bookreeader

For this week's activity, I had a hard time pulling myself away from Google Tools. I really find that they are a fine collaboration, creation and archival tool, and I wonder if I will find any tools to replace Google Drive. I tried TitanPad, and created an account for our School Library. I like that it does not require an email, and that it can be shared so easily and instantly. Still, I miss the templates, the tools that all work together, and the brand recognition of Google Tools. I can see using it with students for collaborations, but wonder if they will use it outside of school. SlideShare and DropBox already have my loyalty. We have sent videos across the country, shared files with librarians across the state, and created departmental folders for collaboration with DropBox. We are so fond of it that a colleague and I requested that the District put a shortcut to DropBox on every desktop in the District. Since we are a District of SMART Boards and SMART technology, ...

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: listen to ‘Test’ on Audioboo 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 mo...

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...

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....