD Outlook Shortcuts http://t.co/WufVAq48 #
• Newseum FrontPage Map http://t.co/CoQE4mNa An awesome site for regional comparisons! #
• The Collapse of Public Education in America (Infographic)| The Committed Sa… – http://t.co/S0E8fy5w via @leecrockett #
• Just got my copy of "Listening to Learn" http://t.co/0fCCe7X3 Good STUFF! #
• Kids Online: the Risks and the Realities http://t.co/kBdaEk2h #
• 100 Ways to Teach with Twitter http://t.co/kUQGbKu8 #

• la kan – Explore Dec 08, 2011 http://t.co/0kL1510i #
• How historians will see us…http://t.co/dBT2bb2F #
• RT @ElectricLit: Type a painting with this chromatic #typewriter http://t.co/MKu3yUIX #
• The rise of a "new literary form" in 2011: the year of the e-book http://t.co/IADBBJug via @NYMag just a diff binding? #
• Transliteracy – QR Codes and Art http://t.co/Xmqgp0JD #
• Louder libraries to open across U.S. http://t.co/xthMYpST #

Check out Eloquent Silence, posted last Saturday on Shaun Usher’s Lists of Note. This is a beautiful example of the complexity and art of word choice that more students need to have time learning and practicing. There was a time when, as library media specialists, we regularly taught the thesaurus, helping students to navigate through keywords and indices. Search engines have diminished shortened the navigational learning curve, and generally we’ve tucked little lessons on specific resource types into our archives, rarely pulling them out within the scope of teaching information research. I wonder, though, if we are missing an opportunity here.  Teaching students word choice is more than a writing skill.  Focusing in on synonyms and antonyms–those thesaurus skills–broaden’s their search scope.  Teaches them that in a largely unorganized and certainly uncataloged web of open information, different contributors will classifiy and refer to a topic in a myraid of ways.  Being able to identify related keywords may be all the difference there is between finding some information and finding the best information.

Below are a few online thesaurus worth our time considering…how can we incorporate these into our lessons?  Read more... (446 words, 2 images, estimated 1:47 minutes reading time)

• Have students cut-and-paste in text from a found resource into the VocabGrabber in order to expand their search to related subjects. Cut and paste text into this tool and it generates an analysis that includes a useful list of vocabulary along with how those words are used in context.  Select a word on the list and a snapshot of that word will pop up in the Visual Thesaurus, along with definitions and sample uses.
• Help students understand how choice of keyword can drive (and even bias) research by using WordNet, a scholarly
  “lexical database for the English language.” Word Net groups words into sets of synonyms  along with short, general definitions, enabling text analysis and artificial intelligence applications by professional researchers. However, the resulting dictionary and thesaurus are more intuitive for many users.  Two projects stemming from the research will be helpful to your students:

• The New Andrew Carnegie?http://t.co/5qLMZDAT #
• Thanks to Buffy for making the busy library more visible and viable (and audible).
  http://t.co/dTNmUWSB #
• RT @MediaReDEF: How 'Big Data' will help Consumers http://t.co/rTfxztvM /via @MediaReDEF #
• RT @PopSci Computer algorithm can quantify just how completely fake the photo retouching http://t.co/JrmitUv7 … Media literacy tool! #
• Just favorited 'Cataloging Games' on SlideShare. http://t.co/RzrqjzbD #