Librivox - Free Public Domain Audiobooks

logo from Librivox.org

Mr. B has been raving about Librivox for years, so the fact that I haven't written a post on it yet is somewhat shocking. The website is the audiobook equivalent of Project Gutenberg. Books that are out of copyright and thus in the Public Domain have been recorded and placed online for free download. If your class is reading a Shakespearean play or other piece of classic literature, this is a great place to go for a free way to listen to the book while you read it.

Librivox in many cases even offers free cover art and cd inserts in case you want to burn a copy to disc. Isn't that nice of them? It's also incredibly compatible with iTunes, so you iPhone and iPod touch users can easily tap into the resource.

Take a few minutes to explore the site and try a download or two. It has the potential of making your English class just a little easier.

Diigo

I know several students are utilizing Diigo for their research paper process.  I thought it wouldn't hurt to add a direct link here on the blog.

For those of you not using Diigo with your research papers, it is an extremely helpful tool that helps you organize information from the web.  You can take notes and highlight directly inside websites and then have those notes available to you from any computer.  You can find a great intro to Diigo video here.

Diigo - Your Friend for Online Research

I'm not sure who came up with the idea of "Favorites" - probably Microsoft (if not, I'm sure they took credit for it) - but they have been a staple since web browsing really got started.  You go to the same websites a lot; you mark them as favorites.  That way, you don't have to remember the address or go through the great big Google search that led you there in the first place.

Favorites are great.  You can even keep them in folders for organizing, but the Web 2.0 revolution brought about some other challenges.  Favorites needed to be accessed across multiple devices.  It's not enough to be able to get to your favorites from your desktop.  Why can't you have the same list on your tablet, and your laptop, and your other laptop?  Some awesome innovators came up with a way to make that possible - and they coined the term "Social Bookmarking."  

With social bookmarking (through sites like Delicious), people could access their favorite bookmarks from anywhere, and they could even share them with friends.  The people at Diigo, however, have taken social bookmarking to a whole new level.  Imagine a simple toolbar that you can install on all your devices which allows you to not only bookmark, but annotate and highlight information from any website.  The best part - the next time you open that same page, the annotations are saved (on any of your devices).  This means you can take notes on THIS article at your computer at home, and then pull up the article and continue annotating at school.  

Imagine for a moment what this could do for your research paper/project organization.  Take a minute to watch this video to get a great visual of Diigo in action. 

Audiobooks - Free & Paid

If you enjoy audiobooks, add a visit to Audible to your to-do list.  Their service (powered by Amazon) allows you to download thousands of audiobooks to your smartphone, mp3 player, or even your Kindle.  You can purchase audiobooks like The Hunger Games at regular prices (between $20 & $30 a piece) or you can become a subscriber and download a book each month (along with some other perks) for a monthly fee of $14.95. 

That said, if you're into the classics (or have to read one for class), such as A Tale of Two Cities or Pride & Prejudice, you can get those audiobooks for the low, low price of FREE.  For a great list of most of the free titles available on Audible, check out this article from Open Culture. 

Audible is a great site to visit if you're better at listening to those AR books than you are at actually reading them.

P.S. - Just want free audiobooks?  Try LibriVox!

Ning - Your own personal Social Network

Though Facebook is by far the most popular social network, many people are put off by the enormity of it.  They love to interact with friends and others who have similar interests, but they want to do that on their own terms.  If you are a part of this growing group - then Ning could be the thing for you.  *Small disclaimer: Ning is blocked here at school, as are almost all social networking sites.  You'll have to take it for a test spin at home.*

Ning allows you