Thing 5: My own thing...

I spent the better part of a week, this summer, migrating a small part of my website to Libguides.  I’ve noticed in my roaming around the web that many college libraries use Libguides as their website, including Adirondack Community College.  Every January we take our seniors to ACC as part of their senior research paper assignment, so that they get exposure to a college library. We’re always looking for ways to make the transition from high school to college less stressful, so it got me thinking about my website.  I thought it the students were use to navigating libguides as seniors, it would be one less thing for them to think about freshmen year. I’m having the libguides as a link on my school website.  It’s still a work in progress, but I like the way you can share templates with other libraries and  the libguide  community. I hope to continue migrating my website throughout the year.

Cambridge Jr/Sr LibGuides

I also created a Google Form for Library Sign in and Sign Out

Thing 3: Personal Learning Networks

Well, I'm going to see if I can complete this Cool Tools professional development before the deadline!  I started out great, but things fell apart for me in August.  I started this and I want to finish it!  I loved iGoogle because I could add RSS feeds to librarian gurus' blogs, it was one stop shopping.  I was upset when I heard that it was going to be phased out. I forgot where I heard about feedly, but I have migrated everything to it and I’m really liking it.   It makes it easy to quickly scan for professional articles and great ideas.
 Following the Daring Librarian give me the idea to create my own QR Quest for this year's seventh grade library orientation and I’ll discuss that in my next post.

I also follow a number of library and/or technology related pages on facebook.  I've read some great articles, that lead to other great articles or other pages to follow.  Since I usually check facebook daily, I can quickly scan my newsfeed for words of wisdom  and much more. I also follow a number of authors, library gurus, and tech gurus on twitter.  Another quick way to say current. Why I’m waiting for an appointment, I can quickly check my feeds in a matter of minutes.

Thing 4: Geolocation

As I mentioned in my last post I got the idea to do a QR Quest, for my seventh grade orientation, from the Daring Librarian.  I wanted to do this last year when we got an ipad cart in our high school, but I just never got it together with APPR looming in the air.  I saw Sarah Olson's post that she created a QR Quest and I thought she's my inspiration to do my own.  I have to thank Sarah for patiently answering all my questions. For the past few years I have had my seventh graders do a scavenger hunt around the library, so  I used the Daring Librarian’s question template and tweaked it with some of my own questions.  Sarah added two items I really liked, the screencast tutorial on using the PAC and taking a picture as an answer to a clue.  I tried to incorporate the screencast tutorial, but our students can’t access youtube. I tried to get around it, by doing the screencast and uploading  it to my website.  I thought I had the solution, because when I went to the tutorial on my phone, it asked if I want to open it in Google drive and it worked.  The problem was that when I made the QR code of the tutorial page, then scanned the QR code, the tutorial didn’t work.  I ended up not using.  I did incorporate using the camera to take photos for some of the answers to to the questions.  When the students were finished with the Quest they then had to show us the photos.  I added an exit slip  to the back of my Quest with three simple questions. For my clues I took photos and then added callouts and other information I wanted the students to know.  When the photos were set, I  upload them to flickr. I used Kaywa QR code creator to make the QR code for each picture.  I printed the  QR codes, arrows, lightbulb clues on yellow paper.  I then spread the clues around the library.  I used this lesson for observation and it went very well.

Exit Slip

QR Quest clues and codes

Flickr photostream

Thing 2: Screencasting

Thing 2: Screencasting;

My first attempt at using a sceencasting tool was with screencast-o-matic, a few years ago. I found it very easy to use! The hardest part was being able to read the instruction, I was recording, without making a mistake. Simply impossible, oh well!  At CCS we use NoodleTools with the students, which has amazing resources for teachers and students to use.   Although I model all the steps to complete a Work Cited page, using Noodlebib, the students always forget how to export the Works Cited to a Word document.  I figured this would be a perfect opportunity to use a screencast to record the steps.  I’ve embedded the screencast on my Citation station webpage and a number of my pathfinders.

I’ve wanted to do a sceencast on how to download books from Overdrive, so I gave it a try.  I had my script and I’m  recording, everything was going well, until I got to the Overdrive page and they had the new interface up.  I just went with the flow and continued recording, but stopped short of downloading because I wasn’t sure how it would work. The process took about five minutes, so simply.  I’ve embedded my video here, but I plan to do it over before school starts. I also plan to do a screencast the steps to download to a Nook and to a Kindle.  I could use screenshots of the download for the iphone/ipad, but with the app it's pretty simple. 

Thing 1: Curation Tools

I looove Pinterest!!! The only problem is, it sucks the life out of me or I should say sucks the time out of my day.  I started using Pinterest, in my personal life, to find ideas for my daughter’s wedding.  This was back when you had to be “invited” to join.  I found wedding ideas and much much more.  That’s where the time element comes into play.  It takes time to explore and then double check (or follow the trail back to the original website) to find the how to and/or more information.  I’ve spent countless hours exploring, but it's paid off with  some excellent ideas!  It wasn’t until a year or so into using Pinterest that I was introduced to the many wonderful ways libraries were using it to curate resources.  I follow a number of libraries to “steal ideas” for displays, lessons, new books and new authors, and more!  Love Pinterest for what it can offer me for my personal life and my professional life. I think both teachers and students will love the ease of using Pinterest, plus many are already familiar with it. 

 I just read Bridget’s post on pinterest and loved the way she used it to gather resources for a project. It got me thinking that Pinterest would be an excellent tool to migrate my pathfinders from a text based format to a visual one.  I could even have a student do the pinning and then just go back and edit the pins with my own comments. Below you can see I gave this a try with some of the resources  from my banned book pathfinder It would a great tool to use to build a visual display of text sets on a concept. At this point my school Pinterest is used mainly to gather professional ideas, Here’s a link to my school Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/ccsjrsrhigh/

Scoopit:  I’ve had a scoopit account for a while, with email notification.  The problem once again is time.  I see all these great resources, but I sometimes have a difficult time finding a chance to read them all.  The great thing is they are all in one spot, so I can go back and check the resources out at a later date.

Edshelf:  I figured I should check out one tool that was new to me, so I explored Edshelf.  This tool is extremely easy to use and a great way to organize all my other tools. I then have a nice visual to embed on my website.  I created a collection for the AASL Best Websites for Teaching & Learning 2013, but wasn’t able to find some of the tools.  The great thing about Edshelf you can “add a tool.”  I really like the organized visual of each collection. Another feature I loved was the ability to print a list of your tools with a QR code for the site. I’m still enamored with the QR code technology! My one critique of Edshelf is that I can’t organize my tools by subcategory.  For the AASL I would I like to break it down further by the type of tool.  I think it’s a great space for teachers and students to organize, present, and share information!