SCLA Part 2 - The New StudySC Website

This session came just in time for what could have been a dull Homeschool program next Friday.  This exciting new site, StudySC,  (up "just in time" - AKA, Just A Bit Late - for the third graders studying the regions of our state) has links to information on South Carolina based point by point on the state's curriculum standards, the best information being chosen and evaluated by teachers.  Well, dang!
The site is organized by elementary, middle school, and high school levels, so that each group has access to age-appropriate materials.  Within the age levels, the sections are thematic and time-period based.  The site is still in beta (and the section on Government is not up yet), but they thought it best to put out what they have and add to it.  It was very exciting to see.  South Carolina patrons can access this at home - unless, perhaps, they have AOL, which make the site think you live in Virginia and then, of course, you can always drop by your local library.
All of the current material is existing, stable sources, such as museums, ETV, and college sites.  There may be a small amount of advertising content.   They hope to add their own content at a later date, such as lesson plans, the ability to search the site by the curriculum standards, and maybe a glossary.
Also on the site is a link to information about the current and past SC Book Award winners - some of them with related activities!
I can't say how helpful this is going to be.  The first day after the assignment, all our South Carolina social studies materials were checked out except the older reference book.  They all needed pictures and information about the regions - and here it was all the time!  This is another example of your State Library doing great things!  Full marks, y'all!

Lookybook

I read about this website in the December School Library Journal and thought I'd take a look at it, having just recently reviewed some children's books on Goodreads (and here, of course, but more on Goodreads). I thought, "Oh, goody! A site that will let someone page through books and look at the illustrations!" but within seconds I was disappointed that two worthy author/illustrators were not on their list. /me goes all frowny-face. I know they can't have every author or illustrator listed (and they do have some great ones), but no Tedd Arnold?! Gah! How can I wax eloquent on the fun illustrations in The Roly-Poly Spider? There are currently only about 300 titles available. I might wait a while for the list to grow before using this website.

In the meantime, though, is this cool or is this cool? ...


As of April, Lookybook is no more. :(

Plaxooooo

Ha ha - Plaxo tries to be funny.

Let's see, how many websites do I subscribe to that are supposed to control the clutter in my life? Bloglines is supposed to aggregate my RSS feeds. ClaimID wants to manage my on-line identity. Google wants to host my e-mail, photos, videos, blogs, groups, etc. I have at least six e-mail addresses that are current.

Now Plaxo wants to coordinate my calendars, address books, and all the other little social networks that have me scattered like seed beads after the cat's been playing on my work table. What a great idea! I'm more scattered on the internet than seed beads after my cat's been playin' on my work table. If only ...

Well, I have to say this much, it did coordinate my calendars. Now I can add something to my Yahoo calendar or the Plaxo calendar and it will appear on both. I don't see it showing how to differentiate between business and personal calendars, though.

There is also a feed that shows everything I entered as one of my websites (that I was able to enter - I can't get it to recognize thingie, Bloglines, or Blogger ... ironic because I have a Plaxo widget on this page now!). This is called Pulse. It will not only show my additions to these sites (when I post more photos to Flickr, mini-blog to Twitter, etc.), but also when my contacts do. It will even check my address books to see if anyone else therein is signed up for Plaxo. I was surprised to find my cousin's son, my friend in Hong Kong, and good old Jane Connor at the State Library! You can also p-o your other friends by having Plaxo invite them, which I haven't done for Yahoo Messenger or anything else, so I'm not about to start.

Just so that I don't feel this has made my life any more stress-free, there is an option to have count-downs to events on your calendar! 54 more days to my husband's birthday!
No pressure, Plaxo!!!


Oooo, look! The editor of our local paper has been sucked into my social vortex! This is the business version of the Pulse page. On the left you can see that I can select other feeds: everyone, friends, family, just little me ...

The calendar, showing what's up for tomorrow, and the infamous countdowns.
Oh, no! What am I getting Bob for his birfday??!!
I've got my cursor over the Yahoo link to show that it last sync'd
with Plaxo almost three hours ago.