Websites

Bookopolis

Bookopolis is a website for students (and teachers and parents) to use for book recommendations, tracking reading, creating a list of books to read, and connecting with friends. Students can create an account to look for new books to read. They can search for books by topic, grade level, award winners, etc. Books can be rated and/or reviewed by other students. Parents need to approve the account and anyone who they want to have as friends. Students can also keep a reading log online. I plan on trying this with my class this year. I regularly have students who lose their monthly reading logs and this would provide another avenue for them to keep track of what they read. It would be something I can show to the parents during Back to School Night. 

FlipQuiz

The FlipQuiz website allows you to create game boards for review or a specific activity. The boards are a nice interactive Jeopardy format and the questions and answers (if you choose) are shown on the screen. This would be a great way to review a specific unit or topic. I could see using this as a librarian or a classroom teacher. I used to have a Jeopardy board I created with poster board, Velcro, and markers. However, that has gone missing and it was limited in the number of questions and topics I could include. FlipQuiz looks like it has many more options and then I could save the boards for re-use with other classes and in the future. I've also tried to use PowerPoint templates, but this appears to be much easier to work with.

Storyboard That

Storyboard That looks like a fun website. Students can use it to create their own stories and comics. They can add the background and then add the characters and the text. They can also create a web diagram or other layout if they don’t want the traditional layout of one pane after another. There is also an app available for iPads. A librarian or classroom teacher could use this to have students create stories about their lives or demonstrate something they’ve learned. I could see incorporating it into our biography project in 2^nd grade. Instead of asking students to create a person, they could create a story demonstrating the important things they’ve learned about that person’s life. We could also use it to illustrate the different character building blocks we talk about at the beginning of the year.  

Blog to Follow

I had trouble choosing one blog to follow. I've been to Adventures of Library Girl before and do plan to return there, but the blog that really intrigued me was The Library Voice. I enjoyed that Shannon Miller posts a lot about incorporating technology into lessons. Her post on Symbaloo and potential lesson plans sounded really interesting and I signed up for the webinar she's doing on Thursday. Symbaloo is the tool I used to create and organize my PLN for 678 and I really enjoyed playing around with it. One of my goals this year is to incorporate technology much more into my classroom and continue that integration when I'm a librarian. She also talks about resources to usse in a makerspace. This blog has a lot of resources that I could see myself using and delving into. I look forward to keeping up with the new information she posts.  

Presentation tools

Thinglink is something I could see using as a librarian to offer resources and/or describe student projects for my students and parents. It offers a nice way to organize information without cluttering up the screen with everything at once like when you try to put it on a page. My group for 678 is using Thinglink for our summer reading program design. We have one image with all of our books that we are using to link different resources for each book. Students would be able to access everything for our program from the one image. I could also see using Thinglink to share a project or special activity with my parents and students.

Haikudeck looks like it would be a lot of fun to create presentations on and that it could potentially be much easier to use than PowerPoint! It also might be something that would be much more student-friendly than PowerPoint and easier for them to make their own presentations to showcase their work or ideas.

With the popularity of graphic novels, I see a lot of potential with Pixton. I've watched students draw their own comic strips for the last few years. I can just see their eyes lighting up and the wheels start turning when they are given the opportunity to create comic strips on the computer! I was able to create a simple one without too much trouble, so I think it would be possible to teach them how to use the program. Most of them will probably catch on much faster than I did.

3D Printing, Coding, & Robotics

As our students start to see more and more of these additional technologies outside of school, it's really important that schools try to incorporate them. I think these are all things that would fit really well into a Makerspace in the library. The Makerspace at Camelot Elementary School in FCPS uses Scratch programming and MXT Robotics. This YouTube video shows how they use those programs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=32&v=Hcnww3N-vHA. The students' eyes just light up when they talk about what they've been able to create in the Makerspace.

I have also seen first hand how kids can get excited about coding. Every kid in my school participated in the Hour of Code this year. They came back from the computer lab talking very animatedly about what they got to do. We work so hard to get students to explain their steps and break projects or ideas down into smaller steps. Coding requires them to go through that step by step process. I know not all schools have computer labs, but as a librarian hopefully I could offer the option of doing some coding to at least the students who are interested in it.

