Valibrarian

As I review recent research literature in the area of libraries and literacy learning, I find repeated articles about gaming and Immersive Learning Environments.  I am beginning to understand the power of immersing a learner in a situation that requires learning new concepts and skills.  This “situational” learning gives the brain motivation to analyze, synthesize, [...]

  Book Discussions and Book Clubs are traditionally a highlight of library programs (certainly my elementary school library book club is a happenin’!).  On July 23rd, I led my first virtual book discussion in Second Life on Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, a 1992 novel which first coined the term “metaverse.”  I worried that no one [...]

In the back of my mind I have struggled with the concept of “blogging” since the moment I encountered it.  As a writing trainer, I have spent many summers training teachers on the recursive writing process.  A writer is encouraged to revisit writing again and again to revise.  The writer takes an idea and revisits [...]

Now Google has released Lively and Facebook is giving us Vivaty.  Just how many virtual worlds do we need? And how in the world(s) are we supposed to choose?  Valibrarian just entered both new worlds and compared the two environments.  This animoto video shows the “cartoon-animation” type avatars in Lively.  I also made an animoto [...]

I’ve worked with editing videos for my school news show for years but only started editing them on the computer a couple years ago.  I made a couple of videos to compare video camera choices.  I am sure that there are numerous other video cameras available now, but here is a video created with the [...]