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Mrs. Betty Shiver, Westwood's curriculum director and I been working on this project with Stephen Windwalker, the Kindle Nation Daily ebook guru. (See eBook Revolution where I recommended his blog.) We "met" sometime in February through an email. He writes my "go to" blog for free ebooks and reviews.
Those of you who follow me know that first (like Julie Lindsay and I did with Flat Classroom) we start SMALL and work out the issues and plan for scalability and then move to add a few more before we move to large-scale scalability. (i.e. 800 kids on a wiki project like we do w/ Flat Classroom.)
I expect this will be the same. So, follow the blog (http://kids.kindlenationdaily.com) and send it to your friends and librarians. For now, I encourage you to have your students post their own review of the book as a comment or ask questions of the students who wrote the review. Let's get the conversation between kids, librarians, and teachers going about books. When we scale, people who have participated and show their adeptness with online media may be a factor. (Face it - blogs are blocked in many schools so we need to know if you can converse.
If you are interested in participating in the future, please fill out this form.It is great to see people who are interested having content from real students and I know others have done this but I guess it is my time to "learn how."
NEWS RELEASE
For immediate release
Kindle Nation Daily and Local School Announce Launch of New “Kindle Kids’ Corner” Blog to Help Kids Find Great eBooks
Camilla, Georgia USA (March 7, 2011) — Camilla, Georgia school, Westwood Schools and Kindle Nation Daily blogger Stephen Windwalker announce a cooperative effort to launch the Kindle Kids Corner Book Review blog (http://kids.kindlenationdaily.com). Westwood Students in grades 2-8 will be writing bi-weekly book reviews for Windwalker’s Kindle Kids Corner, a spinoff for kids from his popular Kindle Nation Daily blog targeted to adults.
“One thing many of us love about the Kindle is that it instantly expands the number of books at our fingertips from whatever we have in our homes or our school libraries to, literally, millions,” said Windwalker. “With the launch of the Kindle Kids’ Corner blog, we’re hoping that kids will help other kids find entertaining and appropriate ebooks and get a little writing experience in the process.”
Westwood Schools technology program, led by leading educational blogger, Vicki Davis (Cool Cat Teacher Blog - http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com), has received many awards for their global collaborative efforts including the Flat Classroom project featured in Thomas Friedman’s book The World is Flat, and the NetGenEd project coordinated with Leading author, Don Tapscott. Vicki’s blog has received numerous awards including the 2008 International Edublog Award for Best Teacher blog and is co-author of a book on global collaboration in the classroom to be published by Pearson Publishing in January 2012.
“As we move to bring leading global collaborative efforts of all kinds to every student at Westwood, this is a natural progression for us,” says Davis. “We want our students to actively use social media to improve their lives and the lives of others and blogging is a unique form of writing distinct from the traditional essays written in classrooms.”
Ross Worsham, Headmaster, says, “The Internet is an incredible opportunity for our rural students to shine both nationally and internationally. We may play for state in Football but in our technology program our playing field is the world.”
This program will be led by curriculum director, Betty Shiver and piloted by middle school teacher, Deana Rogers and elementary teacher, Andrea Stargel. The first posting was from student Dru F. about the book The Last Night by Hilari Bell.
Windwalker, a former teacher, brick-and-mortar bookseller, and publishing executive, began writing books and blog posts about the Kindle the first week it was launched in November 2007, and his Kindle user’s guide was the number-one bestselling book in the Kindle Store in 2008. Kindle Nation Daily is located on the web at http://www.kindlenationdaily.com/ and Windwalker can be reached via email at kindlenation@gmail.com.
Westwood Schools is a private K-12 school located at 255 Fuller Street in Camilla, Georgia where “every child is a winner.” The school was founded in 1971. For information, call (229) 336-7992 or visit www.westwoodschools.org.
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For more information on the Kindle Kids Corner blog, contact kindlenation@gmail.com
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