Kamishibai, a traditional, low-tech form of Japanese storytelling, has magical effects on your audience.  I fell in love with it last month thanks to Deborah Abner, my friend and wonderful librarian at Lincoln School in Brookline, which has an ELL program for its large Japanese student population. She asked me to use it for library lessons during Sakura Week when I subbed for her. It’s easy, fun, and totally engaging. Yes, that’s me up there, having a great time!

The golden age of Kamishibai in Japan was from 1920-1950, when storytellers travelled regular routes, selling candy and telling stories, including folktales, sci-fi, adventure, and sometimes even war propaganda.  It fell out of favor when tv came along. Kamishibai was considered backwards and vulgar, and the artists turned to manga. The art form was revived recently in school settings, mainly as vehicles for folk tales. 

Kamishibai kits include the box in into which you slide prepared images with text printed on the back.  While your audience looks at strong graphic illustrations, you read the text off the back of the card with instructions for expression and timing. The kit might include wooden clappers announce the the show. You can buy Kamishibai stories, too.

During my lessons, I read Momotaro Peach Boy and The Inch Boy and worked in a lesson about cliffhangers, an important part of the Kamishibai tradition. Possibilities for this art form in the classroom include students making original Kamishibai, and students reading Kamishibai aloud for fluency.

Additional Resources

• Manga Kamishibai by Eric P. Nash (Abrams, 2009)
• Wikipedia definition
• Kamishibai Man by Allen Say (Houghton Mifflin, 2006)
• Kamishibai for Kids (supplier)

I’ve had a Kindle for almost two years and have used it once or twice for a total of one hour.  Does that mean I’m not “ereading?” 

No.

I don’t use my Kindle often.  But I do use GoogleReader, GoogleBooks, iBooks, Zite, Flipboard and various free content rich apps like the British Library 19th Century Collection and NYPL Biblion.  And I’ve also figured out what Calibre is.

GoogleReader

I’ve been hoarding blogs for years now on my precious GoogleReader.  When I read bloggers who say RSS readers are on the way out I get a funny feeling in my stomach and think, “no that can’t possibly be true.”  Google, please don’t kill GoogleReader.

GoogleBooks

I’ve gone to GoogleBooks to find fiction from the late 1800s, early 1900s.  I downloaded a copy of Chehkov’s Uncle Vanya to prep for a play I was going to see about a month ago.  Thank you Google Books and Harvard Library for scanning and sharing this high quality and convenient resource.

iBooks

I use iBooks for epub ebooks, like the free downloadable books that Kristin Fontichiaro publishes on Smashwords, and to open and save PDFs on my iPhone and iPad.

Zite and Flipboard

I use Zite to build a customizable newstream that I read on my idevices.  Flipboard creates an attractive, illustrated ebook from my Twitter and GoogleReader streams.

Free Content Rich Apps

British Library 19th Century Collection and Biblion NYPL are the two free library apps I’ve gotten to know.  They hold highly targeted digital archives, including ebooks, essays, and primary documents, in distinctively designed containers. Using them is like browsing through amazing antique stores. The British Library 19th Collection contains some fascinating travel writing, and Biblion focuses on the 1939-1940 World’s Fair in Queens.

Calibre—when you don’t have an iPad

My friend was published in a literary magazine a couple of months ago and they sent her a link to a free epub edition of the issue.  Not having an iPad, she couldn’t access the magazine on her MacBook because it doesn’t read iBooks files (this is how our friends at Apple encourage us to buy more hardware).

Enter Calibre, an open source ereader tool that organizes and reads epub files (and probably other file formats, too). Download it for free and start reading ebooks on your desktop computer.

Kindle

Why don’t I use Kindle?  Because I’ve had so much fun exploring these other ereading tools, they’ve meshed better with my existing habits, and they’re free!  I did fire up my Kindle a few months ago because Seth Godin’s Domino Project on Amazon published a free ebook that I thought I should read.  

Happy ereading!

Photo credit goes to librarian extraordinaire Buffy Hamilton. Funny how I search “ereading” on Creative Commons and her photos are returned first:

 Some rights reserved by theunquietlibrarian. Photo link.

I’m always signing up for new platforms online.  Sometimes it’s like shouting into the void ( Visual.ly?) but usually I learn something exciting that has applications to education.

I signed up for Vook a few months ago and heard back from them earlier this week about getting a beta tester account and taking training.  I just finished the training and am impressed with the ease and flexibility of this tool. 

Vook makes

• standard ebooks
• enhanced ebooks
• custom CSS templates

Vook uploads from

• word
• mp3
• mp4
• mp4 video

Vook publishes to

• mobi
• epub

reaching Kindle, iBooks, and Nook, and other ebook publishing platforms like Smashwords.

Do you have some content that you would like to see as an ebook?  I would love to get some practice with this tool, and would be interested in producing an ebook file for you.

Please contact me here or at alida.hanson@gmail.com.

Created by: HackCollege

Check out the Common Core app I added to my blog.  Look on the right hand side of the page, click on the tab, and you’ll get handy pull out directory of English and Math Common Core standards for grades K-12.

It’s easy to grab the code and it to your blog.

Image courtesy Flickr user Photos by Stan

As librarians and graduate students, we know that citations are the basis of scholarship.  Academic careers are made and broken on the strength of citations (academics track citations of their own work, which increases their influence and value).

But what about high school students?  Yes, they need to know how to cite and make bibliographies for papers, and it’s a tool to consider plagiarism.  But what do students actually learn from citations?

Read more …