AASL Best Sites 2013

I checked out three very cool websites today that would be really helpful in the classroom or the library.  Click on the picture or the link to check out each site.

https://www.biblionasium.com/

The first website that I enjoyed was BiblioNasium.  This was is a site that is similar to the Good Reads website that we are currently using.  However, this allows students to be in contact with one another in a safe forum.  They can link to their teacher, librarian, principal, and parents to really show a community of readers.  This would be a great tool for a child growing up to keep track of all of the books that they have read in their life and to see how they have grown as a reader.  This is something that I always wanted to do.  This is also a great tool for teachers and librarians to use to make suggestions to students to broaden a student’s reading.

http://www.socrative.com/

The second site that I checked out was Socrative.  This is a site where you can have students use their own devices or school devices to interact in the classroom or the library in real time.  Rather than having to ask students what they are thinking individually, you can get everyone’s response all at once.  This would be a great help in the classroom as you can constantly monitor understanding to help build remediation groups.  In the library, this would also be helpful during lessons to easily present to all students directly at their tables rather than having to move groups to see your projection area.

https://www.smore.com/

The final site that I looked at is one that I am already planning on using this coming school year.  Smore is a site that makes newsletters.  However, these are not your traditional classroom or school newsletter.  Smore creates newsletters that embed links, audio, video, and so many more things.  When sending out your newsletters it works on smartphones, tablets, and facebook.  This site really opens up the world of digital communication to your community at large.

QR Codes

QR codes are one of the bigger technologies that many SBTS are trying to pull into the classroom lately.  I know of one elementary SBTS who has covered the school in them.  The only difficulty with them in elementary school is the mandate that if we see a student with their phone out that we have to take it from them.  The Bring Your Own Device initiative has been helpful with many students and helping to try and bridge the technology gap in schools.  However, we still need to try and find other ways to get students connected electronically if they cannot bring their own devices.  iPads in the library or iPods could help this situation.

Here are two QR codes that I created for my blog this week.

This first QR code will take you to the site we have been working with a lot in LIBS 602, Good Reads.  I never thought about an electronic way to keep track of books that I have enjoyed and could then grab them for students with reviews.  It is a great site.

This second QR code will take you to a site that will read a sentence to you.  This is a very cool thing for students to do in the classroom to add a quick description to a piece of work in the hallway.  What a great idea for a Back to School Night or a Literacy Night.

Infographics

You know, once you realize what you want to do, it definitely comes across easier.

The Tweeting Librarian

Most of us have heard of Twitter.  Some of us even have Twitter feeds.  My own brother says that I need to stop using Facebook as a Twitter feed, but I have more friends on Facebook so why change platforms for 140 characters.  These are some of the things that school librarians need to think about when it comes to using Twitter in the library.

I chose to look at Twitter feeds in the school library because I have not seen much use of it in the elementary school classroom.  I looked at Newton South High School Library twitter feed and saw a lot of positive things about it.  You can link photos in your Twitter feeds where you can share student's work or even pictures of teachers with their favorite books.  They also linked to websites about world events and book reviews by students.  These librarians did not limit themselves to just the walls of the school.  They were trying to talk to students as global citizens, not just inmates at the school.  

Carmel Middle School shocked me when I saw that they only have 5 followers for their whole Twitter feed.  This can be an issue if you are trying to reach a bigger audience.  You have to think about what tactics you can use to get more people subscribed to you.  Justin Bieber has 45.6 million followers.  We need to think about what we are doing in our library to make it as popular at pop culture.  Another con I found with Twitter was that schools are just using it to make announcments and not linking to students work or even to outside websites for curriculum.

The final Twitter feed I looked at was Our Lady of Lourdes.  This feed seemed to be spotty.  There were a lot of time in between Tweets.  This is another factor that we have to think about in supporting and promoting our school library.  One thing that I noticed above all else with all of these library blogs is that there  are no direct invitations to teachers to use links. 

 As I looked at some of the followers to the bigger Twitter feeds, I noticed that many of the followers were adults and not the students or parents from the school community.  It made me think about what is the most important part of the Twitter feed.  Is it to connect your community to the library or to connect the world to your library.  

Audio tools

Having worked in the classroom for a while, I came to know Audacity REALLY well.  I used to publish a monthly podcast with my students from my language arts class integrating either science or social studies.  We would build the plot and script together, making sure that our script had enough speaking parts for each student (between 8 - 16 each time).  I taught my students how to do sound editing in the fourth grade and they were able to use those skills in the fifth grade to work on their GATP.  Those podcasts were some of the most fun times that we had our classroom since we did them during AAP pull out and I wasn't allowed to teach anything new for that hour every week.

Voki was something that was very new to me.  It really intrigued me because it seemed similar to other voice things that I have seen like Blabberize and Crazy Talk.  We used Crazy Talk this year in the fifth grade for doing projects and the kids thought that it was the coolest thing.

http://www.voki.com/pickup.php?scid=8339339&height=267&width=200

I liked using Voki because it could be another way for non-verbal students to give themselves a voice.  This is also a fun tool where students could create a character to share out knowledge with the class.  You can really create just about anything on this site and have them say.....ANYTHING!