Sunday, September 13, 2015
I will be speaking at VAASL this year!
I am pleased (and just a little terrified) to announce that my presentation "Lightning-Fast Tech Tools" has been selected for the state VAASL conference this fall. I will be presenting in a concurrent session not yet scheduled, Nov. 19-21 in Williamsburg!
Thursday, September 10, 2015
A Fall 2015 update
Well, I have four semesters done and three more to go. I am taking three classes this semester. One is a teacher education class in which I have to complete a 70-hour practicum. I have been assigned to a kindergarten class, so that will be fun and exciting! I love kindergarteners. Of course, I have some trepidation because it has been a long time since my own kids were in kindergarten. At that time I did plan some lessons, crafts, and centers for class parties and Girl Scouts, but making spider lollipops out of pipe cleaners and Blow Pops was pretty low stakes. I am already madly pinning lesson ideas on Pinterest. Despite my placement in a regular kindy class, I hope the teacher will allow me to teach library-type literature activities to get some practice. But I am prepared to teach anything! One thing I am sure of is that I can handle the curriculum. Pretty sure I know my alphabet and how to count to 10.
My other two classes are a bit less interesting, but necessary. Technical Services in Libraries is essentially Cataloging 101. The history of cataloging is dry but I do like history so it is holding my attention so far. The second class is Reference and Information Retrieval. I have tons of experience in research so I am not too worried about this class as long as I dot my i's and cross my t's.
I'm a bit concerned I might need reading glasses though...the font on some of the articles I have to read seems awfully small this semester. This is what you get for being a non-traditional student.
My other two classes are a bit less interesting, but necessary. Technical Services in Libraries is essentially Cataloging 101. The history of cataloging is dry but I do like history so it is holding my attention so far. The second class is Reference and Information Retrieval. I have tons of experience in research so I am not too worried about this class as long as I dot my i's and cross my t's.
I'm a bit concerned I might need reading glasses though...the font on some of the articles I have to read seems awfully small this semester. This is what you get for being a non-traditional student.
Thursday, August 6, 2015
Tech Tools Presentation
This is a Web 2.0 Conference Presentation I have created as my final project for LIBS 602.
Monday, July 27, 2015
Makerspace Bonanza at the MAKESHOP
Last weekend I visited the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh with my family. Four years ago when we visited, they had a makerspace in its infancy. To my excitement, the MAKESHOP (on Twitter: @makeshoppgh) is now a force to be reckoned with, and I had to share some of the pictures I took there. My 12-year-old daughter wanted to stay there all day!
Words and pictures don't do the MAKESHOP justice, but I was hoping the projects, storage ideas, supplies, and so forth would prove inspirational to librarians. Although the makerspace concept is different in a children's museum in terms of scale and budget (and the MAKESHOP is on an epic scale), many of the lessons are similar in terms of safety, supplies, supervision, and scope.
I was lucky enough to chat with the MAKESHOP's manager, Rebecca Grabman, who gave me permission to share her name on my blog along with the pictures I took. Her email is rgrabman[at]pittsburghkids.org. (Replace the at with @.) She is incredibly knowledgeable about makerspaces and making/learning research, some of which is supported by the Children's Museum. We had a fascinating conversation, and while we talked I was busy making a tiny house out of cardboard while my daughter sewed a bunch of grapes out of felt. This place will truly bring out the creativity in everyone. Go see it if you're ever in Pittsburgh!!
Here is part 1 of my MAKESHOP slideshow!
And because PhotoSnack limits the number of slides you can use, here is part 2:
Words and pictures don't do the MAKESHOP justice, but I was hoping the projects, storage ideas, supplies, and so forth would prove inspirational to librarians. Although the makerspace concept is different in a children's museum in terms of scale and budget (and the MAKESHOP is on an epic scale), many of the lessons are similar in terms of safety, supplies, supervision, and scope.
I was lucky enough to chat with the MAKESHOP's manager, Rebecca Grabman, who gave me permission to share her name on my blog along with the pictures I took. Her email is rgrabman[at]pittsburghkids.org. (Replace the at with @.) She is incredibly knowledgeable about makerspaces and making/learning research, some of which is supported by the Children's Museum. We had a fascinating conversation, and while we talked I was busy making a tiny house out of cardboard while my daughter sewed a bunch of grapes out of felt. This place will truly bring out the creativity in everyone. Go see it if you're ever in Pittsburgh!!
Here is part 1 of my MAKESHOP slideshow!
And because PhotoSnack limits the number of slides you can use, here is part 2:
A Blog to Watch
After viewing several blogs that were new to me, Will Richardson's really grabbed me: http://willrichardson.com
I took a class last semester about teaching social studies, and my professor spoke a lot about authentic intellectual work (AIW) and project-based learning. This seems to be what Richardson is interested in as well. His posts are extremely thought-provoking, and he challenges many of our base assertions about what school is and needs to be. He has his finger on the pulse of the need of education to evolve with the technological times. Very interesting stuff and one to learn more about.
I took a class last semester about teaching social studies, and my professor spoke a lot about authentic intellectual work (AIW) and project-based learning. This seems to be what Richardson is interested in as well. His posts are extremely thought-provoking, and he challenges many of our base assertions about what school is and needs to be. He has his finger on the pulse of the need of education to evolve with the technological times. Very interesting stuff and one to learn more about.
AASL Best Websites 2015
The American Association of School Librarians publishes an annual list of Best Websites for Teaching & Learning in several different categories. I perused many of the websites on the 2015 list and chose a few to highlight here. What I found somewhat universal is that, because these sites are meant to be crowd-sourced, a few are not yet as populated as they will be if they prove to be a hit. Therefore it can be a bit difficult to judge the potential of the online community when sites are in their infancy. These websites are all worth visiting and revisiting!
