bookreeader

We have partnered on VoiceThread, Animoto and Xtranormal projects in my former elementary school, and we had fun with Voki and Blabberize in another school. Even though teachers want to incorporate more technology into projects, I have never been able to convince a teacher to abandon paper posters and use Glogster to create "live" projects! Unfortunately, these collaborative forays into the digital storytelling realm have not all been smooth and golden! I think that the problem is that technology can be so undependable, and we cannot depend on the tools to work smoothly in the 30 or 40-minute periods in which we have to create the magic! Even as I created the above Glogster presentation as a trial for an upcoming music class, I encountered glitches and delays. Multiply this by 25 students, and things could get messy. That being said, using Power Point as an introduction to digital projects has helped teachers and students turn from paper and pencil presentations to m...

Flickr has been my go-to photo share site for a while, and I love that I can share with groups, or with family, or with everyone....and I don't have to hide family photos that I want the folks back home to see from the people I work with professionally.  (bookreeader again is my Flickr name!) My daughter started using Instagram to post pictures of herself everywhere she goes!  Now I send her snaps of her dog (which she somehow left behind) and places we go that she will recognize.  With an iPhone, it is the easiest way to share photos. I also like the 360 app on my iPhone, BTW.  I love taking panoramic pictures and sharing them on Facebook or Twitter or in emails.  It used to be a free app, but I think it is now $.99.....but it is well worth the buck! I played with a few tools, and found editing Flickr photos a snap with Aviary.  Then, with PicMonkey and my edited photos, this was fun and easy enough for a beginner to create: These are photos of ou...

In honor of the season, I have uploaded a picture of a wonderful Holiday tree!  I was surprised at how many images were available on Flickr, and how many were in the Creative Commons.  Flickr certainly has grown!   In the past, we have used it to share pictures with those who are far away, as writing prompts, and as a source for pictures in a photo-editing class.  It did take three tries to get the image to load, so I wonder how much patience students would have with downloading images from the Internet.  For elementary  students, we often download a few file folders of appropriate and usable images, and then show them how to select from the saved files.  I know that secondary students are used to finding images on Google; using a site like Flickr would certainly channel their searches and help them focus on the topic rather than the images!  As a side note - I think it is so important to remind students that images are property just as...

RSS feeds to me are R eminders that I am S o S wamped by information from all sides!  My GoogleReader feed is posted on a lovely iGoogle page, to remind me to check it frequently.  Unfortunately, I don't use the iGoogle as a homepage, so I have to remember to go there, as well.  I am glad when I do, because it has great info, and fun feeds like a Word of the Da y (of which I see about one a month) and a How-to of the Day (ditto), which is always useful!  Then I look at the Google Reader, and am horrified to see that I am SERIOUSLY behind in my reading! But this time when I peeked at my backlog guiltily, I noticed that the posts are the same as the ones that I have read through Twitter and Facebook, as I tend to follow the same bloggers on all.  This prompted some swift housekeeping, and I trimmed the Google Reader subscriptions back to ones that don't appear elsewhere.  And explored some suggestions, some of which proved to be worth tasting for a while....

I definitely would like to set up a board of some kind for the school library. We could add sites for research, fun tools to explore, games and educational activities, and other schools' sites. I am wondering whether to go with Pinterest or Learnist. Pros and cons: Pinterest is very popular, and seems like it is here to stay. Learnist is educational, so there would be less temptation to stray from recommended sites. Both are attractive, and easy to use. Must research and experiment further before unveiling The Site.....

I originally started following Twitter so that I could see what my out-of-town kids are doing.....They never call! But I found so many great tips and resources through the postings of Edudemic, Will Richardson, David Jakes, Richard Byrne, and some amazing librarians - Paige Jaeger, Buffy Hamilton, Rebecca Buerkett, Joyce Valenza, and, for fun, Bill Barnes. My philosophy of Twitter is obviously not the same as my kids'. I only post when I feel that the info will benefit the group, so I seldom post, but frequently lurk. I was thrilled to hear Joyce Valenza speak of using Twitter as a research tool; the thought of following historical developments through the postings of ordinary people on the scene is exciting. Unfortunately, most teachers still consider Twitter to be a social tool of no consequence to education. Question: Would you teach students to use Twitter in a research project -- if they cite it properly??;-)

Thing 1: Blogging Hello! I have been a university librarian, a medical librarian, a law librarian, a public librarian (for more years than I care to admit!) an elementary librarian and now I am a Middle School Librarian in the Binghamton City School District. I tried blogging for personal communication, and in the school, but I never kept up with it, except on FaceBook, where I keep track of my three grown children! (They blog, but never phone!) I am taking part in this program so that I can learn about more Cool Tools, actually use the Tools, and hopefully promote their use among my colleagues. This lesson reminded me that blogs can be very powerful, very inviting and useful tools for collaboration, communication and publication....and that I should revive the blogs that I started years ago, but abandoned through neglect. Middle Schoolers love blogging; I need to find a way to keep them communicating about the Library, the things that interest them, and the things that they are l...