Thing 14: Social Reading & Book Stuff

So, now looking at Social Reading...  

I am a fan of GoodReads.  I have an account.  I am also a member of several groups, including the Capital Region BOCE Elementary Book Group and the Capital Region BOCES YA Book Group (just in case I get moved, so I can try to stay up-to-date).  I am moderator for the Schoharie Central Professional Book Group, which we use mostly to keep track of what we've read.  The thing about GoodReads is that it can be time-consuming.  I use it in fits and spurts, entering lots of books in a short time, not daily.  I do like the recommendations feature and I follow several other librarians entries.  Too often, though, people are hesitant to say that a book is bad.  There are lots of reviews saying how wonderful books are, but not so many saying they stink!  

I must say that I still don't understand the "customize the “get a copy” section on your own account with links to your local libraries" feature.  I can't find any of my local libraries, but when I try to "If your library isn’t already listed, you can add it," I am adding a link for one particular book.  I don't have time to add a link for every book I read individually!  Maybe for the books I want to read someday I could do that.  Maybe there is something I just don't understand.

Then, there are eBooks.  I have used a number of them on different devices -my phone, a tablet and a kindle.  (I actually borrowed a BOCES kindle for one summer to get a good feel for what it is like.)  I  just don't really like them for personal use.  I think I am one of those people who are really affected by the blue light spectrum.  Being on any electronic device before bed, revs me up so I can't sleep.  IF only there were a way to change their displays to be more in the red range, like some of the new LED lightbulbs are beginning to do.  

With that said, I have done a lot of exploring for school.  Our SLS has an OverDrive account (as does our local public library).  I try to market those to the students and their parents.  I looked into setting up our own school OverDrive collection, but it was both prohibitively expensive and surprisingly disappointing.  Although I know there are a lot of eBooks out there, you can't really go into building a collection by knowing what titles you would like to have;  many just aren't available.  It seems to be better to know a subject or a genre you want to add.  By the way, people should know that they will presumably need a variety of Bookseller apps to access all of the available OverDrive books (some only in Kindle format, Nook, etc.)

I ended up choosing to start a FollettShelf collection with books for each grade based on their curriculum.  One of the advantages is that some of the books can be purchased as multi-user, not just individual copies.  Another plus is that it gives the teacher's something to show on their interactive projectors.  I try to market the FollettShelf collection to the parents and students as well.  Follett does have apps for their product, too.  Earlier this year, Mackin sent me an e-mail about getting free MackinVIA books, too.  I quickly signed us up.  In some ways, I think that their product may be more intuitive from a user standpoint, but it doesn't seem to have as nice of a search feature.

I looked into Freebooksy briefly.  Interesting how in addition to free eBooks, they have raffles for physical book giveaways.  Since I don't really like reading eBooks, it isn't really for me.  I look forward to hearing if anyone knows of any great sources for kids.

I signed up for NetGalley, but I have not been approved for any titles yet.  It will be interesting to see what I think of this site in the future.

The idea of Calibre is interesting, but my need would be mostly for school.  I would love it if it could be network-hosted so that it could assist the teachers in finding the eBooks that are physically on our network, but I don't see that the desktop is very workable in my professional setting.  

I had looked at WeGiveBooks before, but they now have a lot more books!  I think that I will try to use The Snowy Day with my HeadStart group on Monday!  I like all of my students to experience eBooks just in case they have access.  I think that they will probably find it exciting.  I want to tell the teachers at my school and the Capital Region BOCES Elementary Book Group, too.  I can see teachers using the WeGiveBooks books on an interactive projector to teach reading skills and/or to teach content.  I plan to add the link to my website, too.  

I have looked into the International Children's Digital Library before, but I decided to look again.  It does not seem to have nonfiction, so it is not as exciting to me.  Still, I think it is worthy of a link on my website.  The searching by cover color is weird though.  I try to tell my students NOT to choose books by how they look and here is a website encouraging it.  Very odd.

