Putting It All Together and STACKS

It's no secret that some of my favorite products include netTrekker d.i., Tech4Learning's entire product line, and Scholastic. I've also been enjoying Zoho lately as well. I found a way to make them work together!

Recently I was conducting a training on netTrekker d.i. and was sharing with the media specialists how to save the preferred links and the directions for the project in the My Portfolio. (For more information on this, contact netTrekker d.i. for professional development. They have a fantastic Integration Class. I'm not just saying it because I teach it, it really is good.) I also showed the teachers how to create a rubric using the free tools courtesy of Tech4Learning's Myt4l. We needed somewhere to post the rubric, so we uploaded it into Zoho's Spreadsheet and made the spreadsheet public. I then posted the URL for that spreadsheet into netTrekker d.i.'s My Portfolio, right into the folder for that particular project.

Then I overheard that it would be great if the media specialists could add a list of the preferred books for the unit. One said they could use the Template tool and put all the books on a list. I took that opportunity to showcase the Scholastic Book Wizard. I created a list of books about Abraham Lincoln and added the booklist to the project folder I created in netTrekker d.i.

Here's an example of a completed booklist. Joey has been asking me a lot about Superheroes lately and he only seems to be ale to concentrate or think about Batman, Superman, Spiderman, and the others like them. So we went on the Wizard and found other books about heroes, but necessarily with those that are well known. These are books that he'd like to read or has read at school.

And while I was on the Scholastic website, I found this great new social tool for students. It's called STACKS. It's still in Beta Testing, but there's going to be a lot of neat features to help students connect with other students who share their love of reading certain books. Check it out - there's some great stuff already there. My niece is playing with the links now.