It's certainly an exciting time to be getting my degree in library science! There are so many technology-based resources at my fingertips, and I'm having a great time exploring them all. One way that I can stay current with the happenings in libraries is to read blogs from fellow librarians. One of my favorite blogs is Mrs. Reader Pants . I first found her blog while looking for recommendations of YA books to read for one of my classes. Her book reviews were thorough and entertaining (for example, she gives a short synopsis of the book, includes her personal opinion, and gives her age/grade level recommendation). Her blog is very easy to use with tabs along the top for options such as "book reviews", "book talks", "library ideas", "book fair tips", etc. I think I have read through all of the tabs several times each! She also labels per posts so that you can easily click on the a specific label and see all the book reviews for that topic (such as romance, bullying, chick lit, etc.). So if you had a student that only loved to read action/adventure books, you could click on that label and pull up a bunch of book reviews for that genre!
I recommend Mrs. Reader Pants to everyone I work with because her blog is so easy to read and is chock-full of helpful tips and tools.
Sunday, July 26, 2015
AASL Best Websites of 2015
I returned from my summer institute all pumped up and ready to jump right back onto the librarian bandwagon! Those three days got me very excited about the sorts of activities and resources I can use with students in the future. I checked out the AASL Best Websites of 2015 list and was pleasantly surprised to see that I am already familiar with quite of a few of them! Yay! That means that I'm actually paying attention in my LIBS classes!
But seriously, here are three websites that I thought looked especially interesting and short description of each.
1) Storyboard That
Calling all English teachers, this is THE website for you! I immediately loved the setup to the Storyboard That website, and I found it to be intuitive to use. Students can use the website to pick among 6 different layout choices: classic, T-chart, grids, Frayer models, Spider maps, and timelines. With a free account, you can make up to two storyboards per week. There is no software to download and students can save their projects on their accounts. As the website says, students will really be able to "bring a book to life!".
2) Google Classroom
What I love about Google classroom is how it is already so familiar to the students. Some of the teachers at my school already use Google classroom and the students are very impressed with how easy it is to use. They create documents in the Google docs and upload them for the class (and teacher) to see. Another great feature of Goggle docs is the collaboration that is available with groups of students. Multiple students can be working on the same document at the same time! Assignments can be organized into folders, which makes it easy to keep track of students' work.
3) FlipQuiz
This website allows students to create their own game show-style boards for review. What I love about this website is that it displays the game shows on the screen instead of the students having to create paper-and-pencil style games (like the old paper version of Jeopardy, taped to the front board of the classroom). This website offers a much easier and faster way to create review games for students, and the students can make their own (instead of the teacher creating the review game). It's a great opportunity for students to take responsibility for their own learning!
But seriously, here are three websites that I thought looked especially interesting and short description of each.
1) Storyboard That
Calling all English teachers, this is THE website for you! I immediately loved the setup to the Storyboard That website, and I found it to be intuitive to use. Students can use the website to pick among 6 different layout choices: classic, T-chart, grids, Frayer models, Spider maps, and timelines. With a free account, you can make up to two storyboards per week. There is no software to download and students can save their projects on their accounts. As the website says, students will really be able to "bring a book to life!".
2) Google Classroom
What I love about Google classroom is how it is already so familiar to the students. Some of the teachers at my school already use Google classroom and the students are very impressed with how easy it is to use. They create documents in the Google docs and upload them for the class (and teacher) to see. Another great feature of Goggle docs is the collaboration that is available with groups of students. Multiple students can be working on the same document at the same time! Assignments can be organized into folders, which makes it easy to keep track of students' work.
3) FlipQuiz
This website allows students to create their own game show-style boards for review. What I love about this website is that it displays the game shows on the screen instead of the students having to create paper-and-pencil style games (like the old paper version of Jeopardy, taped to the front board of the classroom). This website offers a much easier and faster way to create review games for students, and the students can make their own (instead of the teacher creating the review game). It's a great opportunity for students to take responsibility for their own learning!
Friday, July 10, 2015
Presentation Tools
For this week's module, I explored several presentation tools. Wow! There is so much to choose from out there! Long gone are the days of creating a standard Power Point for every occasion. I gave a few of them and try and had some surprisingly good results.
1) Slidely
The first site I explored was slidely.com. It recognized me because I was able to log in through my Facebook account, which is helpful when I'm on my computer at home but won't be an asset when I log in at school (we have no access to FB on my school's network). I was able to start making a presentation in just a few minutes! It's a very user-friendly site, and and I could see myself using it to make presentations for my classes at school and for professional development applications. I've never heard of slidely.com before now, so I don't think many of my colleagues are familiar with it. I like how easy it is to incorporate photos, videos, and audio into the presentation.
