SYNC YA Literature into Your Earphones

2 Free Audiobook Downloads Each Week

June 23 - August 17, 2011

Teens and other readers of Young Adult Literature will have the opportunity to listen to bestselling titles and required reading classics this summer. Each week from June 23 - August 17, 2011, SYNC will offer two free audiobook downloads.

The audiobook pairings will include a popular YA title and a classic that connects with the YA title's theme and is likely to show up on a student's summer reading lists. For example, Maggie Stiefvater's Shiver, the first book in a popular series with strong allusions to Romeo & Juliet, will be paired with Shakespeare's classic.

To find out when you can download titles to listen to on the run this summer, visit www.AudiobookSync.com.

SYNC Titles

Summer 2011

6/23/11 - 6/29/11

Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater

Romeo & Juliet by William Shakespeare

6/30/11-7/6/11

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

The Trial by Franz Kafka

7/7/11-7/13/11

Where the Streets Had a Name by Randa Abdel-Fattah

A Passage to India by E. M. Forster

7/14/11-7/20/11

The Last Apprentice: Revenge of the Witch by Joseph Delaney

Beowulf by Francis B. Gummere [Trans.]

7/21/11-7/27/11

Chanda's Secrets by Allan Stratton

Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

7/28/11-8/3/11

Ashes, Ashes by Jo Treggiari

Rescue: Stories of Survival From Land and Sea by Dorcas S. Miller [Ed.]

8/4/11-8/10/11

Immortal by Gillian Shields

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

8/11/11-8/17/11

Storm Runners by Roland Smith

The Cay by Theodore Taylor

Reading as a teen = better job

A study involving 17,000 people shows that those who read books as teens get better jobs as adults.

Google Art Project

Announced on February 1st, Google Art Project digitally displays over 1000 works of art from museums like the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Florence's Uffizi Gallery, the Tate Britain, Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum, and many more. You can do a Google Street View-style walk through of the galleries, make your own collections from the works on display, and the level of detail is mind-blowing (you can even zoom in one eye in Rembrandt's Night Watch - they won't let you get that close in the museum!).

Seriously, getting this close just wouldn't happen.

Artist information, data about the work itself, and links to more works by that artist are provided when you click on the white "i" information icon on the right side of the screen.

My one issue with this site is the inability to search among all of the galleries. For example, one of the art club members wanted to see something by pointillist Georges Seurat and I could not find a way to search for his works in all the museums contained in Art Project. However, a work-around would be to do a Google site search, such as "Seurat site:googleartproject.com" in the main Google web search.

That one gripe notwithstanding, it is a wonderful resource that allows detailed viewing of artwork for anyone with an internet connection, and hopefully the coming months will bring even more artwork and galleries.

Food for thought

This 3-minute video about the rising global population is certainly worth watching.

7 Billion, National Geographic Magazine from Jamie Lee Godfrey on Vimeo.

Help Tim Burton write a story!

Tim Burton, darkly creative film writer/director/producer known for films such as The nightmare before Christmas and the version of Charlie and the chocolate factory that starred Johnny Depp, is writing a short story between November 22nd and December 6th using Tweets submitted by Twitter members. This type of story creation is called Exquisite Corpse, or Cadavre Exquis, and is written line by line: one contributor writes a sentence, then passes it on to another writer who adds another sentence, and so on.

Burton's Cadavre Exquis begins as follows: "Stainboy, using his obvious expertise, was called in to investigate mysterious glowing goo on the gallery floor." As of this morning, there are 19 sentences contributed by members of the Twitter community, and there is still over a week to join in. Have a go!

The true size of Africa

This image made the rounds online last week and since I love my maps (especially map games), I printed off a full colour copy with data to put on the library door. It really puts into perspective how large a landmass Africa really is!

The original post I saw was on Stephen's Lighthouse, and here is the full version of the image (with supporting data) by Kai Krause.

The value of school libraries

Stephen Abram has written a brief post on his blog about the value of school libraries, with links to several studies that provide data on this topic. A brief quote:

...students, who attend schools with well-funded, properly-stocked libraries managed by qualified teacher-librarians, have higher achievement, improved literacy and greater success at the post-secondary level.

The post and studies are well worth a read for librarians, teachers and administrators.

Wonder of the Web: Wolfram|Alpha

If you are not aware of the Wolfram|Alpha computational search engine, you probably should be. It's really something else - as it states on the homepage: "Today's Wolfram|Alpha is the first step in an ambitious, long-term project to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable by anyone."

I don't know who these people are, but they need a lot more initiative. Sheesh. (Actually, you can now watch the man responsible for WolframAlpha give a dynamic 20-minute presentation.)

At any rate, it turns out that Wolfram|Alpha can actually give step-by-step solutions to quadratic problems, as demonstrated in this blog post. It can also be a very handy search engine for finding anything from finding out how many milliliters are in 10 Tbsp, the population density of Ghana (given by square mile, square kilometre, and square foot, no less), or where the note A is located on a keyboard (it will even play the note for you!).

Hundreds of other examples are also available, from elementary math to ocean comparisons to languages.

