Today is the bicentenary of Charles Dickens birth, and I've been celebrating by finding apps for my iPad that will increase my knowledge of the illustrious author. I already had some - Christmas Carol is after all my favourite book of all time - but I've found some other gems to add to my digital jewel box too! 

Christmas Carol, Padworx - already had this and have loved it ever since I first downloaded it. I enjoy all of Padworx' apps (Dracula is also very good) , the sound effects and interactive elements make reading on the iPad a more immersive experience than reading one of my well thumbed paper copies.

A Christmas Carol, Starlight Storybook - This one tells the famous festive story in the form of a poem, written illustrated and animated by John Marr. It would be perfect to introduce younger children to Dickens and the animations are charming. Very happy to have discovered this today!

Dickens Dark London, Museum of London - This app was produced to celebrate the Dickens exhibition at the Museum which runs up until the 10th June. It's extremely dark and atmospheric and follows Dickens on his night walks around London whilst suffering with insomnia which is something I can certainly empathise with. Includes a map than transforms from Dickens' times to the present day and will eventually have 5 walks narrated wonderfully by actor Mark Strong. The first walk , Seven Dials is available to download for free and the following ones will be £1.49 each, or free to download when at the museum or at the location. Very clever, I feel some field trips coming on!

Dickens Papers, - a series of Dickens works that are going to be published in periodic installments echoing the way much of the author's work was published. Includes video and photos from the present day as the creators walked in the footsteps of Dickens. As a keen amateur photographer, very much enjoying this one.

Charles Dickens Works, PicoJoys Studio 2011 - I have always meant to read more Dickens but hadn't got round to it. This app is basic, just books in the usual swipe to turn the page format but it will stop any excuses I may have been making about not having the books with me. Now which shall I choose first?

Audio Book Shelf, Cross Forward Consulting - I enjoy listening to audio books when travelling and this one although not exclusively Dickens , is great value for £1.49 with 13 classic books to choose from and an in app purchase of 69p getting you a further 6 adventure stories. Nicely presented in the form of a virtual bookshelf , books download to the iPad when you click on them to start reading so would probably be a good idea to do this when using wifi not 3G.

Have a great Dickens day.......off to listen to a story now ;0).

I've had a purge of the apps on my iPad this week and deleted quite a few but still have about 400 so didn't go too mad! I am often asked which apps I think are best (searching on the app store isn't exactly a fun experience - they really need to introduce a decent Boolean search on there!) so I thought I'd write some posts with some suggestions. Starting with Early Years today, will have to do several lists because too many to fit on one.

1. The Numberlys - Following on from the immensely successful Morris Lessmore app Moonbot have now released this app which is designed to help kids learn their alphabet. It is of course utterly beautiful, in the style of an old black and white movie and no iPad used by children (or adults in touch with the child within!) should be without it 
2. Sound Touch - hours of fun with 6 different categories of pictures , a simple tap brings up another picture with an associated noise, each main pic having 5 behind it. Keeps young children amused for ages.
3. First Words Deluxe - lets learn some new words! touching each picture triggers the word to be said aloud. Basic, but words said very clearly
4. Mr Thorne's Phonics - couldn't leave out the excellent Mr Thorne and his phonics videos, such an engaging teacher and very good value
5. Sammy Squirrel Battles the Alphabet Robots - like the graphics on this , slightly disconcerted by the American accent ('zee' instead of 'zed') but fun to play and works on upper/lower case recognition
6. Talking Hippo/Talking Tom etc - popular with kids of all ages and good for doing some basic speaking and listening work! 

I will cover books for younger children in a later post. If you want more, there's a great blog focussed on on apps recommendations for kids, called Apps Playground, well worth a look:
http://www.appsplayground.com/apps/

I have just begun my celebrations for National libraries day by pre ordering the Library Book from Amazon. Looks like it will be a genuinely good read and with profits going to the Reading Agency it should provide that glow inside of doing something good at the same time. I was shocked to read on a blog from Ian Clark (http://infoism.co.uk/blog/2012/01/no-national-libraries-day-in-kent/ )that the Kent Libraries will not be celebrating National Libraries Day .....or was I? My local library is in Greenhithe, it's in a small building that is set back from the road and is extremely easy to miss. Once you do realise that it exists a warm welcome greets you when you go in. The staff are friendly and helpful and I always enjoy chatting to them. The stock however wouldn't encourage anyone to pop in - to be honest I often struggle to find anything vaguely current to read and the books are looking tired and uncared for. Their funding in the last few years must have been nearly non existent and the books are sadly out of date. There are always people there when I visit but then as the library is only open for 2 afternoons and 1 morning a week I suppose they are making the most of it. 