Robotics is something that, as a teacher, I'm pretty sure there would be plenty of students who know more about it than I do. While that's a little scary, what better way to give a student the opportunity to excel. I've had students come in and tell me about what they've built or done in robotics club. We've seen a few movies come out recently dealing with robotics such as Big Hero 6. It would be nice to be able to tie in some of their personal lives into what we're doing in class. We build circuits in 4th grade and I know they build on that throughout their science careers. Adding robotics would take those ideas to another level.

3D printing is another piece that would be nice to integrate into the classroom. Students could be required to design something for the printer that goes along with a particular project. I've done that before, but they've only been able to draw it or create it out of some kind of other material. Imagine the look on their faces when they see something they've designed come to life on a printer!

As much as it would be nice to incorporate these things into school, I imagine that funding for them is something that might be hard to come by or at least something that needs to be found through grants or other alternative funding.

QR Code Scavenger Hunt

http://www.classtools.net/QR/qr_generator.php?fold=2&fname=EmYV3&diff=0

The link above will take you to the QR codes for my Jackie Robinson review scavenger hunt. I had to open it in Google Chrome in order for the codes to show up, but I did check to make sure that the codes work. Not sure I can trust my second graders to walk around the school with iPads looking for QR codes, but they would really like it!

The QR code below is the first one for the directions. There are 5 more at the top link that have the questions for the scavenger hunt.

PowToon Video

As I was searching for a topic to use for my video and looking through all of my pictures, I had trouble settling on one idea. We're getting ready to leave in a couple of days to go to the beach with my in-laws. This year we'll have 12 of the 17 cousins with us, so it's always interesting to see how long they last on any given day. For the most part, they do quite well but we always end up with some of the questions on slide 3. However, the beauty of being at the beach is that you can always come back the next day!

Going to the Beach PowToon video

Video Tools

Of all the tools I tried, I played with PowToon the most. I ended up pushing through and creating my video on it. I was fairly please with my final product, but there were a lot of things I had to figure out on the fly and some I couldn't do. I tried multiple times to change the images I used on the 3rd slide which were the default images. However, I couldn't find something that still fit with my generic kid theme for that slide. If I had an upgraded membership, there would have been a lot more options for me to choose from. I also initially recorded my kids saying "Can we come back tomorrow?" and tried to add it to the last slide. However, then I realized that it wasn't possible for me to add that only to the last slide, the voiceover had to be as long as my slideshow. It was interesting to get my kids to wait until just the right moment to say it again! Needless to say, this is not something I'm likely to give my students to try. I might consider it with older students working in groups, but I don't really think early elementary kids would handle it well. I could see using it to create some cute presentations. It certainly has a lot more options than powerpoint and if I wanted to narrate the whole thing, it would be really easy to add the voiceover. The recommendation is actually that you write the script and record it first and then do the slides and timing based on your voiceover. That's something that would be interesting to try.

I also played with Animoto. I found it a good program to work with and didn't have too much trouble with it. I know many teachers who use it or similar programs to create end of year slideshows for their classes. I am not very good at taking pictures on a regular basis to have enough to do a slideshow at the end of the year. However, I could see using it as a way to promote a special activity or project. We did the marshmallow challenge at the beginning of the year as a class building and cooperative learning activity. I talked about it with the parents at Back to School night, but this would be a fun way to show them what the students had done.  

Two of the tools that really intrigued me were the iTunes apps Sock Puppets and Toontastic. We have a cart of 30 iPads at school that I would really like to incorporate into some of my instruction. Since these apps are free, they would be worth taking a shot at trying. I think the students would really like being able to create their own Sock Puppet and Toontastic videos. Both apps could potentially be used for our biography projects, where the students research someone and then usually create a large poster cutout of their person. They could use these apps to "interview" their person instead.  

Webpages

I had some trouble finding examples of school library websites that I was excited about. I did manage to find a few, but more often I found websites that had pieces I really liked. I am planning to use Weebly to make my website. It seems to be the one that I can play with the most. I'm a little concerned the website is going to end up looking dry based on what I see with the examples I've found. However, that will just have to be up to me to create a fun and inviting website.

My favorite website example I found was this one http://parkviewlibrary.weebly.com/ because it was bright and colorful. I found the mix of so many different apps on the home page to be very confusing, but I loved the map of "Who in the World is Visiting the Library Today?" and that it separated out the different grade levels. I think it could have done a better job of organizing the links on the home page and on the grade level pages.