2) Prezi
I next tried out prezi.com. I have seen many Prezi presentations but have never made one myself. I found the program easy to use and the templates and color schemes were very modern. I know that my students like to use Prezi for their school projects, so it would be helpful for me to know more about the program. The one thing that isn't so great about Prezi is the movement from area to area in the presentation. I almost feel like I'm getting sea sick from all the swaying motion! But that's just me and my personal taste. I first became familiar with Prezi when I started reading the "Mrs. Reader Pants" blog. All of her book talk presentations are done with Prezi-- check them out here!
In conclusion, either of these programs would be easy to use for my final presentation and would give me modern, clear results with minimal frustration.
References
http://www.slidely.com
http://www.prezi.com
http://www.readerpants.net/p/booktalk-presentations.html
1) Slidely
The first site I explored was slidely.com. It recognized me because I was able to log in through my Facebook account, which is helpful when I'm on my computer at home but won't be an asset when I log in at school (we have no access to FB on my school's network). I was able to start making a presentation in just a few minutes! It's a very user-friendly site, and and I could see myself using it to make presentations for my classes at school and for professional development applications. I've never heard of slidely.com before now, so I don't think many of my colleagues are familiar with it. I like how easy it is to incorporate photos, videos, and audio into the presentation.
2) Prezi
I next tried out prezi.com. I have seen many Prezi presentations but have never made one myself. I found the program easy to use and the templates and color schemes were very modern. I know that my students like to use Prezi for their school projects, so it would be helpful for me to know more about the program. The one thing that isn't so great about Prezi is the movement from area to area in the presentation. I almost feel like I'm getting sea sick from all the swaying motion! But that's just me and my personal taste. I first became familiar with Prezi when I started reading the "Mrs. Reader Pants" blog. All of her book talk presentations are done with Prezi-- check them out here!
In conclusion, either of these programs would be easy to use for my final presentation and would give me modern, clear results with minimal frustration.
References
http://www.slidely.com
http://www.prezi.com
http://www.readerpants.net/p/booktalk-presentations.html
3-D Print Creation
For this week's module, I needed to create a 3-D object that followed some guidelines: no bigger than a quarter of an apple; neutral, solid color; relates to reading or libraries. We are having a contest in class where we will be voting for the "Top 3" ideas and those objects will be printed at our Summer Institute in a week.
I drummed my fingers on the computer desk for a while and thought, "What represents reading to me? Or a library? Or librarian? Hmmmm.........". My husband volunteered "worm" for a bookworm, but I thought I might have trouble with wavy lines in the programming. And I wasn't sure how to make a "bookworm" look any different than a regular old earthworm! I finally came up with the idea of a kite because reading can "soar you to new heights and take you farther than you ever thought possible". The kite has some great symbolism to go along with it. To drive home the "reading" aspect even more, I made the kite part into a book and even put "LIBS" (for our class) on the text section of the book so that it is more identifiable. I had a hard time thinking of how to make bows on the tail of the kite until I thought "Bingo! Do the number 8 sideways!". I think it turned out pretty good!
I used tinkercad.com to create the kite and then saved it as an STL file. You can see the progress below!
I drummed my fingers on the computer desk for a while and thought, "What represents reading to me? Or a library? Or librarian? Hmmmm.........". My husband volunteered "worm" for a bookworm, but I thought I might have trouble with wavy lines in the programming. And I wasn't sure how to make a "bookworm" look any different than a regular old earthworm! I finally came up with the idea of a kite because reading can "soar you to new heights and take you farther than you ever thought possible". The kite has some great symbolism to go along with it. To drive home the "reading" aspect even more, I made the kite part into a book and even put "LIBS" (for our class) on the text section of the book so that it is more identifiable. I had a hard time thinking of how to make bows on the tail of the kite until I thought "Bingo! Do the number 8 sideways!". I think it turned out pretty good!
I used tinkercad.com to create the kite and then saved it as an STL file. You can see the progress below!
Friday, July 3, 2015
3-D Printing and its Applications in Schools and Libraries
The hot topic this past year around my school was "3-D printing". When I see the sheer number of articles on schools using 3-D printers, it comes as no surprise that they are in high demand for student use. My county's local paper just recently ran an article (you can read it here) titled "KG Students Make Magic with 3-D Printer". The article explained that a drafting class at the high school designed and printed a bow tie for the principal to wear to the graduation rehearsal. It turned out great and really brought some recognition to those students and the level of technology that they are using today.
