How to Find, Download, and Borrow Books from the Internet Archive

On Tuesday hundreds of thousands of works entered the public domain. That includes early movies, pictures, early audio recordings, and many pieces of literature. Many of those works are available through the Internet Archive. The Internet Archive offers millions of texts that can be borrowed and or downloaded for free. In the following video I demonstrate how you can borrow ebooks and download ebooks through the Internet Archive.


Applications for Education
There are a couple of things that teachers should note about the Internet Archive before sending students there to look for free books. First, the Internet Archive does contain some works that you definitely wouldn't want elementary school students to see or listen to. Second, borrowing through the Internet Archive requires registration with a valid email address. Therefore, the best way for teachers to use the Internet Archive is to find what they want students to access then download it and place it into a Google Drive folder or OneNote folder for students to access without having to actually go to the Internet Archive.

Shaking Stories - Shake Your iPad to Create a Story

Shaking Stories is a free iPad app that is filled with randomly generated writing prompts. New prompts appear on your screen when you shake your iPad. The prompts are divided into for categories. Those categories are Characters, Places, Problems, and Time. When you shake your iPad a prompt will appear in each of those categories. Tap on the category to read the full prompt.

Viewing the prompts in Shaking Stories is available to anyone with or without an account in the app. If you create an account in the app, you can write a short story and publish it on the app. The app stalled out when I tried to do that this morning. But judging by the gallery of stories, other people have been successful in publishing their Shaking Stories stories. Speaking of the public gallery of stories, anyone can access it. Stories do appear to be moderated for language. As you can see in the screenshot below, there was an admin note on one story that had an inappropriate word that was removed by an administrator.

Applications for Education
Shaking Stories could be a possible solution to the age old problem of "I don't know what to write about" that every language arts teacher has faced at one time or another. Simply shake your iPad or have students shake their iPads to generate a list of creative writing prompts.

Have Students Make Lists Before Starting Web Search

This is an excerpt from a book that I have been working on for the last fifteen months. I'm getting close to finishing it. 

Our students have become accustomed to entering a search into Google as soon as they are confronted by a question to which they don’t have an answer on the tips of their tongues. However, if they’re forced to take a few minutes before they search, they often find that they already know the answer. This is why a pre-search checklist should include listing what you already know about a topic. This list can be generated from memory or from notebooks (physical and digital). Not only does this process refresh students' memories, it also saves time in the long-run because they aren't spending time searching for information that they already have.

The additional benefit of having students list what they already know about a topic before searching is that it can help them more quickly determine if a resource they find during their research does or does not have value to them. For example, let’s say we have a student who is researching the differing motivations for independence of colonists in the north and south. If that student has already created a list of ten basic causes of the American Revolution and then lands on a webpage that is essentially a primer on the American Revolution, that student doesn’t need to spend more than a minute on the page to determine that nothing new is going to be revealed to him through the page he has just landed on.

Creating a list of the terms that another person might use to describe the same research topic is the final task to complete on the pre-search checklist. Creating this list can break students out of their own little circles of thought. A thesaurus is a handy aid in making this list. Brainstorming and playing a word association game with a classmate or two will also help students develop alternative search terms and phrases.

Once students have begun the search process and have bookmarked a few resources, ask them to stop and identify the terms in those resources that are new to them. If they cannot find anything that is new to them, it might be time to move to more challenging resources. If they do find new terms, ask your students to add those terms to their lists of terms to use in subsequent searches.

Implementation Tips:
It can be a lot of fun to have elementary school students brainstorm lists of words to describe an object, person, place, experience, or problem. So rather than having them turn to a thesaurus for alternative words, turn this part of the search process into a group brainstorming activity. You might be surprised at what they come up with.

Search Engine Optimization specialists often consult keyword banks to discover the words that people are using to find products and services online. One such resource is KeyWordTool.io. Have your middle school or high school students enter their search terms in KeyWordTool.io and they’ll find long lists of related keywords that are used in similar searches.

A Quick & Easy Way to Create an Audio Recording

For the last decade Vocaroo has been my go-to tool whenever I've needed to make a short spoken audio recording. That might change now that I've started using Online-Voice-Recorder.com from 123Apps. Online-Voice-Recorder.com offers the same simplicity of Vocaroo plus a couple of features that I've always wished Vocaroo had. One of those features is the ability to pause a recording in progress and resume it when I want to. The other feature is the option to trim the dead air at the beginning and end of a recording. Watch my video to see those features in action.


Applications for Education
Online-Voice-Recorder.com could be a great tool for students to use when they need to make a short spoken audio recording to include in a slideshow or video. It could also be useful for making short podcasts. Registration is not required in order to use Online-Voice-Recorder.com which makes it a convenient choice for students who don't have email addresses or simply don't want to sign-up for yet another service.

How Google Keep Can Help You Reach Your Goals

Google Keep is one of the most overlooked tools that students and teachers can access through their G Suite accounts. It can be used for bookmarking, writing notes, annotating images, sharing task lists, and creating reminders. I use the reminders function every day. The reminders function in Google Keep can be helpful in working toward creating and or maintaining a habit that will help you reach your goals for the new year. In the following video I demonstrate how to use Google Keep to set reminders that can help you reach your goals.


Learn more about Google Keep in my upcoming course, Getting Going With G Suite.