WhatWasThere: As a history buff and vintage photo lover, I appreciated the potential of WhatWasThere right away. Both an app and a site, WhatWasThere ties Google maps to historic photos, with the idea that visitors can see a historic street view along with a modern one. Once you click on a photo to select it, you can click to go to Google StreetView, where the photo you selected will be overlaid over the modern view. A slide bar allows you to fade the vintage photo in and out so you can simultaneously view both old and new.
What this could potentially mean in real time is that a visitor could stand on a city block (or search for it) and see photos of all the historic buildings that existed on that same spot. Alternatively, a class could research the history of a particular building as it was built and evolved over time. While it does take some age and experience to appreciate how cool this view of the past is, students might be excited to see what was there before their school building or the grocery store on the corner. It is a good way to get students interested in local history and to give them a sense of how time changes things.
The site currently has about 50,000 photos and is crowdsourced, meaning users are able to upload their own vintage photos with simple tags and labels. I tested the site by searching for Virginia Beach, VA (where I currently live), Ewing Township, NJ (where I grew up), and Chillicothe, OH (where my husband's father grew up). These are roughly in order of population, and I found photos for all three, with Chillicothe only having two photos thus far. Bigger cities obviously have more, but the site is growing all the time.
MyStorybook: This one is so fun and has instant appeal to children who want to create their own storybook. There are plenty of sites and software that do similar things, but MyStorybook is an excellent entry. It's free and quick to get started with no account needed unless you want to save your story. Accounts require an age range, email address, a username, and a password, but not a child's full name or any other details.
MyStorybook offers tutorials to help young students get started creating their storybook, but most will probably be able to dive right in. Teachers can easily provide structure to the creation process or let children's imaginations run wild. The characters and other pictures, backgrounds, etc. are numerous, flexible, bright, and colorful, and it is easy to add pages to your story. When you are done you can save it as an eBook and/or share it online.
Gooru: This site, unlike something like MyStorybook, requires a bit of a deep dive in order to fully engage with the site. To take a snorkel, you can browse the "collections" uploaded by contributors--basically, annotated web links with suggested lesson ideas, all curriculum-mapped to Common Core and/or other standards.
If you want to take the plunge, you can "remix" them into collections of your own. You can also upload your own content and create a "class" within the site to share the resources you have remixed or uploaded with your students. Digital analytics help you monitor whether your students have visited and successfully completed the module you create.
A few districts have adopted Gooru, at least experimentally, and like other sites such as Edmodo, it does seem like a district or school-wide adoption of Gooru might be a more effective use than one teacher using it alone. Gooru has potential to be very useful and has the backing of some impressive corporate and non-profit partners.
Friday, July 17, 2015
Presentation Tools
This week's post is about presentation tools. As Dr. Kimmel stated, between apps and the Web there are about eleventy billion choices. I chose to explore three that I'd never tried before. The first one was Slidely, which I found to be easy and pretty intuitive. I could see using Slidely for those end-of-the-year slideshow presentations. You can create a separate account or login using Facebook, which is what I chose to do. I was able to access all of my FB photos and albums instantly, and I made a quick slideshow of my kids' school pictures through the year. I was able to add music from an infinite (seemingly) range of choices, so I chose "Time in a Bottle." You can also make a collage or movie. You can of course upload pictures or access them directly from several different sources, including Flickr. Despite poking around, I couldn't figure out how to share my slideshow any way except on Facebook, although it does seem like there are other options if you can figure out how to do it.
The next tool I tried was Haiku Deck, which is very simple to use though its options are limited. Taking my inspiration from the name, I chose to illustrate a poem that I like. One of the nicest things about Haiku Deck is that it contains a large array of tagged photos, making it super easy to find photos for your slides. (They are internally credited, too, which is helpful.) The templates are simple and you cannot control very much, but it is definitely quick. HaikuDeck, like Slidely, is integrated with social media and available as an app. I wish there was a way to add music, and at least when I was using it the autosave function crashed Safari several times, but otherwise this is a very painless way to make a quick presentation. I think students who do not have much patience with technology could find many ways to use it. Here's my creation:
Life has loveliness to sell - Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires
Finally, I tried Pixton, an online tool that allows you to create your own comic strips. The site offers a seven-day, limited function trial membership, after which you can pay for different installment plans that range up to $90 a year. The site offers a number of community features. The comic strips that others have created are way more impressive than this one (here's just one example), which I made in about 15 minutes using some Sondheim lyrics from the musical Company. While I am not inclined to pay to use a site like this, I could see students really enjoying it and using it for literature projects. How fun to illustrate a scene from a novel the class is reading, for example!
The next tool I tried was Haiku Deck, which is very simple to use though its options are limited. Taking my inspiration from the name, I chose to illustrate a poem that I like. One of the nicest things about Haiku Deck is that it contains a large array of tagged photos, making it super easy to find photos for your slides. (They are internally credited, too, which is helpful.) The templates are simple and you cannot control very much, but it is definitely quick. HaikuDeck, like Slidely, is integrated with social media and available as an app. I wish there was a way to add music, and at least when I was using it the autosave function crashed Safari several times, but otherwise this is a very painless way to make a quick presentation. I think students who do not have much patience with technology could find many ways to use it. Here's my creation:
Life has loveliness to sell - Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires
Finally, I tried Pixton, an online tool that allows you to create your own comic strips. The site offers a seven-day, limited function trial membership, after which you can pay for different installment plans that range up to $90 a year. The site offers a number of community features. The comic strips that others have created are way more impressive than this one (here's just one example), which I made in about 15 minutes using some Sondheim lyrics from the musical Company. While I am not inclined to pay to use a site like this, I could see students really enjoying it and using it for literature projects. How fun to illustrate a scene from a novel the class is reading, for example!
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