beccablog, teacher-librarian

I heart screencasting.

1.  Often, you can reuse the videos for multiple assignments and projects.

2.  If a student is absent the day of instruction, ‘look here – everything you need to know from yesterday’ all in a screencast.

3.  Easily upload to a libguides page.

4.  Teachers can grab and put on their website.

5.  Easy to create and share.  I like to use Camtasia – a few years ago, they gave out an older version for free online. I still have the site, but not sure if the download still works.

Click here for an example screencast in our Libguides page – APCAIII Literary Criticism, All the Pretty Horses.  (Click Works Cited tab.)

Below is an example of a screencast (I did not add my voice to this one) for a research paper in 11th and 12th grade Communication Arts classes.

The use of video has been very helpful for instruction and advocacy.  The above video was produced for the I Heart 21st Century Skills video contest last year.  It won first prize!

I began using Teachertube, but it was slow and cumbersome to use.  I then tried Vimeo and it worked great for some time.  I currently have an account through Viddler for host videos and then embed in a variety of places.  Viddler has been great since it is not blocked like Youtube.  Although I believe Youtube is much more relevant, I do not have a library account at this time.  My hope is to create a Youtube Channel for next year.

We are using instructional videos to upload to our libguides.  For example, we created a video about how to grab the citations off of ProQuest and other online databases.  Then we embedd this in our libguides page for the assignment.  As students are working on their own or if they forget the original in-class instruction, they can refer to this video.  Very helpful!

Last week, I was instructing a class for the book trailer project. Students read a book of their choice and then create a book trailer noting the characters, tone, mood, theme, and other literary elements that would fit the assignment.

For multimedia/digital assignments, we discuss the ethical use of information and how to correctly create a project using public domain images and music. Not only do we discuss the “how”, but also “why”. The “why can’t we use a song from my iPod” or “why can’t I grab any image off of a Google image search” seem to stump many students. Even after I show the students the many sites and Creative Commons searching, they seem to still think these laws are crazy.

So, I was flipping through Entertainment Weekly at lunch that day and saw that the Ellen DeGeneres Show is being sued for playing songs in their show’s intro without permission (September 25, 2009 issue). I began telling the students about this and light bulb! They began to understand that these rules have implications and it is not just “them” that has to follow such rules.

Image from Will Lion, Creative Commons

I am always looking for different ways I can help students interact with the content on a web page.

What I am looking for…

*Available at home and school

*Online – not  paper and pencil type thing

*Works with databases and free web

*Easy to use

*Easy to download (if you have to download) and use with a variety of browsers

From Jane’s E-Learning Pick of the Day, I found iCyte.  I am going to try it with students and see how it goes.  If you do the same, let me know or if you have a different/better site, please send that my way too.

iCyte Overview from stephen foley on Vimeo.

We recently launched Ebsco’s Integrated Search which is a type of federated searching that is affordable for us.

What do I like about it?

*Searches our sources from one spot – books and online

*Appears all on one page and since students are familiar with Ebsco, they are comfortable with the interace.

*Keywords – I will put this as a con too – but it really does make you work for a good search term.  This can be frustrating for students, but putting in a broad term will make the search “messy”.

*Subject terms – Ebsco provides additional subject terms in the sidebar.

*Once you do your search, you can then take out databases and search again.

What could be better?

*The title takes you to another page with an abstract inside Ebsco – but doesn’t take you directly to the article.  Students are confused by this extra step.

*Interace is very busy – but that is the Ebsco look.

*Book section

Will it compete with Google? No, but what actually can?  But I am always searching for a place that can provide great information that might capture student’s interest and impact how they do research.

1. iGoogle: A great place for all my feeds. For students, they can easily customize the page for their needs AND place our widgets on the page.
2. Twitter: I receive so much information from Twitter. New ways to get information into the hands of students by posting on our website too. twitter/bvwlibrary      twitter/beccamunson
3. Google Reader: Makes my life easier. Would like students to use it more – but we are getting there.
4. Audacity: Great for student projects. Free. Easy to use.
5. Edublogs: We have several blogs – for students and staff. BVWest Reads, BVW Productions, BeccaBlog, Jag Stacks
6. Delicious:  Keeps me sane as I organize my finds and research what other people are doing.   Next year, we are moving all our links for the library projects to delicious.
7. Voicethread:  A tool our teachers have really embraced especially our social studies teachers.   
8. Widgetbox:  Love this site to create widgets and apps for iGoogle and Facebook.  However, it is now fee-based.
9. Slideshare:  Collaborative.  Takes a powerpoint inside the walls of the school and makes it available to anyone, anywhere.  I think students get that…
10. Wikispaces:  Way to publish projects, easily collaborate with others.