Notably, Wolfram|Alpha provides what they call source information for the data presented in their results, which are not necessarily where the information came from but further sources for similar information. These other sources are conveniently linked in the source information list.

This is definitely worth a look for those interested in math and science, but Wolfram|Alpha has data that applies to pretty much every other subject area as well.

Infinite Photograph

Infinite Photograph is a photo mosaic of more than 300,000 nature photographs that just keeps going and going and going. For example, the image on the left it is a photo mosaic of a chickadee head, which you can see is made up of hundreds of tiny photos. Zoom in (with the yellow square in the bottom corner) to see the other photos, and all of those photos are mosaics as well. It is really quite astounding.

If you enjoy this you may also like NASA's Visible Earth, the Smithsonian's Earth from Space, and the always wonderful The Big Picture.

The Week in Rap

Via SLJ's email newsletter comes The Week in Rap, a weekly summary of current events and news in the form of (you guessed it) a rap. While it's definitely focused primarily on the United States and the news and events that occur there, it is certainly worth a look. Below is a special edition about Barack Obama's election victory.


The Week in Rap from Week in Rap on Vimeo.

Great idea!

Sunset on Mars

Mars sunset, taken in May 2005 by the NASA Mars Exploration Rover Spirit. The sun appears so tiny! From NASA image of the day.

NASA's Phoenix Lander parachutes to Mars surface

Photo courtesy of http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/images/press/PHX_Lander.html

That is a photograph of the Phoenix Mars Lander taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter as the Lander parachuted down to the surface of Mars. I watched part of the live coverage of the landing on CNN on Sunday night and it was pretty exciting! It's hard to imagine spending years working on a project like the Phoenix Lander, launching it into space, waiting months and months for it to get to where it's supposed to be, and then crossing your fingers and hoping it lands safely 400 million miles away.

You can see more images taken by Phoenix and learn about how it works on the NASA site.

Also, the Discovery space shuttle is launching on Saturday, May 31st, at about 6pm Atlantic time.

PRHS Library toolbar

Last weekend (May 9-10) I attended the Atlantic Provinces Library Association (APLA) annual conference in Charlottetown, PEI. One of the many excellent sessions I attended was entitled "Top Tech Tools" which involved 8 library staff members from different institutions do a quick 5-minute overviews of their favourite new technological tool. One of the presenters spoke about Conduit library toolbars and it really piqued my interest, so one of the first things I did when I got back to work was make my own toolbar.

Voila:

It's a little small to see, but the toolbar gives users a quick link to the library catalogue, RSS feeds of new books in the library and new Del.icio.us links, and links to other useful tools. You can look at the PRHS Library toolbar in more detail here and start creating your own here.

Leave a comment and let me know what you think!

Book furniture

There is a lot of neat furniture and homes that are inspired by (and contain) books. I've collected some images and thought I'd share them here.

If you want to have a nightstand that looks like a pile of books (that are actually drawers), you're in luck!

http://www.comunistar.com/Collection2008/Nightstand/Poetry.html

Although I have my books organized by colour at home, it doesn't look nearly this impressive!

http://freshome.com/2008/02/12/rainbow-bookshelf/

A bathtub with shelf space - genius!

http://www.bornrich.org/entry/bathtub-with-book-storage-for-bookworms/

A bookshelf that doubles as a staircase in a London apartment.

http://gizmodo.com/358636/stairs-bookcase-actually-makes-me-want-to-move-to-london

You don't need a bookmark with this shelf.

http://ontwerpduo.nl/en/werk_openbook.html

Real life 'Death Star'!

Cue the Imperial March folks, NASA found a real-life Death Star!

From the CBC.ca article:

"a black hole in a "death star galaxy" blast[s] a neighbouring galaxy with a deadly jet of radiation and energy."

Sounds like Alderaan is probably kaput already.

Looks like I'll have to start avoiding the school roof

Find out what Harry Potter character you're like!

Quidditch World Cup - for real

At some colleges in the United States, students play Quidditch (from the Harry Potter books). Basically, they run around with brooms between their legs and chase a human Snitch (dressed in yellow), throw bouncy Bludgers at people, and try to get a volleyball Quaffle through hoola hoops.

I'm not making this up. Read about the 2007 Quidditch World Cup here (there are photos) and an article about the origins of the Quidditch World Cup here.

Get your own Weasley clock!

Well, not exactly (and not yet), but Microsoft has developed a prototype "Whereabouts Clock" that's a lot like the Weasley's clock from the "Harry Potter" books:



It works with a certain software on family members' cell phones that transmits the cell phone's location to the clock that might be in, say, your kitchen. Neat!

Remembrance Day links

From the PRHS library Del.icio.us account.

Creepy stories for Halloween

Some of my favourite short stories are old gothic horror stories, and with the Internet you can often find them since many are now out of copyright. Here are a few of them:

• Edgar Allen Poe wrote wonderful gothic horror - try The Tell-Tale Heart.
• My absolute favourite short story that I read for school is The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell.
• Or, you could read the first few chapters of Dracula by Bram Stoker. The most terrifying beginning to a book ever!
• It's not exactly horror but it's definitely tense: Leiningen Versus the Ants by Carl Stephenson.

Happy Halloween!