Thing 12 - Social Learning and Learning Management Systems

I checked out Schoology and Edmodo.  I downloaded the apps for both.  At this point I would use Edmodo with my students as it didn't ask for my email as a student and since I work in elementary this is important.  I found  Mightybell was easy to use and was able to put up a post.  I'm guessing that to use the teacher part for both Schoology and Edmodo you have to create a separate account, is this correct Polly?  As a librarian I can use them for book discussions.  I used Kidblog last year with my fifth graders and this year I may try Edmodo for something different.  Schoology looked like it had more options though, which is what the review videos that I watched indicated.  If I can get rid of the email requirement it might be the way to go.  The quiz function in Schoology was cool.

Thing 11 - Mapping and Geolocation Tools

Just finished watching the tutorial on the Google Earth Lit Trip, a very creative idea to tie together books, geography, and history.  As I was watching, it turned out to be a little more complicated than I thought (html code), but doable.  There is a lit trip for Bud Not Buddy that I'm going to share with my 6th grade teachers, as that is the next book in the CC module. Another book that I could use it for is Magic Tree House - Hour of the Olympics.  I read that to my second graders last year during that module and they loved it.  It will give them a real sense of distance between the US and Greece. Our school has a summer tech camp and one of the volunteers taught the students how to use the push pins on Google Earth and calculate the distance between the two points. Kids liked it.  It was for grades 3-5.
I also loved the tool to make a QR Quiz.  If I can get access to multiple iPads to use in my library, I would like to make one for my 3rd graders for when I teach call numbers and the Dewey Decimal System. 

Thing 10: Productivity Tools

Whew - I'm on the last thing - yeah!  I have enjoyed this PD and have learned many things.  Now I have to find some time to take full advantage of them :-)
For productivity tools I looked into many of them.  Evernote I can envision using to store my lesson plans - scan worksheets and store web links.  I'm dreaming of not having piles of paper and folders everywhere - my husband would think it was a dream come true also!  I wanted to create one using one of my existing lessons, but I can't download to my district equipment.  Dropbox looked great.  I use flash drives and email my files now and have different versions in different places - not productive at all.  I wanted to download the software on my district laptop but as with Evernote I  was blocked without admin permission.  Does anyone know if RCSD Helpdesk will push it out to our laptops?  I'm going to download it on my personal computer and setup an account.  My  son just got an Android smartphone and I'm going to suggest he use the Lookout product - it looked great.  I have an iPhone and have not setup my "Find My iPhone" yet, so I will do that now and compare the features of the Apple product with Lookout and make sure I use one of them.

Thing 9: Databases

I looked at many of the options for this "Thing."   I have used Scoopit and have links on my library page for Scoopit.  I also have links on my library page for many of the Novel databases.  I like Groiler very much.  One of the products that I really liked was Kidrex, although the first two results were commercial sites selling things.  I think it looks very appealing to younger users and the results were user friendly.  I thought the results were more user friendly than the the way the results are shown for SweetSearch.  I read Celeste's comments about Power Search and between now and next week I'm going to go through the class.  I'm hoping to learn techniques to teach my students about searching.  The contest to get the least amount of hits sounds intriguing - sounds like a great lesson for my 6th grade boys - they love anykind of competition :)

Thing 8: Collaborating, Connecting, and Sharing

Whew!  I'm finally caught up on Cool Tools - for now.
I have used Doodle in the past to set-up meetings, and also shared documents with my co-workers on Google Docs.  I liked Doodle - it was simple and easy to use.  It worked very well, even for novice users.  Now if I only could get everyone in my family to use it to try and schedule holidays and family parties!

TitanPad was new to me.  I am in charge of a district librarian committee for planning reading incentives - RocRead.  I setup a TitanPad so committee members can post and share their ideas and plan our next incentive.  It is hard to get everyone together on the same day all the time and there are too many emails to sort through.  The color coding and the ease of use was very inviting.

I'm familiar with Skype - I have used it very often for personal conversations, but haven't yet used it for school.  I would like to investigate using it with one of my library classes and collaborating with another district librarian.  I am going to investigate what tools are available to me to use it - an iPad or another camera.

There were a lot of choices for document storage and sharing on the web.  I'm also involved in a collegial circle and we are writing and sharing lesson plans.  I will ask the group if they would like to use one of these tools to share - it will create less emails hopefully!

Thing 7:Podcasting and Screencasting

I'm going to use podcasting to introduce my students to the new Kidblog I set up for my 5th grade students.  I'm setting up this blog with a lot of help from my blogging experts and Cool Tool friends, Sally and Paula - thanks girls!  Here is my first podcast. 

I'm going to put this into my welcome message to start the blog.

I did have trouble getting this to display at first.  I made a board on audioboo, copied the embed coding, and pasted it in the HTML view in Blogger.  I just previwed it and it looks like it will work.  Interesting though that when I switched back to the "compose" mode in Blogger to type the rest of this post, I can't see the HTML code anymore, even though in HTML view it is still there and works - wierd.

I think the screencasting tool would be great to set up instructional videos for students on how to use Destiny.  I will maybe post it on the school website.  Also, I may make an instructional video for subs on how to login to Destiny and check books in and out.

Thing 6: Curation Tools

Finally I understand what Pinterest is, instead of just pretending I do when people talk about it!  I liked this category.  I found great sites on the Chris Gibson site that I shared with my 2nd and 6th grade teachers to use with ancient civilizations.  She used Scoop-it and I liked the look of that site very much.  Updating and cleaning my Destiny home page has been on my "to do" list for quite some time.  There are so many great links, but the home page gets very long. It also gets challenging to keep them in a particular order as you add additional links.   I am going to experiment using Scoop-it to collect resources and then use single links by topic to the Scoop-it site instead of listing all the individual sites directly on Destiny for some of my categories.  Using Scoop-it will allow the users to see pictures and logos of the sites which will help the younger users navigate getting to sites.  My primary students can't always find links on the home page.