Others to add:  Animoto, Toondoo, Wordle, iMovie, Voki, Ning

Click here for the real Top 10 List of Learning Professionals.

This is a double-post from the JAG Stacks newsletter blog for teachers at staff at West. 

With new 2.0 tools, there are new ways to visualize text that can possibly enhance understanding and engage students.

Tagcrowd and Wordle provide visual representations of words. 

How can it be used?  Go to SIRS Researcher, Election 2008, and copy-paste the text of the two candidates.  Wordle or Tagcrowd will provide visual representations of the topics or keywords the candidates emphasized.  Want to see the bias of an author?  Copy-paste the text from a journal article into Tagcrowd and again, you can visualize the important concepts stressed by the author. 

Tagcrowd and Wordle can work with any text document accessible through you computer including Word, Powerpoint, and Internet Explorer. 

How-To Video 

I am teaching voicethread class this afternoon to teachers in our district.  For the class, I created a resource wiki (http://bvvoicethread.wikispaces.com/), so we can post new ideas and access resources that I found to help beginners.

We recently purchased the education license of Voicethread.  It makes it easier to manage for the most part.  Recently, they added a feature that will be very nice for massive import of students.

Import – you can import a csv file (excel) of student’s names.  To add the students to a “class” or group as they call it, you have to individually select a student to join the group.  However, this can be quite cumbersome, so they made it where students can join a group by inputting a teacher code.  This will drop the students name into the group. 

Now, as we are beginning to use voicethread more often, I try to find good examples.  Often, I find basically reports of sorts without the discussion.  I believe the exciting thing about voicethread is the collaboration aspect – where students, teachers, parents, city, and global citizens can access and comment to create a good discussion. 

How do we connect through voicethread? Should we just do a search and locate a voicethread we want to comment?

How do we provide a “global” aspect with students – so other people around the world can comment on their voicethread?

I have a teacher wanting to connect her U.S. History students with another U.S. History class in a different part of the country.  How do we go about it?

I am always looking for real world examples when discussing plagiarism with students.  Often, it seems that taking something from another site is not a big deal.  I found this recent company blog article discussing how another company used their words.  Although to me, the offense is very slight, it does a good job of showing how important it is to be an ethical user of information.    AND it shows that we don’t make up these rules!

(Note: their top image is actually copied from another site as well.)

Another exciting year at BVW! (I thought about the beginning line for some time – how do I begin to look at the new school year? Exciting, full of change, anticipation….)

So, as we begin the new school year, there are many dreams/hopes for the library. 

We decided to come up with specific SMART Goals for our department.  This is a draft, but a good beginning.  We haven’t set quanitative goals ever – it seems by saying – such & such number will happen, we try so hard to meet a number & we lose out on the quality work we do with the teachers who do use the library. 

Smart Goals (Draft):

By the end of 2007-2008 school year, the library media specialists will collaborate with 50% of the faculty. 

Collaboration: (Define)

Initiatives:
Meet in Professional Learning Communities
Food Snacks
Continue collaboration with already developed relationships
Provide resources in print and nonprint related to curricular areas
Utilized resources

By the end of 2007-2008 school year, 80% of students will indicate that they have a greater appreciation of literature.

Initiatives:
Informal Survey
Funds provided for literature
Web page promotion of books
Involve Johnson County Public Library
Podcast/Vodcast – BV West Reads
SSR
Novelist resource
By the end of 2007-2008 school year, 50% of students utilizing the library will have completed a rigorous research project and utilize specific text type reading strategies.

Rigorous – research not reports

Utilize and further enhance Essential Question Guide
Collaborate with classroom teachers
Utilize various databases (ProQuest, Gale, Ebsco, etc.)
Integrate technology effectively to further enhance engaging projects
By the end of 2007-2008 school year, the library media specialists will facilitate effective integration of technology in 50% of collaborated projects.

Initiative:
23 things 2.0
Resources
By the end of 2010-2011 school year, all parents/community members will have greater awareness of library resources provided to the BV West community.

Initiatives:
Parent Night
Newsletters

We will post the final draft at a later time and of course, more thoughts to follow…