On this website http://valenciahighlibrary.weebly.com/, I really like the section on the front page that highlights new books that are available. That is something my librarian is planning to do next year in the actual library, but it would be nice for the students to be able to check those out online as well.

Except for the opening wordle on the home page, this website (http://salisburyelementaryschoollibrary.weebly.com/) isn't all that exciting. However, it is very well organized and offers a lot of good information. This website (http://ensignschoollibrary.weebly.com/) also offers a large variety of well-organized information. Both of these last 2 websites have an added piece of a personal touch from the librarian. The wordle on the home page of the first one is nice. On the second page, the librarian invites everyone in anytime for a chat and offers her own favorite websites on the home page.

God Bless America (sung by my kids)

Voice Recorder >>

My kids have both learned "God Bless America" at school and regularly sing it at home. They loved recording it and would have done it over and over again until perfect, but here's their first take.

Audio Tools

Playing with the audio tools this week was fun. My kids got a huge kick out of the Blabberize site. I think they would have played on that one with me for a while. I could definitely see using something like that in the classroom to do something fun with my class. It could either be used for a fun project where they get to choose the photo and what it will say. I could also use it for some of my units, such has having a talking monarch butterfly up on the screen instead of me. Along those same lines is the Chatterpix App. I could see my students really enjoying that on the iPads at school. They could be required to choose a picture relating to what we're studying and have it say at least one fact they've learned. They could also potentially use something like this when we do our biography projects. They could put up a picture of the person they are studying and have him/her say a few lines.

I could also see using one of the recording tools such as Vocaroo, Audiopal, or Clyp to record student presentations to then post on our Blackboard site. I have often thought that it would be nice for me to be able to listen to presentations a second time or for the parents to be able to listen to them as well. This would provide an opportunity for everyone to have access to the presentations at a later date.

The first thing I thought about when opening Voki is that I could potentially create lessons on there, or at least a little bit of the instruction, so that I wouldn't have to do it over again. I think it would be really beneficial if you teach a lesson more than once. Part of me wonders if my students would pay more attention if there's a talking version of me on the screen rather than a live one. I'm sure the novelty of it would wear off at some point. Voki also has the potential for sub plans. Sometimes I have opted not to leave a lesson with a substitute because I wasn't sure she would present it I a way I would approve. If I used something like Voki, I would still be able to give the lesson and she would need to complete the follow through.

The Booktrack Reader App looked really neat, but I think it is too old for my current second graders. It might be nice to introduce to older students reading young adult novels as the soundtrack could add a nice touch to the story.

Creating an Infographic

Wow! All I can say is that this took me a lot longer to come up with something that satisfied me than I thought it would. I ended up using Canva to create my infographic. Here's the link to it if it's hard to read on the blog: https://www.canva.com/design/DABTPQ62d-k/CI8QG5D9ck08reDnIHgxdA/view?&utm_content=DABTPQ62d-k&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link&utm_source=sharebutton&cc_from_uid=UABTPdTu-HQ
At first I tried to use a template, but then I got frustrated when I couldn't change things the way I wanted them. Then I tried to design it all myself, but couldn't get everything to tie together the way I wanted. I finally settled on a different template and decided I was going to make it work whether I liked it or not. I had a vision in my head of what I wanted my images to be and I still think that I have too much text and not enough pop, but I was too frustrated to continue to fight it. I also quickly discovered that despite being able to search through a whole lot of images for what I wanted, only a very small portion of them was I able to use for free. Something got messed up with the font in the last paragraph and despite my efforts to fix it, it still doesn't look quite right. I'm sure as I did this more it would get easier and I would be much more comfortable with manipulating the information, but for now this is what I've got.

As I consider the implications of my first experience with creating an infographic, there are definitely some things to remember when trying to do this with students. It was hard to come up with a topic that was meaningful and one I felt I could manipulate. I think a potential way around that would be to incorporate the students' own questions and maybe have them survey other people about favorite books or what they like to do on their free time or something like that. This way they could present the information in a more traditional format as well as come up with an infographic to use. I also think I should definitely be more familiar with the software in order to better help troubleshoot and facilitate the students' infographics. If I want still have to fumble around with it than I won't be as effective in conveying the information to them. I should also be honest with them in how frustrated I was when I created my first infographic and that it's ok for the first attempt to not be perfect.