The DayByDay Family Literacy Calendar coming soon for New York looks like it might be exciting.  South Carolina has links and access to Tumblebooks on theirs!  Definitely worth remembering.

Thing 13: Media Skills

So, I have been looking at this topic.  I actually have learned a fair amount about media tools in the last year for some projects at school.  I have become good at modifying photos, using a green screen approach to add things into a photo.  I noticed that the free editor Paint.net was not included.  It was the best way that the IT guy and I could come up with to get me up and running fast and cheap.  Although it is not as intuitive as some of the commercial products, there is a big community using it, so it is fairly easy to get help.  I love that some of the functions, like cropping are SO simple to do.  Just select and hit the crop to selection!  I think that ClippingMagic is a good addition to my repertoire.  I had done the same thing the old-fashioned and fairly tedious way, so this is definitely a good tool to know!  I used it with Pixlr to create this photo.

I still think that Paint.net is easier to use than Pixlr, though.

Many of the media tools mentioned directly in the resources or in the resource links are browser add-ons.  This is very problematic at school.  Add-ons really slow down your browser for one.  We also cannot download without the IT guy's help because the computers are so tightly frozen.  Frankly, something has to be pretty important to go ahead and ask him to come so I can download it.  (The ability to "green-screen" images into Paint.net was that important, but I don't think Quozio, for example, is.

We have looked at Word Clouds at our school.  Wordle is fun and easy though not as visually appealing as Tagxedo.  Unfortunately, Tagxedo is blocked for our kids.  It is not blocked for teachers, so if the teacher is willing and the kids are trustworthy, they can use it on the teacher's account.  The problem is that Tagxedo is linked to Facebook, etc.  Our firewall blocks any site like that.  It is a good idea to ask your IT guy for the test account for your grade(s) to see if a specific website will work with the settings that your students' accounts have.

Under video, I was surprised that YouTube for Schools was not mentioned.  Our IT guy got the school into that so that teachers can easily use the "safe" content. Of course, that does not mean that all of the adds that pop up are safe.  I found this out while looking for intro videos for a fifth grade project.  That is why I have done some work with Windows MovieMaker of late.  I downloaded the videos that I could with KeepVid and linked them together.  It really worked pretty well. I understand the problems with downloading, but I don't intend to pass the work off as my own or to post it.  I just have it to show the class, so I am pretty sure that I am totally kosher with fair use.

While exploring this subject further, I went to the "12 Great Way to Download and Convert YouTube Videos for your Classroom" link.  I did explore one of the products mentioned, Clip Converter.  It was exciting to see that it has both audio and video converting ability.  From a comment at the bottom of the page, I linked to an Edutopia article on the subject which showed me some more video sources.  I was excited to learn about WatchKnowLearn which seems to have great kid-friendly videos for learning content.  You can spend an awful amount of time on You Tube or Google-searching for useful videos to introduce or reinforce a topic.  WatchKnowLearn organizes videos from the web into categories and age levels.  I saw some great videos there!  The Teaching Channel was interesting, too, but it seems, like EngageNY, to be more of a how-to teach it, than really a content source.

It seems like this whole topic is a mine field with regard to copyright.  I know that there are Creative Commons photos, etc. out there which do not violate copyright, but it is so hard to find what you want the kids to see in Creative Commons.  I went looking for good photos of different habitats around the world and didn't find good photos in Creative Commons.  I know that I can use other photos in my lessons (so long as I give credit where it us due), but that means that I can't put the lessons on my website, which is a bummer!  I wish there was a WatchKnowLearn for Creative Commons photos!

I was glad to see the Screenshots resource list as this is such an important skill!  I couldn't believe it when I found out how few people in my school know about and use this feature.  I constantly use printscreen when I am making new presentations.  I paste the printscreens into Paint or Paint.net and crop or add text, etc.  Screen shots are absolutely essential for my SMARTboard presentations.

I have also used Picasaweb recently to add photo slideshows to my library website, https://sites.google.com/a/schoharie.k12.ny.us/schoharie-elementary-school-library/.

