Thing 13: Media Skills

Lots of great stuff in this module! I downloaded Picasa and made an album of My Family's Christmas Celebration held on Dec 22.  I have used the snipping tool in Windows before. It comes in handy when submitting an IT work order to be able to show the IT staff exactly what error message is on my computer screen. I downloaded Awesome Screen Shot and played around with it. I tried Snag.gy by following the directions on the screen, but nothing happened. I really liked Clipping magic to change the image's background. Pixlr has some extremely interesting editing tools. I read "25 Sites for Creating Interesting Quote Images". I might try this with the next English class that comes to the library. I have used Wordle before, but Tagxedo was fun to play with too. I have made "Fiction" signage for my library shelves using Wordle. I have had classes in the library using Windows Movie Maker to put together presentations. I personally find it not very user friendly and the students (and teachers)get very frustrated with it. Youtube editor is blocked from school, but from home it looks pretty easy to use. I wish I could convince the powers-that-be to unblock Youtube and it's tools. I read "Using Digital Images: An Educator's Guide" because I am always interested in copyright issues. I have made this a link to the article for easy future access. 

Thing 12 Social Learning Management Systems

Edmodo is used by most teachers and students at my high school. I use it for my library book club as a discussion forum between our meetings. Another teacher uses it very much like a college professor for an online class does. I watched the Schoology video and read the article Schoology vs. Edmodo. It seems like Schoology is a better platform if students are using iPads and apps. For our population, Edmodo meets the needs of the teachers and students. After looking at Mrs. Altham's blog regarding a summer reading club, I may attempt that using Edmodo next summer. I read the article "Survey of K12 Educators on Social Networking, Online Communities, and Web 2.0 tools". It does not surprise me that librarians have the highest percent participation in social networks. We seem to thrive by bouncing ideas off each other and sharing experiences. I posted what I am reading on Mightybell.I use Good Reads all the time to follow book series'. I plan to teach my library book club members how to use Good Reads to find other books they may like, read reviews, and post reviews. Facebook is blocked in our school. As an aside, when our students first started using Edmodo, I was constantly reminding students that they were not allowed to be on Facebook in school and if they were getting around the filters, I would need to report them to administration. After a few instances of this, I realized the students were working on assignments on Edmodo! Their discussion platforms looks so much the same, from a distance I really thought these students were on Facebook! Finally, I joined TeacherLibrarian Ning and posted a few comments regarding library fines, and how long to keep magazines in the library.

Thing 11 Mapping and Geolocation Tools

I looked at the new Google Map Interface. The Photo Tours are interesting, but distracting if you are really just trying to find something on a map!I looked at the sample map lessons in the eCourse link. I also looked at the Google Earth Lesson Plans and wish I taught younger grades. I added my favorite vacation spot to the map of the US on HistoyPin (mid-coastal Maine). I clicked on a link at the side of the page that led to 40 Maps That will Help You Make Sense of the World on Twisted Sifter. This was a fun and interesting site to look at. This also led me to click on a link for MapPorn out of curiosity. Wow! There are alot of statistical maps on that site. Finally, I looked at the Lit Trip for My Brother Sam is Dead and will recommend this to a friend of mine who teaches 7th grade Social Studies in Connecticut.

Thing 9: Databases & Search Tools

Working in a High School library, I use databases every day. Our district purchases some through our local BOCES such as Facts On File and Gale and Culture Grams. We also utilize the Novel NY databases appropriate for grades 9-12. I have quick links to all of them on my library web page, as well as links to e-book collections. I am investigating some ABC-CLIO databases for next year. Our district uses Follett Destiny for our IPAC. Besides searching library holdings, it also searches for valid websites and searches whatever databases I have catalogued for individual projects. I compared the websites Destiny finds to Sweet Search results. Some of the results were the same, but I noticed Sweet Search suggests more .com sites. I signed up for InstaGrok after playing around with some topic searches. I love the "web" result. It looks alot like the web produced by some public library IPAC searches. I had set up a Scoopit account in a previous module, but I "followed" a few library-teacher resources this time. I printed out the "10 Google Search Tips all Students Can Use Poster" to post in my library. I bookmarked the "20 Useful Google Search Tips You Probably Don't Know" for future use with teachers and students. A few years ago our district had Alan November speak at a Conference Day. He showed us a few of these Google tips like the site: and define: and domain limiters. I am going to explore some more about building my own Custom Google Search. I can see how this would be very helpful for teachers to direct their student's research without limiting it too much. As a side note: I thoroughly enjoyed this course and would like to see BOCES offer more like this, especially for librarians. It is difficult for us to find courses that are applicable to us.