The library is just opposite the entrance of Ingress Park estate and I would have thought that it would be overrun with customers. Apparently one of the staff approached the libraries service with a plan to leaflet the area to make people more aware of the resource they have on their doorstep, but this plan was denied as any literature has to be standardised and approved - so nothing was done. The neglect of the library is saddening and a crying shame but as there are plans afoot to close some Kent libraries it's not hard to see why no effort at promotion has been made by the council. 

The fact that there is no mention of a day that has been organised to celebrate the contribution libraries make on the Kent Libraries webpage is an utter disgrace - and seems to be a cynical political decision. Kent County Council you should be very ashamed! 

Only a few days until the big day and I can't wait! I'm well known for being a festive freak and I've been reading themed books for ages to get ready for it. Thought I'd share some of my favourites here;

For children
A Pussycat's Christmas - when my daughter was young she was asked to read this to her whole primary school, with the pictures on overhead projector sheets and I can still see her now, so seriously reading. It's a beautiful book. 
http://tinyurl.com/c9svgeq


Tosca's Christmas - by the same author, illustrations are delightful and Tosca looked similar to Lady, our cat at the time 
http://tinyurl.com/bojcomo


The Christmas Miracle of Jonathon Toomey - moving story told without too much sentimentalism and the pictures are quietly wonderful
http://tinyurl.com/cyewk4l


Spot's First Christmas - who can resist Spot? my son certainly couldn't and we read this book so many times, we probably all learnt it off by heart!http://tinyurl.com/bntuehc
 
Santa's Twin & Robot Santa - I read a lot of Dean Koontz when I was younger and was delighted to discover these two picture books written by him about Santa's naughty brother http://tinyurl.com/cjcpxfl       http://tinyurl.com/cg9dl4t

The Night Before Christmas - classic of course, we always read it as a family on Christmas Eve before bed, even though my kids are grown now. We still have this old copy of it that was published in the year my son was born and it is much cherished.
http://tinyurl.com/crz7224

Chick Lit
I'm not ashamed to admit it, I find romance makes for very relaxing reading, especially books that have a festive theme and these have been my favourites this year:

Christmas at Tiffany's - loved the glamour and travel description in this book, didn't want it to end
http://tinyurl.com/clwfxj5

1225 Christmas Tree Lane - I only discovered Debbie Macomber this year , her books are as comforting as a cup of hot chocolate with marshmallows on a cold night and this book was no exception, left a warm fuzzy feeling lol.

What else have I read this December? well I have returned to an old favourite, Rumpole at Christmas, his irascibility and the dry humour in John Mortimer's writing are very amusing. Finishing with the best I am also re reading Christmas Carol but on my ipad this year, excellent Padworx version that I am very much enjoying.

Wishing everyone a very happy Christmas, hope you get all the books you've been wishing for (I'm hoping Santa will bring me the Amazon voucher I've been hinting at!) 

Happy reading!

Feeling very angry at this moment after reading John McTernan's article in the Telegraph (http://tgr.ph/oyQV0t). Apparently the fact that I oppose the closure of public libraries makes me a 'Liberal whinger'  and I am only fighting to keep libraries open out of condescension and guilt.....what utter rubbish the man writes! Starting with the old chestnut 'you can get it all on the internet these days' argument. yes, you can get a wealth of information on the internet, this is true in fact you can get such a flood of information from one search that it's all too easy to drown in it."You can become ridiculously well informed ridiculously quickly" with Google apparently - you can also become ridiculously ill informed. Librarians are trained to help people swim in this flood and help steer them towards the relevant facts. "Fast cheap computing has spread to most homes" - operative word there is most and if that's his information then he certainly hasn't worked in any of the schools I visit where internet access at home is by no means a given, and parents are struggling to pay increasingly high food bills let alone spending money on internet access. They certainly don't have the money to buy their children the 'whizzy new mobile phones' the article mentions. As to 'virtually every kid has a desk at home' - utter rubbish, if I had said this to some of the students I used to work with who were sharing their bedrooms with 3 or 4 siblings they would have had hysterics! Not only did they not have desks but the noise at home made it impossible to study and they spent long hours in the local library working so hard to try and safeguard their future employment prospects. Libraries in secondary schools are indeed first class but the sad fact is that many of these are under threat of closure too, or have had their budgets slashed and anyway cannot offer the out of school times access that public libraries can. 
Personally I am a computer geek , I fully admit it and make good use of Overdrive to borrow books to read on my iPad when travelling but I still take out 'real' books from my library regularly , as do my grown up son and daughter.
Citing your qualifications and work experience certainly doesn't make your arguments any more credible Mr McTernan , I do hope you have never called yourself a librarian because you are a disgrace and indeed an embarrassment to the profession. 