As the robotics coordinator for King George County, I have seen the 3-D printers in action at other middle schools (we even had one at our recent summer camp) but until recently, our school was not one of the lucky ones. Lo and behold, my assistant principal came to me with a grant from Northrup-Grumman and said, "They will give us up to $2500 for something technology-based....what do you want?" and I immediately said, "3-D printer!". It's set to arrive next month and will be the first one in a county school. We settled on a FlashForge printer because that is the one we used at camp, and it's reviews are outstanding.
So this topic could not have come at a better time because I'm actively trying to learn as much as I can about 3-D printers and design before ours arrives! The first article I read--"Cool Products for Teaching", had some great ideas of introducing code writing to students. Because we implement the LEGO Mindstorm robotics program with all 330 of our seventh graders, the students are introduced to code writing along with robotics. But I like some of the programs and apps that she describes and believe that those programs would be a good introduction to code for the novice student.
Chad Sansing makes a good point in his article "Coding Skills Empower Us All" when he writes that teaching students to write codes doesn't mean that each of those students has to go into technology as a career. However, when we teach all students to use code, we give them the opportunity to use it more efficiently in the future or to advance their skills in a future career, if they choose. Teaching all students to develop their coding skills will only benefit them in a world that is becoming more technology-savvy every day.
I think that 3-D printers should be welcomed with open arms to any and all schools and libraries that can get one. They are a perfect tool for exposing students to writing code, 3-D design, and graphics. Who knows how many students will be inspired to take more science and math classes because they love using their school's 3-D printer? The effects of 3-D printing can branch out through all content areas and achievement levels.
References
Tahnk, J. (April 27, 2015). "Cool products for teaching kids how to code". Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeana-lee-tahnk/neat-products-for-teachin_b_7138030.html
Cook, P. (June 9, 2015). "KG students make magic with 3-D printer". Retrieved from http://journalpress.com/king-george-and-dahlgren/king-george-news/4400-kg-students-make-magic-with-3d-printer
Sansing, C. (May 11, 2015). "Coding skills empower us all". Retrieved from http://www.slj.com/2015/05/technology/coding-skills-empower-us-all-the-maker-issue/#_
LEGO Mindstorm homepage (2015). http://www.lego.com/en-us/mindstorms/?domainredir=mindstorms.lego.com
As the robotics coordinator for King George County, I have seen the 3-D printers in action at other middle schools (we even had one at our recent summer camp) but until recently, our school was not one of the lucky ones. Lo and behold, my assistant principal came to me with a grant from Northrup-Grumman and said, "They will give us up to $2500 for something technology-based....what do you want?" and I immediately said, "3-D printer!". It's set to arrive next month and will be the first one in a county school. We settled on a FlashForge printer because that is the one we used at camp, and it's reviews are outstanding.
So this topic could not have come at a better time because I'm actively trying to learn as much as I can about 3-D printers and design before ours arrives! The first article I read--"Cool Products for Teaching", had some great ideas of introducing code writing to students. Because we implement the LEGO Mindstorm robotics program with all 330 of our seventh graders, the students are introduced to code writing along with robotics. But I like some of the programs and apps that she describes and believe that those programs would be a good introduction to code for the novice student.
Chad Sansing makes a good point in his article "Coding Skills Empower Us All" when he writes that teaching students to write codes doesn't mean that each of those students has to go into technology as a career. However, when we teach all students to use code, we give them the opportunity to use it more efficiently in the future or to advance their skills in a future career, if they choose. Teaching all students to develop their coding skills will only benefit them in a world that is becoming more technology-savvy every day.
I think that 3-D printers should be welcomed with open arms to any and all schools and libraries that can get one. They are a perfect tool for exposing students to writing code, 3-D design, and graphics. Who knows how many students will be inspired to take more science and math classes because they love using their school's 3-D printer? The effects of 3-D printing can branch out through all content areas and achievement levels.
References
Tahnk, J. (April 27, 2015). "Cool products for teaching kids how to code". Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeana-lee-tahnk/neat-products-for-teachin_b_7138030.html
Cook, P. (June 9, 2015). "KG students make magic with 3-D printer". Retrieved from http://journalpress.com/king-george-and-dahlgren/king-george-news/4400-kg-students-make-magic-with-3d-printer
Sansing, C. (May 11, 2015). "Coding skills empower us all". Retrieved from http://www.slj.com/2015/05/technology/coding-skills-empower-us-all-the-maker-issue/#_
LEGO Mindstorm homepage (2015). http://www.lego.com/en-us/mindstorms/?domainredir=mindstorms.lego.com
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