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.