I watched the #oneweek unveil at this afternoon on Ustream. Turns out the team assembled at George Mason University built a WordPress plugin that allows you to create custom eBooks from your blog posts and/or external RSS feeds. Projects can be assembled through a drag-and-drop interface. Publish formats currently include ePub, PDF, TEI and RTF.
From the Anthologize blog,
Use the power of WordPress to transform online content into an electronic book.
Anthologize is a free, open-source, plugin that transforms WordPress 3.0 into a platform for publishing electronic texts. Grab posts from your WordPress blog, import feeds from external sites, or create new content directly within Anthologize. Then outline, order, and edit your work, crafting it into a single volume for export in several formats, including—in this release—PDF, ePUB, TEI.
Please note that Anthologize cannot be installed on blogs hosted at WordPress.com.
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From the “Will Richardson always makes me think file,” I found this quote from one of his latest Weblogg-ed posts, New Reading, New Writing, to really set the wheels in motion.
Is social reading and social writing in our kids’s futures? I don’t think there is much doubt about that. More and more I’m finding Diigo annotations and notes cropping up on the articles and essays that I read, and by and large I’ve found the commentors to be serious, thoughtful and articulate.
Much like Mr. Richardson points out, I’ve been finding Diigo annotations more and more myself since I started using the Diigo toolbar for Firefox. When I read that quote initially, it had me thinking about how Diigo might look in a classroom environment. I guess I was thinking more of a 1-on-1 environment. However, upon further reflection, I don’t think that would be the best way to integrate Diigo.
Why, you ask? To me, Diigo is a tool that you use during those quiet, reflective times. Alone to your work, Diigo is there to help you push that bright yellow highlighter across digital text, rather than the thin pages of a paperback. You don’t really use Diigo with a crowd. You use it during “me” time, when you’re in a reflective mood and capable to be attentive and think critically about what you are reading. For most students, I don’t think that type of “me” time happens very often during the 6-8 hours that they are cramped in a classroom desk with 30 other kids around them. So when and how would a student use Diigo?
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Last night on Twitter, Bud Hunt commented that Writing in the 21st Century by Kathleen Blake Yancey was a must read for educators. Since I’ve had that pdf on my desktop for a week or two now, I lamented back that my reason for not reading yet. My pathetic excuse back is outlined in our tweetversation below.
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