Happy National Poetry Day everyone! First day of the Write Path international collaborative poetry project and today we will be continuing poems and finishing limericks started by published poets on the theme of Games which is the National Poetry Day theme this year. Please do have a look at the progress later today: http://writepath.ning.com/profiles/blog/list?q=06%2F10%2F2011
My own favourite poem is The Tiger by William Blake :http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~keith/poems/tyger.html
but in keeping with the theme of Games I'd like to share this one by Allen Ahlberg all about the 'games' students play with The Supply Teacher:http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-supply-teacher/
I hope you enjoy a day filled with rhythm and rhyme. With the sad news today of the death of Steve Jobs I'd also like to dedicate The Tiger to him, he was indeed a tiger of a man and I hope his wifi signal in heaven is strong and unlimited.


http://www.nationalpoetryday.co.uk/

Yesterday I attended Creative Junction's celebratory event, Fete Create in Witney. It was held on a farm, Cogges and I was somewhat bemused to be presenting to a group of young people, in a barn with two very much in love doves cooing loudly overhead! (was relieved to remain clean however after the warning about flying poop I had!). I was talking about the work I have completed as part of a contract to help Ranelagh School English dept use more technology for their teaching. We completed a variety of mini projects - tweeting in the characters from Much Ado About Nothing, blogging as the same characters, using Voicethread to comment on bullying images, writing stories on Storybird, creating glogs for persuasive writing and on the themes of MAAN to be used for revision, making MyFakeWall pages for the characters in a play, writing poetry with Piclits and writing collaborative stories on Neo 2 notebooks that were then published on a blog. Some of the Ranelagh students I worked with were in in my session yesterday and I was very pleased to see them! The creative partnership with this school worked really well, and I think we all learnt something from staff to students. It was different , talking to kids that were perched on hay bales but good fun too!

We had a wonderful picnic lunch in the very sunny orchard and were so very lucky to have a visit from author Philip Pullman. I didn't have a books to get signed so Philip signed the back of my iPad case! Even more treasured now of course.


Such amazingly creative work I heard about yesterday, Creative Junction are fabulous facillitators, such a shame that they no longer have funding to continue. Schools and students will feel their loss greatly. 

Whilst browsing Twitter this morning I came across a link to a new app for the iPad; The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr Morris Lessmore and decided to have a look. I have numerous apps on the iPad, some that are functional, some that are for fun but none of them are in any way near to the quality of Morris. This is the most beautiful, moving app I have ever seen , it made me laugh and I'm not ashamed to say, at the end of it I even shed a tear. It is the first app released by Moonbot Studios and at £2.99 is a real bargain. I can't wait to show it to .......well everyone really, it is that good. This app has justified my spending on the ipad all by itself, I defy anyone , child or adult to not be captivated and spellbound by it. I will eagerly await more apps from Moonbot but not sure they can top Morris!
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-fantastic-flying-books/id438052647?mt=8

Today I have been working with year 9 students in Bracknell who were composing poetry and illustrating it using Piclits.com. The quality of images on Piclits is excellent and I was very impressed by the imagination shown by the young people in the class, who found Piclits easy and fun to use. Such a good, simple resource that can be used in so many ways!

Now, I am not a political animal. Politics and politicians normally do not impinge on my life at all - yes I know that is a shameful admission but to quote Bob Dylan 'the times they are a changing'. This government seems to be contradicting themselves at every point, one moment saying literacy for all is one of their key goals, in the next breath taking away funding from organisations that promote reading and writing to young people. The latest ridiculous idea is that primary schools are to be given a set list of the books they must study - what a sensible idea that is ...not! http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-13320661 How can you decide on certain books that will appeal to all children, boys and girls from every area and cultural diversity and who is going to make this decision? Surely we should have faith in teachers and librarians to have the specialist and local knowledge to be able to choose books to study that will appeal to children in their school without dictating to them about their book choices - after all they know the kids in their school best. Children are not 'one size fits all' and they are all at different stages in their reading journey, will this be taken into account? I suspect not. Having set texts at secondary school has had the effect of turning lots of young people away from reading - even a great work of literature that would normally appeal to a certain age group becomes boring and tedious when one 'has' to read and indeed, dissect it endlessly. Yes we should be encouraging children to read widely, there are so very many fantastic books written for primary kids from brilliant authors that really understand how to enthrall kids but to generalise and say 'all seven year olds should read this book' is quite ludicrous and will not encourage students to explore authors and genres to find things that excite, amuse maybe even terrify them and 'turn them on' to reading as a pleasure for life . If the government want to encourage more primary school kids to learn to love books perhaps they should be looking to ensure that every school has a visit every week from a knowledgeable, enthusiastic, qualified librarian - this would have far more impact than dictating which books should be studied.