Using Image Editing and Creation Tools

As I have had some time to play with these different tools, I realize that most of these could be a lot of fun for students to play around with as well. The ability to modify pictures could be something that would really add detail to a project and potentially make it more unique.

For my modified image, I used the ImageChef - Meme Maker. I had also played around with the Lolcat Generator at Big Huge Labs as well. I found the Meme Maker to be a little easier to use because I had more control over where to put the text and how big it would be. I could see using something like this with student pictures to help them display their goals or things they are proud of. They could add the statement directly to the image. They could also take pictures of something we are studying outside and add a statement to that as well.

I thought the FoldPlay (http://foldplay.com/foldplay.action) site looked really interesting as well. I currently have a classroom of second graders obsessed with origami, cutting paper, and folding paper. I can only imagine the fun they'd have during science if I made some of these for them to create. This is certainly something I would want to have practiced ahead of time so that I could help out any struggling students. I think I'm leaning toward the Kaleidocycle. I'll let you know what happens if I try it in the next couple weeks!

I love the idea of the Badge Maker at Big Huge Labs. Students could have badges made to be archaeologists, reporters, scientists, etc. Having a badge would just make them feel that much more "official." Likewise, the Trading Card feature also at Big Huge Labs has nice potential for the classroom. Students could be asked to create trading cards about the important people, animals, and even places they learned about this year so they would have a nice set at the end. Alternatively, each student could be assigned one of those things and then prints enough of them for the class. Then they could trade each other's cards until they have a full set.

Some of the options on Tuxpi reminded me of creating word art in Microsoft Word in terms of how you can manipulate the image. These tools could add some nice touches to reports, displays, or projects. For anything on that site, you would need to caution students not to do too much to their images otherwise it will be too distracting for the viewer. They are better off keeping it simple as opposed to getting carried away (Reynolds, 2014).

References:
Reynolds, G. (2014). Presentation zen design: A simple visual approach to presenting in today's world. United States of America: New River.

  

Playing Around with Images

DeVylder, L. (2015). Chicks galore. [Modified with ImageChef - Meme Maker]. CC BY-NC

I spent a lot of time playing around with the different tools in the Sandbox and had to finally settle on one to post. I picked this picture of the chicks that hatched in our classroom this spring. I always felt when I checked on them that they were just looking at me wanting to get out of the box. However, all I could envision was them running all over the classroom and the students yelling there was chick poop everywhere. We did take them out a few times, but only for a little while!

Where I really want to be

When searching for a great image, I found myself trying hard to stay focused. I realized that what I really wanted to do was be at the beach as that's where my mother was this week. I chose this picture because I really liked how the chairs were prominent in the front on the rocky sand and then the water appears to get blurry as it gets farther away.

Bidmead, S. (2014). Deckchairs [photo]. Retrieved from: http://pixabay.com/en/deckchairs-sea-beach-seaside-355596/ CC 0

Answer Garden

As we are rapidly approaching the end of school, I thought it would be fun to ask what everyone is looking forward to this summer. (20 character limit per answer, as recommended by Answer Garden.)

What are you most looking forward to this summer?

Introduction

As I considered what I wanted my blog to look like, I was a little overwhelmed with my choices. I'm still not sure that this is what I want it to look like in the end, but it was definitely fun to play around with the different options! I chose to set up a blog with a url that I might be able to use in the future as a librarian. One of the things I noticed about my current school library is that while there is a Blackboard site for the library and the library catalog is available online all the time, there is not a lot of updating from our current librarian.

In Presentation Zen Design, Reynolds (2014) calls for designs to be simple so that viewers are able to clearly understand what you're trying to get across. I debated between the background of books on blogger as well as one of the other ones. In the end, I chose the birds flying over what appears to be sand because that's how I feel when I am reading a really good book. I want my students to be able to have that same feeling of being transported into the book and story. In terms of typeface, I did not see any of Reynolds' (2014) suggested typefaces on my list of options or I couldn't figure out how to add them. Instead, I chose Trebuchet, a sans serif font, because "it's generally accepted that sans serif fonts work better on computer screens" (Reynolds, 2014, p. 40). All of the different areas of text are in Trebuchet, with the headings being a little bit larger and bolded.



References:
Reynolds, G. (2014). Presentation zen design: A simple visual approach to presenting in today's world (2nd ed.). United States of America: New River.