Using Facebook and YouTube to Teach Math

Who poo-poohs social media for teaching and learning? Not I ...

Seabury alum Ben Rogers uses Facebook, along with his website Crewton Ramone's House of Math to get the word out about his super simple method of learning math.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Makawao-HI/Crewton-Ramones-House-of-Math/204602101536?ref=nf

And, Ben is putting up simple and effective lessons on YouTube, like this one about making change for $100.00, and (the formerly dreaded) nine times tables:

"Using Addends to make change for $100.00 & multiply by nines"


Who says social media and education don't mix very well?
Not I ...

Bravo, Ben!
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How to Make a Book Trailer! Advice from an Alum

Seabury alum Myrlin Hermes is a published author!  Her newest book The Lunatic, the Lover, and the Poet will be published this month.

Myrlin explains how she made her (fabulous, see it below) book trailer for free (they can cost thousands)! Read http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2010/01/guest-blog-week-how-to-make-book.html.

This is something our students could do! I'm thinking Animoto and iPhoto would work too.

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Promoting Reading with Animoto

I love how books and technology can mix, in delightful and unexpected ways! Made my second Animoto slide show yesterday, this one to promote reading.

I collect We LUV Reading photos from my Facebook friends, and put them in my photo album, with permission first, of course. I decided to celebrate the 50-mark with an Animoto slide show.

30-second shows are free, and full-length ones (anything more than 30 seconds) cost $3. With this particular slide show, I chose the additional option of creating an HD version ($5). The HD version downloads in both MP4 format and ISO (DVD quality, for burning). You can get a year-long subscription to make unlimited full-length shows for $30. If it's for a business, it's $249.

Animoto provides a great choice of royalty-free music, organized into categories (Top 40, Classical, Latin, Jazz, Country, Holiday, etc.). Or you could add your own.

You can add video clips and text too. In this case, all I did was upload the photos and choose the music.

Uploaded the slide show to TeacherTube yesterday too (again, with permission), and already got 40 hits.

The beauty of it all? ANYONE can do this!

Have FUN with it!

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MEME: a new word for this librarian

Where have I been?

Learned a new word today ~ MEME: An idea or pattern of thought that "replicates" like a virus by being passed along from one thinker to another." http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/lit_terms_M.html (Although there were many wikipedia results in Google, I'm still professionally queasy about quoting wikipedia :D)

Facebook friend Lisa notes: "Memes are all the rage... my brother showed me a TED conference video with a speaker about memes. You can probably Google it. My favorite is the neatly folded point on the end of toilet paper in a hotel room... it communicates to you that it's clean and cared for, when it really may not be. The speaker has a funny segment on it."

Cousin Keoni adds: "Internet memes are an interesting meme. Simple phrases taken out of context ("All your base are belong to us") or paired with pictures (lolcats, pancake bunny) spread from peer to peer faster than most diseases." http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/pancake-bunny

You can find out more about memes at http://knowyourmeme.com (although you have to sign up to participate)

Librarians have it GOOD -- learning something new every day is our job! Aren't we lucky?

P. S. Meme rhymes with cream.

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