Your Resource for Information Literacy
Check out the new EasyBib App in the Chrome Web Store!
EasyBib is constantly working hard to make the research process run more smoothly. That’s why we’re so excited to tell you EasyBib is now directly accessible through the Google Chrome homepage. We would love to get your feedback on EasyBib, so please help us out by writing a review!
An Introduction to Pearltrees
Kyle Pace is a District Instructional Technology Specialist and Google Certified Teacher in the Lee’s Summit, Missouri School District. Kyle, a former elementary teacher, provides professional development for teachers and works with students on educational technology topics such as Google tools, social media, mobile learning, and more. Kyle has presented multiple times at conferences such as ISTE and FETC. Kyle is also the founder of EdcampKC, an annual “unconference” in the Midwest. twitter.com/kylepace and kylepace.com.
I’ve written and spoken before about the essential skill (a literacy according to Howard Rheingold) of not only being able to collect content from their network(s), but to curate what’s collected. Just like a museum curator pours over artifacts to find the very best to display, we should also do the same not just for our own professional resources, but see it as an obligation to model it for our students.
I came across a new resource recently (I believe the hat tip goes to Alec Couros for this find) called Pearltrees. After you sign up for your account, you can start building your own Pearltrees. Pearltrees are made up of “pearls”, or sites you want to curate into particular the Pearltrees (topics) you’ve created. Give this 40-second video a watch from the Pearltrees site called “Why Pearltrees?”
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UnzYWinUhk&w=560&h=315]
Once you’ve signed up for your account, you will already have your “root” Pearltree created for you with your username. You will also see a couple of Pearltrees waiting for you. One is called Getting Started and another is called Pearltree Videos. You can see them in my main Pearltree page here.
You will also see there that I have created a Pearltree called Digital Citizenship. I added “pearls” to the Digital Citizenship Pearltree by using the “Pearler” tool, which is a browser extension that’s available for both Google Chrome and Firefox. When I came to a site I wanted to add to a Pearltree, I clicked the Pearltree extension (I was using Chrome) clicked on the Pearltree I wanted to add it to, and it was instantly there. Easy enough.
As you noticed above you can share links to specific Pearltrees in your account and also embed any Pearltree you’d like on your own website, blog, LMS, etc. It’s also easy to share directly to Twitter and Facebook.
I also like the emphasis on sharing of your Pearltrees. They call themselves a social curation community. You can even give it a try by importing your Delicious bookmarks (I’m a Diigo user so I did not try this feature). So not only does this site give you an easy way to curate great content, but it also recognizes the importance of being social about it by making Pearltrees easy to share and they can also be built collaboratively.
Here are a few of the more important features that I believe Pearltrees offers:
- Easy to use interface
- The browser extension works nicely for quickly adding content to different Pearltrees
- They are easy to share
- Pearltrees can be created collaboratively
- It’s a web-based application, allowing students to access content from anywhere, including the free iPad app
Think of Pearltrees as a content curation meets concept-mapping tool. I had a great time learning how to use it and I think it would be great for students as they curate content they need for various classes. I look forward to watching it improve. Have fun!
Read MoreNew Features from EasyBib
Happy January Bibs! While you were taking a well-deserved rest from school we were hard at work bringing you some really great new features. For instance, if you haven’t already you should download our free mobile app. It was a big hit on iOS last year and we’re happy to announce that it’s now available for Android!
To start out the updates, we now include your email address in the top right corner of the page so it’s easier for you to remember which account you’re logged in to.
This becomes even more important when you realize what our next big update is: collaboration! That’s right, you can now share your bibliography with other EasyBib users. Once logged in, just click “share” on the desired bibliography, enter the email addresses of those you want to share with, and choose sharing permissions (do you want to allow editing and commenting?). It’s that easy! We will later come out with the ability to share your notebook. Click the images below to see videos of the features in action!
There are some other updates as well. You can now use our Paperlink feature to link to spreadsheets and presentations, along with documents, in Google Docs.
Read MoreEasyBib Releases Free Android App
Last June we released our FREE mobile app for the iPhone and a few months ago we launched a native iPad version. Users were thrilled that they could generate their citations effortlessly on the go – as attested to by rave reviews and thousands of downloads. But some people were left out…
Not anymore though. Today we’re proud to announce that our FREE app is now available for Android devices. Download it from the Android Market now!
The app functions exactly the same as the iOS version. When you first launch it, you will be taken to the bar code scanner. Scan any book you like and your citation is automatically created.
You can also search for any source you’d like by selecting the “Search” tab. Once you select your source from the list of result, it will again be automatically formatted.
Other great features include: seamless transition between MLA, APA and Chicago styles; managing citations, and the ability to email your lists so you can add them to your EasyBib account from a computer.
If you want to see the app in action, check out the video we created of it running on iOS devices.
Read MoreEasyBib App Featured in the AppStore
Great news today everybody! EasyBib’s FREE app for iOS devices is featured in the Writing section of the Education apps on iTunes. We’re really excited that so many people love the app, and better still that they are using it to help them make their citations more easily.
If you haven’t checked it out yet, our app allows you to use your device’s camera to scan a book’s bar code and then automatically generate a citation from it. You can then seamlessly switch between MLA, APA, and Chicago/Turabian styles. You can also search by a keyword or ISBN, and once you’re done you can email those citations to yourself. Smart.
Read More