Thing 8: Collaboration

The District I work in uses Google Apps for everything. Not all teachers are on board, but those who use them, love them. I shared a Google form I made as a survey regarding eReaders on the collaborative doc. I am planning a lesson, during which I will be observed by an administrator, where the students will be sharing their Works Cited pages with me from their Google Drive. The great part about it is the program we will be using is EasyBib.com and the students have the option to save their Works Cited pages directly to their Google accounts, and then share them with me and their teacher. What a paper saver! I looked at TitanPad which looks alot like Google Docs. I could see this being used as a note taking program much like our English teachers now have a Google scribe for each class. In another class, I signed up for a Dropbox account and plan on compiling all my library resources in one place. Our district uses Google Calendar for computer lab sign up. We have four computer labs in the high school that teachers are able to sign up for 60 days in advance. An administrator designed the form and shared it with all faculty in the beginning of the school year, and it has been working well. There have been some instances of teachers getting "bumped" by other teachers, but of course the administrator can go to the revision history to see where it took place. The other great thing about this system, is when we have a snow day, the calendar automatically moves forward a day so nobody loses out on computer time! I thought about setting up something like this for the library too, but as it is now, when they come into the library to schedule their classes, I have the opportunity to collaborate with the teachers. I am afraid this would be lost if I switched the library schedule to an online calendar. I was interested in how join.me works. We used to have SmartSync in our computer labs and the library so I could see what each computer was doing, I could push out documents to the students, or I could take over their screens. Last year, our district switched to a virtual desktop computer system, and I have been told there is no way for SmartSync to work with that. I wonder of join.me would work on the virtual network? And finally, I plan on looking deeper into Collaborative Classroom. It looks much like Edmodo in that assignments can be posted and graded within the program, discussions can take place, and programs like this open the opportunity for a flipped classroom. I browsed the topic lists and the grade content areas. I plan to share this with teachers looking for lesson ideas. I enjoyed this module. I am all for collaboration, as I think most media specialists are, and these resources are only the tip of the iceberg!

Thing 7: Podcasts and Screencasts

I do not have a microphone on my computer nor do I own a SmartPhone or Tablet that can have a microphone App. This topic really made me realize how I need to update! I read and listened to the article "Student-Created Sequoyah Book Reports, AudioBoo, iPads and QR Codes" and was very impressed about how 21st Century this library and the students are. My school library does have newer computers for students to use but the webcam/microphone has been disabled. Our IT department is able to re-enable it for classes working on assignments requiring audio/video.Listening to the "Isinglass Teen Read Award Nominees Book Talks" gave me ideas of how I could use podcasts in the high school library for book talks and reviews.(Another idea for my book club next year.) I looked at some of the screen cast programs mentioned in the article "Screencasts Turn Students into Digital Teachers", and I am going to mention this to the math and Science teachers. I think it would be helpful to students to have a screencast made for difficult Algebraic problems as well as demonstrations of how Physics formulas work.It would be kind of like making our own "Khan Academy". I have a digital camera that is able to record short videos, so I tried to make my own screencast using the camera, but the quality was so poor I am not going to post it here. I ended up making a screencast using Screenr, but there is no audio. It was very self explanatory, and I would really like to try it with a microphone! I added this screencast to my library webpage to assist students in searching the library catalog.Here is the link to it:

Thing 6: Curation Tools

My head is full of new information! I started by reading the article" Teaching Kids to Curate Content Collections", which led me to the NYC soda ban resources in Scoopit which I shared with a 9th grade English teacher who is researching local interest topics.I looked at Learnest and thought this would be perfect for an English 11 teacher who runs a flipped classroom. I joined Scoopit and looked at Chris Gibson's page which I ended up sharing with a 10 grade Global Studies teacher who is researching Ancient Civilizations.I looked at the conversation threads in Mentormob and plan to follow them more closely.I also joined Diigo and am following Cool Tools for Schools and Teacher-Librarian. In reading through the class information, I think I am more in the "Digging for Gold" category---collecting information and passing it along.I completely understand how these curation tools will be beneficial for students to put together resource lists for research projects. I may play with Scoopit over the stummer to make resource lists for the main projects required at the high school where I work. Right now I just have lists of websites that have accumulated through the years, and I would like to reorganize my webpage to make it more appealing.

Thing 5: Digital Storytelling and Presentation Tools

I skimmed through many of the tools mentioned this week, but the ones I spent time on are VoiceThread, Photopeach, Zooburst and Storybird, as well as the information about Creative Commons. I really like the idea of having the students create booktrailers using VoiceThread. I may do this with my library book club students next year. (There is no club this year). I absolutely love Zooburst and wish I was working with elementary students to utilize this tool in my library. There is a way to view the stories on a regular PC if you print out the 3D "tool" and hold it up in front of the webcam. I made a little slide show of my Maine vacation pictures using Photopeach. It was fun to choose the pictures and music. I would love to do this for all my family get-together photos! Here is the link for it: http://photopeach.com/album/131a7y1 Presently, I have 2 Freshman English classes that are coming to the library to use Windows Movie Maker to design a book trailer. The students have finished reading and studying Fahrenheit 451. They have chosen a book that they have read in the past that left an impression on them. They are to create a book trailer about that book to convince the other students in the class why this book should not be banned/burned. They are using images and music through Creative Commons. I can't wait to see their final projects.