Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Thing 13 - School Library Web Presence

I looked through all of the ideas for library presence on the web.  I currently have a school website that I keep up-to-date.  When I have a class come in, I create a page with links for their projects and research.  I leave all of this on my site with hopes that we can use it again next year with the same teacher.  I find that the teachers will do a similar project the next year.  It is easier to update my page each year than to start out fresh.  The teachers are coming back to the library & requesting me to teach part of their classes now.  They like that I add their suggestions to my page & that I tweak it.  I still find that some teachers just need me to keep students on task.  That's ok.  I have them in the library & even though I don't give a whole class lesson, I can still give the students one-on-one instruction on how to better search.


The site that I explored the most was S'more.  I really liked it.  It was very easy to use & very easy to edit.  I created a page & sent it to our person that does the facebook page for our school.  She didn't post it because it explains how to get on our eBook site.  So I talked to some students in the library.  I am going to create a twitter page & request students to follow me.  I really think that with Twitter & S'more, the library presence is going to increase a lot.  I did send my first S'more to Polly.  It was a simple one, but it looked so professional!


As of this week, our eBook checkouts have reached over 1,000.  Normally, I don't get worked up over circulation numbers, but this time I did the happy dance.  I send out an email to all of the people in our district.  This is definitely something that I will be putting on our S'more page. 

Thursday, May 14, 2015

Thing 29 Student responses

Good morning,
I am looking over the suggested webpages to look at.  If it costs one even one penny, I don't even look at it.  It is just too hard to have things approved to put on our school iPads. 


I am looking at Padlet & I must be just not getting the idea of how I can use this in the library.  I clicked on Create & have an empty page with not much information of what to do next.  I think I need to go to youtube & watch a few video clips to see haw others are using it.


I find that things keep changing in the internet world & it is hard to stick to one thing and keep it active for more than a few months.  For example, when Wordle came out, every one was using it.  Then Tagxedo was the all the rage here.  Everyone was creating with Tagxedo.  That was just last November that you could walk into a classroom & see Tagxedos on the walls.  Now, I'm not sure what the rage is this month.


Our school has been implementing iPads & offering iPad training this summer.  I have lots & lots of apps on my iPad that the school downloaded or is it uploaded?? on to our desktops.  Most of the apps are not impressive.  They did put a couple of apps that I recommended on to the desktops.  Overdrive, Audible, and another one.


I have used Plickers before.  I showed it to another teacher who showed it to a teacher & so forth.  It was used for a while & then it fizzed out.  I think if I start it up again, it will run it's course again.  I liked the fact that the students have no idea what the other students are deciding.  That way they can't just fake it.


I am in a high school where the students think they can be hilarious.  That can be a problem when we use a tool that shows their comments on the screen.  Especially if the comments are anonymous.  So I have to limit how the students can respond.  That's one reason why Plickers is so user friendly for our school.  Answer guard would not work for us, since that answers a anonymous.  It would become a game for the students to see who can get away with inappropriate comments.


I just created a Google form & embedded the form into my webpage.  I really liked it, but the only thing I didn't like is that you don't know who answered what.  I think that it is a great tool, but I need to think about how to use this in the library.  It took me some more investigating, but I found out how to include a name.  You make it a text box question.  Now I need to figure out if a spreadsheet can be done to show the results for the students.  I also sent an email to our tech people.  I heard indirectly that we are switching to Google Docs & Office 365.  It will be nice to use Flubaroo.  On further investigation, I can see that this would be a great tool for creating quizzes for teachers.  I'm still not sure how I would use this with library patrons.  Students like quick & easy.  I think I will collaborate with one of my teachers, but first I need to know what the students will see on their computers & if they will have gmail accounts.  The way that we keep changing technology here, I wonder what's next.



Thing 12 Media Skills - March 9th

Good morning,
Today, I am working with Thing 12 - Media Skills.   I thought I would use it first to promote the library so that I could get practice before I did this with the students.


It's been an interesting & slightly frustrating to get started.  I now have a school ipad to use.  With my ipad, I took a couple of pictures to use Clipping Magic.  My ipad doesn't support the webpage.  So then I emailed the picture to me.  From there, I downloaded the picture into Clipping Magic.  While I was practicing doing the background & foreground, I thought of my skills with Etch-a-Sketch was paying off. 


After about 1/2 an hour of trying to get the picture to look right, I gave up.  A student was watching me & said it looked like I was doing something similar to Photo Shop.  There is an art student in our building who is really good with Photo Shop.  The student suggested that I have the art student give me some help.  I guess I was really doing a terrible job if Hannah is suggesting that I need help. :)


I restarted my rock picture & practiced one more time.  After all that, I saved it & found that I need to pay for clipping magic.  Well that summed it, I closed the webpage & move on to the next idea.


I will be back.

