YouTube EDU

YouTube EDU has been around for a year. If you haven't checked it out, you should. It now features over 65,000 academic videos and 350 full courses from universities like Stanford, Yale, and MIT. Here is the Education Channel on YouTube EDU.

Open Culture blog offers compilation of "intelligent" YouTube channels. Great way to explore what YouTube has to offer for your own edification or your students'. Monty Python all in one place is quite handy, after all.

On a related note, C-Span has made its entire video library available. All 23 years--160,000 hours. Maybe not as entertaining as YouTube, but certainly both current and historical. The archive is searchable and free. Includes Book TV broadcasts. I did pretty well on this quiz; how about you?

New 23

The 2010 version of 23 Things On a Stick launched February 1. MILI participants are welcome to sign up. This year it is a monthly newsletter--Things On a Stick--delivered via email. Each issue will offer two to three Things of use in libraries or personally. There are no other requirements--no blogging, no deadlines--and no prizes! You can find the Newsletter Archive here or go to the Things On a Stick Archive blog to Join the Mailing list.

ProQuest Resources

In light of the session on databases held recently, here are some additional resources from ProQuest. ProQuest is the vendor for ProQuest Newstand Complete, Historical New York Times, and Historical Minneapolis Tribune. Newstand Complete and Historical Tribune are available via ELM. MELSA provides the Historical New York Times through metro area public libraries 9public library card needed for access to MELSA provided databases).

ProQuest Newsletters (free to subscribe). They, of course, promote their database products. Useful for curriculum ideas, links to ProQuest videos and more.

• Explorations for updates and inspiration for K-12 teachers
• History Happenings for K-12 teachers

You can follow ProQuest on Twitter, which is where I learned about these newsletters. @ProQuest

There's an App for That

Here is Jane's Elearning Pick of the Day's list of iPhone and iPod Touch apps for productivity and education. Do you have any apps for education or productivity you like?

MovieClips

Here's an easy, free, & legal way to find and share clips from movies:

With over 12,000 movie clips, you can search, find, view, discuss and share scenes from your favorite movies.

for a year, the team at MOVIECLIPS has worked tirelessly to collect clips and make them completely searchable by actor, title, genre, occasion, action, mood, character, theme, setting, prop, and even dialogue. This makes it simple to find a scene fast. We are hopeful that you’ll use this powerful search to discover new movies. For that reason, we've included links with each clip to easily buy or rent the feature-length movie.

While is is far from exhaustive (What? No Goldie Hawn as a librarian in Foul Play!), it is a place to start if you need a discussion starter or video clip for another use.

Libraries and Museums Online

MakeUseOf.com has a nice round-up of some libraries and museums that have digitized collections. Included are the Library of Congress, National Library of Scotland, Smithsonian, British Museum, British Library, The Hermitage, and the Louvre.

Another resource MakeUseOf points out is the European Virtual Museum. This collaboration among 20 museums has these features:

• Browse historic items from over 20 museums across Europe.
• View items by country, museum, time period BC and categories.
• Each item has it is own page with detailed related information.

Wordle Trick

Here is a handy trick for Wordle--you can keep words together in phrases if you use the tilde between words. Here is a blog post that explains it http://www.jamiekeddie.com/602.

And here is my Wordle using the trick!

Dear Snta Clas--

Even Santa is into texting, apparently. For a "nominal fee," Santa will send a child 3 text messages prior to Christmas and, for an additional fee, one on Christmas morning. According to a Burnsville Mall spokesperson:

We thought [Santa texting] was clever, something fun, trendy and different that would appeal to children. We think it adds to the whole holiday experience for the kids.

Read more here.

In other Santa communication news, the US Postal Service reversed its earlier decision to block Santa's mail sent to North Pole, Alaska. The nationwide Operation Santa program uses volunteers to answer the letters. USPS made the decision after one of the volunteers answering the letters turned out to be a registered sex offender. USPS has tightened security and screening for volunteers.

Canadian children can write to Santa, who has his own postal code HOH OHO, or email their requests via a form on Canadian Post's web site.

And, just to brag about my own relationship with Santa--I taught him how to email and search the Internet when I was teaching the Senior Techies program in southeastern Minnesota. Actually--I taught two different guys in two different towns who claimed they were Santa. They had pictures and everything! How is that possible?!