Thing 12: Social Learning & Learning Management Systems

      I have had a little experience with Edmodo, but not much. Like many of these systems, they seem better for secondary than elementary and better in affluent areas than in high-poverty, rural areas where many kids don’t have high-speed internet access. I had taken a short (2 hour) course in Moodle about 5 years ago when we first added Moodle in our district. At that point I had created a Moodle “course” for a project that one sixth-grade teacher was doing, but I haven’t maintained it and she hasn’t asked any more about it.
        I decided to revisit Moodle for this Cool Tools project. (I will be looking into Edmodo again as well). I like that Moodle is free, has always been free, and is on our server, so even if future versions go commercial, we should be able to use the current version for years. One of the difficulties that put me off of Moodle in the past was that each update seems significantly different from the previous. I know that the same capabilities have to be there, but they are not in the same place and I have to search them out. It takes a little time to find accurate documentation for the specific version that you have at that moment.
       I also find that the enrolling students feature is more difficult than it needs to be. They have to “sign in” to Moodle before they can be enrolled in a class. It makes using it in a school a little more difficult. There is a way to enroll with a CSV file, but I haven’t fully explored that. Still another problem is that the students do need an e-mail address, though since the Moodle software is housed locally, the e-mail addresses do not need to be accessible by the public (like say to use GoogleDocs). In our case only fifth grade and up has e-mail addresses at this point, though the tech guy is willing to add them for younger kids AND he will add in “generic” Moodle accounts which could also get around the e-mail requirement.
       Moodle is not as visually appealing as some of the other learning management systems. To my knowledge, there are not apps for it yet. However, they have added “badges” like Edmodo and it is fully featured so that you can add documents, links, tests, quizzes, videos, etc.
       So far I have started to create 2 different “classes” in Moodle. One is for my sixth graders. When students have lessons, therapies, doctor appointments, or other absences, they come to me to try to make up the work. It is problematic to schedule with all of my other lessons for all of the other grades. They don’t have recess per se and my schedule varies by the day. I have started to set up my predictable lessons for their big sixth-grade research project in Moodle. Next year, I will enroll all of the sixth graders in September and show all of the students how to use it during our first lesson. Then, they should be able to take responsibility for making up their missed work. Cross your fingers that it really works that way! Also, some sixth-graders seem to manage to lose every paper they are given before they make it out of the room. By posting all of my hand-outs on Moodle, I can tell them to find it and print it instead of taking my prep-time to do it.
         The other “class” I have created is for Professional Development. Jan Tunison gave a talk about how she used Edmodo for PD with her teachers. A fellow teacher and I created a professional learning group at school about technology. Every month the group meets to discuss different programs/sites/etc. We also talk about problems people are having with using technology. I had been sending out a Word document that gave the minutes of our meetings with detailed instructions for different things we covered. I realized that Moodle might be a good place to store that information so that staff members can access it whenever they need to. Assuming it seems to be working with our group, I will reach out the the principal about presenting the Moodle site at a faculty meeting and enrolling all staff as “students” in the Moodle course. Then they can look at it when they want or need to.
        I have spoken to a friend who is a second-grade teacher about it. I can really see Moodle being a possibility for many different things for a classroom teacher. (At least if the teacher expects to be in that grade for multiple years.) You could set up reading class centers through Moodle. First the students complete this assignment, then read this, then go play this game to reinforce a skill, then take this quiz, etc. Just like with my sixth-grade project, I think it is a great way to set up a research project. All of those timelines and other handouts can be online. You can even have older students use the forum to collaborate or comment on each other’s work.
         All in all, I think learning management systems can be a valuable tool. They take a while to set up, so they should be well thought out ahead of time.