Friday, November 21, 2014

November 21, 2014 - Coding

This week is the first time that I have seen coding and Hour of Coding.  I had no idea what it was.  I have watched the videos and enjoyed the enthusiasm that is shared.  I have been brainstorming of how I can do Hour of Code in my school.  At this point, it is hard to approach teachers in the high school with "another thing".  They are very busy with Core Curriculum, best practices, etc., etc..  I went down stairs to approach our technology teacher & he wasn't there.  As I was returning to my library, I decided that I would do it with my advisement students.  They are mostly 9th graders.  Its a small class, but this would be a great place to start.  I am going to begin the introduction with the 9 minute video on Hour of Code.  I thought it was a little long, but I love the part with the contraptions that appear to be from the future. 


I originally went to college for CAD CAM and data processing in 1981.  It was a long time ago, but I had to take programing classes way back in the BC time.  The is Before Computers in high schools.  I need to  read more on coding.  I have to get everything written down before the big week. :)  I will be back!

November 21, 2014 blogging

I love to follow blogs, however I still am not comfortable setting up a blog for/with my high school students.  We have My Big Campus that the students in 5-7 are using.  Next year, our 8th graders will be using it.  I have decided that I am going to start a knitting blog, get comfortable with that and see how it goes.  In the meantime, I am following the blog Teachthrutech.  I am not sure where I read on Cool Tools to join this, but I am glad I did.  I have already shared some of the ideas with other teachers & had our IT people add an app to the iPads.  That blog is set up so that it goes to my school email.  This is more convenient than going out to find the blog to red it.


Once I start my knitting blog, I will post on here how it is going.


I tried to start the blog for my Knitting &crocheting blog, however I can't upload photos.  I don't know what is wrong.  I read the help screens & I am doing everything right, but it is not uploading.  I will try again later.  I really need the photo part to upload my knitting projects & ideas.

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

November 12, 2014 Thing 1: Blogging

November 11th  Thank you to our troops
Hello,
I am just starting my second year of Cool Tools For Schools.  I am going to try to complete as much as I can.  I have high hopes for this year.  I started with Thing 1 Blogging because I needed a refresher on it.  As I am exploring all of the links on the page I am remembering why it would take me hours to get through the things.  I tend to click & read, click & read, click & read.  So far I am brainstorming how to use blogging in the library.  I am in a high school library & I know an English teacher that would jump on board with blogging.  I am sending all of the ideas of blogging with students to my email & trying to put together a plan to present to the teacher.  Now the one thing I am having trouble with is how the students will be able to keep up with their blogging this year.  Students in grade 9 do not have 1 to 1 computers.  We have laptop carts that we share with other classes.  Next year, the grade 9 students will each have their own iPads that the school has issued.  Do I need to wait until next year for blogging to be successful?


The current 7th graders, which are not in my building, will be getting iPads this Wednesday & Friday.  It is possible for me to go to that building & collaborate with the English 7 teacher.   I need to stop blogging & go explore Kidblog.  I will write more later.


Another question, is BlogSpot part of Google?  I tried to change my email address from jfeenaughty447@gmail.com to jfeenaughty@cgcsd.org, however I can't find where to change it.
Julie

Sunday, June 1, 2014

thing 7 podcasting

I started out with Audioboo.  I signed up through my twitter account and was brainstorming of ways I can use these in my class.  Then I read the small print.  I costs money if you use it too much.  So now I'm going to skip that.  We have no money.
I looked at audioboo again and the. Project they did is similar to one we did with photostory 3 a few years ago.  Its almost identical.  I think with a little more exposure to Audioboo I can come up with some more ideas of how to use it with my unique situation of not seeing the students.  In many places the Audiboo lists as free and then another place it lists as 6.99 a month.

Right now I have my 12-1-1 students learning how to read aloud a children's book to a child. I received an article about how we should read a book aloud.  I took the article a created a month a lessons.  They are practicing the steps mentioned in the article.  The article listed about 30 good read aloud books. Ni borrowed all of them from the public library and had them choose their one book.  Soon we will be reading to pre k students.  I am going to do this again next year, but I will include podcasts.  I will have the students do a podcast for the first time they read the story.  Then when they think they are ready to read to PreK, I will have them do another podcast.  From there, they can critique themselves to see if they feel they are really ready to read to a child.  I have listened to the each student read.  I can hear where they need improvement and make suggestions, but they don't hear what I hear.  With a podcast, I think they will then have more of an understanding of what I am suggesting.

I went in and rediscovered audioboo after watching the video on how to do it.  I now have it on my iPhone and surface.  I even sent the info and podcast to my niece in Aurora, Colorado.  She done with school now, but she teaches photography.  The students can take a photo and do a podcast of what the photo is about or whatever she requires.  Heck, I can do it with my students, to.  Except, I won't be grading the photo.

I saved the article with Mr. Peachey, so I can refer to it for showing other middle school teachers how cool this.  I think I will send the a podcast to encourage them, but first, I need to try it with a few of my students.

I haven't heard the word screencasting before.  I have done Jing in the past.  I did some jings to show people how to access our databases in my webpage.  It's been a while since I did it.  Since I can't be in the library with my students, I am going to use jing on the steps to do all of these.  My Teacher Assistant that teaches the actual class will be relieved that students can watch instructions at their own pace instead of her trying to help everyone at once.  I hope one of these links work ok.


http://audioboo.fm/boos/2215241-thing-7-julie

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