The Prodigal Blogger Returns, Along with iPhone Citations

Well......so much for my Christmas blogging blitz!  I have just not been motivated to blog the past few months.  I'd have an idea for a post or learn something new, but couldn't be bothered to actually write it down and share.  Not good.  Mea culpa.  I suspect if you search that term on the blog, it would pop up several times; I'm definitely a go-through-phases poster, which is only the least reason among many while I'll never be a Doug or a Buffy or a Joyce.

Anyway, I am currently escaping from the end of the Mongolian winter and luxuriating in a 5 star hotel in Borneo,  attending EARCOS, the big conference for Asian international schools.  I'm doing a short workshop tomorrow on Animoto booktrailers, which I've written about previously here, so I won't do it again!  

I'm attending other workshops, though, and have fodder for much online thought, in addition to planning and running Literacy Week at the school a few weeks ago, so I'll post all my stuff on that once I'm back.

In the meantime, here's a nifty little iPhone app I learned about yesterday:  Quick Cite
It's a 99 cents app wherein you basically take a picture of a book's barcode, and it emails you the citation. You can choose among several formats: MLA, APA, etc.  and they have plans to integrate with EndNote--f any of you are using that--in the next few days.

I'm excited about this.  Like most schools, ours "officially" tells students they can't use their phones, but let's be realistic about it.  I ignore that most of the time (as do the students!), and love pointing out ways they can use their smartphones for something other than texting!  In fact, I'd argue we have an obligation to do that, but not everyone agrees.

That's it for now--I'm off to the Bornean forests to view the Orangutans!  I attended a workshop yesterday on QR Codes, so will post my thoughts on those tomorrow. (I know, I know:  you've heard THAT before! )

bibme!

Here I am for what is turning into my bi-monthly posting. Anyone still reading? I'm thinking what I may do is do frequent blogging during summer, when everyone else stops!

If you haven't found it yet, you need to check out Bibme. It's free, and the coolest/easiest citation tool I've seen. It even offers Chicago style, which our history department uses, and does it correctly (apparently Citation Machine doesn't).

The free account allows users to save their bibliography and add to it, export it as a Word document or save to their account. It even makes suggestions for further reading, based on the titles you input.

Now, the very coolest feature is Autofill. Type in the title of a book, article, website or film, and it searches its database for matches, offering those it thinks fits. You choose the appropriate title, and it fills in the rest, or fills it what it has and allows you to put in the details. If it doesn't find a match, you can select your resource type and fill the details in manually.

I emailed the link to the students, and they've been thanking me in droves! Well, one. But she was very effusive....