I am afraid that I approached this Thing with a little less enthusiasm than I should. You see, I am familiar with, and love ScreenR, ever since it helped me publish ALL of the 3rd graders' Blabberize Biography projects on one, easy to view page.
I tried AudioBoo this week, as a test for an upcoming project:
I am excited about the project, but not about AudioBoo. The students will be recording Book Reviews, and we will try to link them to the Online Library Catalog. With AudioBoo, they can only post one picture. Last year we used GarageBand to record reviews with 4th graders, and the result was less than satisfactory. The students spent more time struggling with the technology than they did learning about the book, or enjoying the project. The process strangled the project.
We have decided this year to go low-tech, and use PhotoStory for this project. The students can post a few pictures about the book (the teacher wants 5 or more) and record a bit of thier report with each picture. It is easy, simple, and does not require a consistent and dependable Internet connection (which was a problem when we used ScreenR, and even with GarageBand)
So I approached this Thing with optimism, and a bit of caution. I love new tools, and love when they help students connect with others, or publish to a wide audience. But we are finding that by using simple tools, the 6th graders are learning to apply the technology that they know to new tools, and to adapt their skills to create new projects. I may use ScreenR to post them to a webpage, however, and am open to suggestions as to how I can link almost 100 reviews to the catalog without creating 100 new web pages!!!
Curation! was the title of Joyce Valenza's keynote address and workshop at the 2012 NYLA/SSL Conference, and she introduced the word to hundreds of librarians in one swoop! I have to admit, I was feeling pretty self-satisfied at the time; after all, I had a fat and happy Delicious file, full of handy sites for all occasions. Why, I even searched for useful links through Delicious, adding and sharing with colleagues. Now I see that I am like the old librarian who collects hundreds of back issues of magazines, certain that they will "come in handy some day!". Curation is so much more of a Web3.0 tool: creating web content more than gathering it. So I gave Scoop.It another try. Diigo had scared me away with its daily updates in my email, and Pinterest is my guilty pleasure/personal-rather-than-educational site. I began following other Scoop-ers, three topics, and added a button to my toolbar. I even connected it to my Twitter feed, so that I can post Scoops there...
Comments