Thing # 3

It's embarrassing to admit, but PLN's are something that I do a terrible job keeping up on. Well, at least technology wise. I keep up on my professional journals, collaborate with other librarians, attend workshops, talk with colleagues, but I can't seem to get in the habit of tapping into all the great PLN's on the Internet. I do take webinars and this class but not much more.

The last time I took one of Polly's classes I tried twitter. I was instantly intrigued and tried all of the hash tags she recommended, but I really couldn't figure out how to tweet (I know it's basic, but for some reason I struggled and still do). Then to be honest I never went back and checked it out. So for the sake of this assignment and to build my PLN I decided to give it one more try. I have to say I still feel uncomfortable with and have no idea what I am really doing. I am not sure why this is. I think if I just keep going back to it then I will become more comfortable and hopefully catch on. So, I added the App to my phone so it would be readily available to me. That way when I am bored in the doctors office I can check it.

When I was exploring on my twitter page, I didn't create my own tweet, but I did retweet one new tech tool I learned, which I am sharing here http://oedb.org/ilibrarian/10-cool-ways-libraries-can-use-vine/ (an App for creating 6 second video clips) and I retweeted a cute idea for the library. Maybe you guys could follow me. It would be fun to have a follower! I can't promise I will tweet much myself, but I will keep retweeting. If you are looking for people to follow I highly recommend Shannon Miller. She shares a lot of great resources!

I tried to check out Google Reader for my second PLN, but it has been discontinued. For some reason I have no interest in joining LinkedIn and I really don't want to start too mant PLN's because there is no way I will be able to maintain them. So, I decided to build upon my fb account and expand upon my professional "friends". I joined the NYLA group, which will be great for staying updated on things going on here in NY. From what I could tell there are lots of posting for jobs, but a lot of great resource sharing as well. I joined Children's Literature Connection and at first was a little hesitant because there seemed to be a lot of posts with pictures, but then I dug back into previous posts and found some good information about upcoming conferences and book titles I was interested in. I also liked the ALA page but as far as I could tell it wasn't an open page so I don't think that I could join it??? They had a lot of great information on it though. The New York State Reading Association was a group I joined within the last few weeks and I have to say I have already received great resources from things that have been shared. If anyone hasn't joined that group I would highly recommend it.

I am happy to say that after spending a few hours playing around with twitter and fb I am excited. I know for sure that fb is going to be great for me. I am on everyday and it is is natural to my daily routine. I am not sure why I didn't think to tap into this resource sooner. As for Twitter, I am going to make it my mission to stick with it for a month. Hopefully, that will give me enough time to feel comfortable with it. Who knows maybe I will be creating my own tweets by then.

I look forward to reading all of your posts and hopefully I can start following some of you!

Thing #2 continued...

After all that time and work I put in yesterday to create two screencasts on using OverDrive, I woke up this morning to an email from Paige saying that the interface and features on Overdrive are going to be changing in a few weeks. Just when you think you are getting ahead... I am sure the rest of you are going to get Paige's email as well, but I wanted to give you a heads-up in case you were thinking of making a screencast using OverDrive.

Thing 2: Screencasting

Thing 2: Screencasting

I was so excited once again that the tool we are learning this week is one that I have wanted to try for awhile. I have parents and students ask me all the time how to access Overdrive. I find it works best to take the time to walk students through it individually at the point in which they need it. When I would present it as a whole group, it would motivate students to want to use Overdrive, but I would need to actually walk them through it once they tried to do it themselves. Therefore, I thought it would be nice to have a screencast embeded on my site with step-by-step instructions how to do it.

After looking over all of the choices, Screenr was the tool that appealed to me most because I wasn't interested in doing screenshots. I struggled with Screenr for a long time, but not actually because of the tool. The tool itself was actually very easy to use. At first I needed to download Java, which was long overdue. Once I did that I thought I would simply, just push record. Well, unfortunately it wasn't that simple. I would push record and it would keep loading but nothing would happen. Finally, I decided to try a different browser, I was using Firefox (I know...). That did the trick! It loaded right away when I used Google Chrome. It took me a several tries to complete my screencast, just because I misspoke, but the tool itself was very basic and easy to use. I would definitely recommend it. Especially if you are looking for a simple tool for the students to use.

Here is the Screenr I created for using Overdrive:
 

The other tool I tried was Screencast-o-matic. This was another very simple tool to use. I did have to do a little downloading at first because I have 10.6 version of the MAC. Once I did that though, it was simple to use. I did actually like one feature better about this tool compared to Screenr and that is that it put a big yellow circle around my cursor, which made it easier for the viewer to follow. I was worried about having to upload this directly to YouTube to get a code to embed, but I didn't need to. Once I uploaded it to Screencast-o-matic I was able get the embed code. This was actually nicer than Screenr too because I was able to choose the size I wanted my screencast box, allowing me to format it to fit nicely on my website. Overall this tool is very easy to use and would be simple for students to use for projects of their own.

Here is my screencast for how to download a book from Overdrive to your kindle.




Next year we are starting Classroom 21 in the elementary school, as I mentioned in a previous posts. I could see the kids creating Screencasts next year in that classroom. They could use it for several instructional purposes, but I was thinking it would be neat if I had them use this to show me how they determined the site they were using for one of their research projects was actually a credible site. They could point out the different areas of the website that they used to base their decision on. Then I could use these to instruct students at the lower grades. If I was to use do this with the students I would be sure to use the Screencast planning sheet that Polly shared. I am interested to hear some of the ideas that others have for students using this tool.

I look forward to seeing what tools each of you tried and I am hoping to get some great ideas. In the meantime, if you want to check out my LMC webpage with my screencast you can visit: http://lakegeorgelmc.weebly.com/resources.html

Thing #1: Curation Tools

I was so happy to see that this assignment was directly linked to something I have been wanting to do. Although this is only a start, this is a nice way for me to get started on creating Pinterest boards for teachers that I am collaborating with.
 At our school our sixth grade teachers are starting Classroom 21 next year, in which teachers and students participate in project based learning while providing 1-to-1 computing for the students. Last week we had professional development days in which we started planning out our first theme and we determined that each class will be reading The Watson's Go to Birmingham as a read aloud. I told the teachers that I would work on putting together some resources for them to accompany the book. I started building a spreadsheet for them using Google Docs which is nice because it is easily accessible to everyone, but I didn't love the way it looked. I am a more visual learner so my mind works better with set-ups like the boards on Pinterest. Besides I am not great with spreadsheets as you can see below.

I thought it would be nice to build a board on Pinterest and share that board with them. The board turned into a great resource board that will give the teachers ideas to use with the book and other nonfiction titles and primary resources to pair with it. However, I couldn't find a great way to share the board with them besides adding a the link to the spreadsheet I had already created. After MUCH research and a LOT of trial and error I did determine that if you create a business account you can embed your board. So here is my board. My next step is to add a section to my school website where teachers can easily access this board. As you can tell this is something that can be very useful in my educational setting. This could really take off!!!


In case anyone is interested in how I was able to embed my board, I found this blog post to be the most useful: http://monikarunstrom.com/blog/2013/03/how-to-embed-a-pinterest-board-on-your-blog/

And we're off...

I am excited to be starting my second SLS Cool Tools class. I enjoyed the last class I took of Polly's and find that I still use many of the tools that I learned. I look forward to reading all of your posts!