Week 4: Digging into those digital tools

Here is a summary of my experience exploring these tools:

My favorites:

Flickr. This platform was completely new to me. While I love the search features via Geotaggings to explore images from around the world, and I do like the quality and clarity of the pictures, I found myself feel overwhelmed by how much I can explore on Flickr.

Here is a link to my Flickr account: https://www.flickr.com/photos/144787860@N05/

Timeline. I loved, loved, loved this product. It's very easy to use so both students and tech-skiddish teachers will be able to create a timeline with minimal support. I see this tool being especially helpful for social studies and writer's workshop projects.

Survey Monkey. The bulk of our staff meetings for the year have focused on collecting data to better educate ourselves on the types of skills, concepts, etc., that we need to address in our teaching. I can totally see myself using SM with students, teachers, and library volunteers to create new channels of communication in regards to how I (and the library) can best service members of my school community. Yea!

Bubble.us. I adored this site. It was so easy to generate brainstorming visuals and it's such a helpful tool for students to explain their thinking, generate ideas for a topic or project, as well as for classroom teachers to map out information.

Good, but...
So Zamzer is a brilliant concept, but I didn't like that I had to pay for the service. I know, sounds very ridiculous since they are offering a service, but I wish they offered a basic non-subscription option. I don't see myself using it enough to justify the $9 service charge.

I like the concept of Voki, but I only have my students for 30 minutes a week in library and I can easily see elementary kids getting caught up in the details of their avatar, instead of focusing on the content of their work.



TOOL USAGE LIST

1. FLICKR. A fifth grade class creating a project about life in Colonial American can use their search to find photos of national historical landmarks to be included in a presentation (i.e., Buckman Tavern in Concord, Bunker Hill monument.

2. BIG HUGE LABELS. Students can create spine poetry, then take pictures of it and import photos to Big Huge Labels to create puzzles. The custom puzzles can be put in activity bins that can be dispersed to classrooms for rainy day or quiet time activities, or be kept in the library for centers.

3. TIMELINE. When creating a library volunteer presentation, the library teacher can highlight the arc of the year in the library by creating a timeline. This will help volunteers get a visual sense of the themes during the course of the year, specific programs that occur, etc.

4. GLOGSTER. When students are learning about American symbols, they can share their knowledge by creating in Glogster. Students are assigned to one image and their interactive poster shares information about said symbol. The teacher and/or library teacher can compile the posters for a presentation to post on the class or library blog.

5. ZAMZER. When the previous library teacher leaves PDFs of manuals and passwords, the new library teacher can use Zamzer to convert the PDF to a DOCX to make changes and updates, instead of handtyping the PDF into a new document.

6. SURVEY MONKEY. The library teacher overhears teachers at lunch talking about how annoying it is to book mark a page in Safari. Said library teacher suggests a social bookmarking tool and the teachers look at the LT like she has three heads. The LT uses Survey Monkey to get a sense of how well-versed the faculty at her school is with using social bookmarking. The results of the survey can help guide a potential PD workshop on the topic.

7. DOODLE. Pigging back off of the last scenario, the LT uses Doodle to find a time to host the PD on social bookmarking, since the district she works in offers a ton of PD workshops. By using Doodle, the LT can choose a date that will be most beneficial for the teachers at her school instead of randomly choosing a date.

8. BUBBLE.US. Students in 2nd grade use Bubble.us to map out the defining characteristics among China, Ghana and Mexico over the course of the year in their Social Studies class.

9. VOKI. Students in 5th grade are creating presentations about the impact of explorers on the new world. They use Voki to create avatars of two students having a conversation about this topic.

10. JING. The 5th graders have started a lunch bunch book club program in the library and want to spread the word to let other students know about it. The students take pictures from the book club meeting and then use Jing to create a screencast narrating the experience. That is then posted to the library blog for the community to view.

11. ANIMOTO. A new library teacher wants to show her principal what's been happening in the library so she creates a 90 second animoto to share with the principal and the community at large.