Okay, Thing 11: Mapping & Geolocation Tools I had already seen the Google Maps new interface video once before. It is not very inspiring to me as I don't use Google Maps to find restaurants, etc. I tried to follow the interface tour, but I somehow messed it up somehow. I did learn that when you jump browsers, Google does not follow you! Handy info since they seem to be able to track everything. (Just a reminder to those of you who are not as paranoid about internet snooping, unclick the "Stay signed in" box so that you are only signed in to google when you want to be.) I also just learned to create my post in Word and then paste it into Blogger, because Blogger started saying it couldn’t save my post. (Not that I was ready to publish, yet!) That was something Jan Tunison recommended at her presentation on using Edmodo at NERIC Technology Awareness day. It seems like a good idea to maybe save everything that seems important that you have on a free website as a Word doc, too. I have also learned that Google Maps says that Internet Explorer does not support all of the cool new things in Google Maps. They recommend Chrome of course, but I didn't get that message in Firefox so it must support the new interface. My tech guy, Dave Holmes, is always trying to get me to use Firefox or Chrome, but Firefox is too annoying for school since I can only have it up on one computer at a time. What with budget cuts, I am usually signed on to both circ desk computers at once so I can work on one and go over to check out books, look up things for teachers, put books on hold, etc. on the other when I don’t have any help in the library. Okay, I went into Chrome to take the new interface tour. Not an impressive tour to me. As I play around, I noticed that while Google has taken unbelievable street view photos of my neighborhood, most of the photos at the town I work in are clearly not Google in origin. They are still shots, not 360. It makes sense that no one wants the school in too much detail, (you can only see the bus garage), but I am surprised about the main road. I looked into Photosphere. Interesting that there is something easier with Android that with iPhones. I went with the Android phone, but sometimes feel left out if I am not near other techies. Still, with my students so young and not supposed to be using cell phones at school, I don’t see much use for it in an academic sense. Also, it seems more just a fun thing to do than a really curriculum relevant thing at the elementary level. I could see the Jr high which at times has field tripped to local history sites adding info via Photosphere as a project. I did add my favorite vacation spot to the collaborative map labelled "Wendy's favorite vacation spot." Very inventive title, no? I checked out History Pin, What Was There, and Sepia Town. Sepia Town does not seem to have anything local. History Pin has more. To me it seems like What Was There is the best for our area. I don’t see real curricular connections, but it would make a great Scouting project. In the past, before Common Core and all of the standardized testing, I think that teachers would have felt like they had the time to use this as a local history project. I could see people going to the relatives, local museums, public libraries, historians, etc. to get a photo to scan, identify the location, and upload. That would be cool. The My Histro site seems especially good. We had tried timerime with our Professional Technology Group, but that doesn’t seem as focused as My Histro does. I will definitely mention this to Tech Group. Library Thing Local is interesting, but not much use for school. GeoGuessr is similarly just amusing. I think that some of the Shepard Software geography games are much more appropriate for school use. Free iPad apps might be cool IF we had any tablets in the school building whatsoever, but we don’t! The QR code ideas might be cool, but they aren’t appropriate for a school where the kids are not supposed to be using cell phones at school AND we don’t have any tablets. Finally, I did take a Lit Trip course in the spring. I have a curricular connection for it, but I haven’t gotten back to it. This reminds me to do it and I hope I can get myself to take the time. Well, if I hope I get faster at working through future Things and more succinct at posting about them. Final thoughts... How do I get Blogger to let me have line breaks in my posts? All of my paragraphs ran together!

Okay, time to get to work. I joined Cool Tools with the hope of being as inspired as I was when Polly taught the CDLC course that necessitated this blog. However, the November start with the Holiday crazies at school, at home and in the community was just not feasible for me. I hope to catch up between this weekend and next.

Book-Update

East by Edith Pattou

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This is a great book. Written in several voices, it shows you 5 differing perspectives on what is going on. It is a rewrite of a fairytale that I am not very familiar with. I was engrossed in it. It is one of those books that you read slower as you get toward the end because you don't want it to end. I also found myself having trouble moving on to another book because I liked this so much. Excellent!!



View all my reviews

23 Things for Professional Development

Well, I'm continuing on with 23 Things for Professional Development .  I hope that it proves as enlightening as Learn with CDLC.  I know that there will be some repetition and I'm sure I will miss some things what with the summer, but still it will keep me motivated and learning more.  Excited!