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.

Thing 5: Digital Storytelling

http://animoto.com/play/m2FffSl4fkXn6X2SdPJHiQ

I decided to go with Animoto and stick with using the swimming pictures.  The link above is for the short 30 second video.  It was very easy to use and very quick.
I have used story telling software in the past, mostly Windows Movie Maker and also iMovie.  What I've found is that you really can lose yourself doing this and it takes a lot more time than you think - selecting the pictures, putting them in order and adding any text or music.  I enjoy it though.
Our school has clubs every other Friday afternoon and I am in charge of the Tech Club.  We have been taking pictures around the school to share with our sister school in China.  It has been a challenge to keep the kids focused and get them to take their time to really frame the pictures.  After lots of pictures of the floor and plants in the library, I had to take pictures they could use.  I might suggest they use this Animoto product.  It is much easier and faster than Movie Maker.

Thing #4: Photo Sharing

Finally catching up on Cool Tools!    I have used photo sharing sites in the past.  I use Facebook and also have an account on Snapfish which I have used to share photos from our librarian retirement parties. It is the most convenient way to share the photos with everyone quickly.  It also allows anyone to order copies at their convenience.  I recently created a collage print using my Walgreens account to display library activities.  Sharepoint has worked well for me in the past to maintain a library of school photos for staff to access.  The picture I posted today is of my son at his most recent swim meet.  My friend is the "official" photographer for the team and uses her account on Shutterfly to store the photos.  All the kids and parents can access them to view, dowload, or order prints.  I downloaded this print from Shutterfly and used BigHugelabs to create this poster.  I initially wanted to make a magazine cover, but was finding it too time consuming to design one.  I have been enjoying using the iPad to video the swim meets.  It is so nice to use because instead of using the tiny view finder as I've had to do in the past with traditional video equipment, using the iPad, you can watch in realtime and video at the same time.  The iPad also does a great job filtering the sound and handling the lighting in the pool area.
Happy New Year Everyone!

Thing #3: RSS, Personal Home Pages and Feed Readers

 After spending the last couple of weeks clicking back and forth between the list of participant blogs and saving the blog sites as favorites, I figured there must be a better way and.. who knew.. there was!  feed readers like Netwise!  I even showed my son how he could use it.  I set up the dashboard and also a tab for all the blogs I would like to follow.  So far I like it, although I'm having trouble adding and deleting widgets (I think that is what they are called).  I'm using my laptop and Netwise doesn't always let me get to the delete choice before the pop-up window disappears.  It works much better on the Ipad.  Also, when I add a blog/widget to my dashbord, it seems to be adding it twice. Frustrating.  It did say something about brower versions when I started.

If I can get it to work I might try and put all my email accounts on it then I don't have to log into three places every night to check them.  If it works it will be a big time saver. 

I've checked a lot of the blogs today and I really like the look of Wordpress much better than Blogger so when I get some time (haha) I may switch over. I'm impressed - many people have added pictures from their libraries!

Well, I have to get back to my old fashioned hand-written plan book for this coming week.