Library Love

Yes, Wallwisher again. I'm hooked. So authentic, so easy and such instant gratification. I've been showing it to as many students and teachers as I can.
I put up this Wallwisher up on the Smartboard and had it 'open for business' during the 4th and 5th grade recess times, as well as during some of the library times. After I gave a short demo, some kids came up and added to the wall. I promise I didn't add all those comments that say 'mstara'--learning as I go and left myself logged in so the students' names came up as mine.

What a fabulous way to collect and analyze data about your library. It let me see so clearly what is working for the students, and you can't beat feeling the library love either! Perhaps the next question is "What can we do to improve our Hub?"

Chrissy, our fab grade 5 teacher and soon-to-be technology coach in the elementary, just sent me another site like Wallwisher. Worth checking out!

TechTrain 2010

Every now and then, something comes together so perfectly that it just feels good all the way down to your toes. That was TechTrain for me this past weekend. Chrissy, Kim, Dana, Dennis and I hosted a weekend workshop designed specifically for new users.

The idea came to us in a conversation almost 10 months ago: there are so many great international tech conferences out there, but they go too fast for newbies and are overwhelming. Could we provide a conference designed just for new users? Something that provided a safe, customized environment for teachers to learn the tools and spend the necessary time practicing and feeling comfortable enough to go back to the classroom and implement their learning?

Yes we could.
We just did.
And it was amazing.

From creating blogs and wikis to making slideshows and learning about the Twitterverse, my cohort of ten teachers from various parts of Asia was absolutely phenomenal. Watching them grow in confidence hour by hour throughout the weekend made me a bit giddy, and I loved watching them start to help each other with projects and how good it felt for them to be the ones with the answers.
Each of us guided a cohort of 10-12 people through the weekend, creating that safe environment for the super newbies. Those who had some experience with tools entered the application group and created a digital storytelling project for the newbie groups to view as the culmination of the weekend. This is everyone 'speed geeking' at the end of the day.Such an empowering weekend for both the participants and for me. I think it might be the beginning of a yearly event.

Twitter, Take Two

It took me so long to fully digest the benefits of Twitter. At first, it was hard for me to sift through all the tweets and make sense of what was pertinent to my own learning. So I took a break from it and thought it was simply a tool that wasn't for me.

Enter the lovely Lesley Edwards who oh-so-gently posted about the benefits of Twitter every now and then (smart move to not just do it once, Lesley!), which was just enough to get me thinking about diving back in.

And dive back in I have, and I can now truly say that I am loving Twitter. Why the change? Well, I've narrowed down my field of who I follow to librarians and tech teachers and just a few extras for good measure. In essence, now I'm learning from the people I wish were in the same room as me many times. It feels a bit like that feeling of sitting across from someone while working and one of you says, "Wow! you should check this out. Let me send you the link." Whether you choose to tweet or just be a lurker on Twitter, there is enough great stuff being shared out there that it's worth the leap.

One more reason Twitter is better for me is having a Tweetdeck. This is a site that arranges the new tweets to come up all the time on your computer screen (kind of like a ping for an email) so I'm not actually going to the twitter website.

And if there is anyone wanting to get Twitter a try, I found this little nugget on Twitter today from Librareanne out of Tokyo: a list of librarians on Twitter. I just added a bunch to my account. Plus, you can't beat how cute the Twitter bird is. I've added a "Follow Me" button on the side. Jump on in the Twitter pool!

Paperless Planning

When moving from the classroom to the library a few years ago, I discovered that lesson planning was much trickier. Once so neat and clean and organized and color-coded as a classroom teacher, all of a sudden I had a completely different kind of schedule that changed everyday. There were a lot of sticky notes, Word documents and way too many pieces of paper.

Enter paperless planning from Planbookedu to bring me a sweet sigh of relief. It is nothing short of brilliant, and I don't think it takes that much longer than traditional planbook planning. The overwhelming benefit is that everything is in one place, stored forever, and with the oh-so-amazing features of linking to websites and attaching documents right to my lesson plan. For example, if you look right there on Friday's lesson, the paperclip shows that all my notes about the lesson focus, youtube links, and everything needed for the lesson is just a click away. Now, if only it could only help me figure out how I am going to be in two places at once on Wednesday...

Wordle and Books = Groovy Stuff!

I love the idea of leaving kids with one "cool tool" each time they visit me. During my second session with the grade 3-5 students, I modified an idea I found on Chad Lehman's website using Wordle. In a nutshell, Wordle creates a word cloud out of the text your provide. The more frequently a word is used, the bigger it becomes in the cloud. We began our Wordle lesson by modeling the process, and I had kids quickly brainstorm reasons we love Thailand. Yes, the beaches truly are amazing here, but I did cheat a bit when we made this. When one kid said 'beach,' I asked who else liked the beach and then added a bunch more to give them the idea.We then broke into small groups and listed 6 favorite book titles or series, which I then input into the program to create our Wordle. (It is always cute to hear the 'oohs' and 'aahs' of kids viewing the Wordle). Going one step further, I talked about how our Wordle is actually providing us with data about our class as readers, and we tried to extract the data we could find.

I put them together in a Voicethreadand found myself very interested to see how readers matured greatly from grade 3 to grade 4. There was a leap from mostly predictable series in grade 3 to more individual, meatier books in grade 4. Diary of a Wimpy Kid was overall the most popular, and our friend Garfield was found to be king at all levels.

Online Catalog, 21st Century Style

I spent my first year (ok, first two years) using Destiny in a pretty basic way, but this year I'm determined to have the kids use it in a way that makes it authentic for them. So, we're diving into Destiny Quest, a very cool part of the catalog that gives it all a more current twist that appeals to students (and librarians). Here is a snapshot of my Destiny Quest page showing a fabulous book called Odd Velvet. Check out how many things I can learn about the book just from this page: the summary, a review, other books I might like, put it on hold, and the list goes on.

Cool features we are loving

*Ability to check your own account to see when things are due

*Checking out the lists I've created of book recommendations

*Changing the background theme to something groovy

*Putting their own books on hold

*And my personal favorite--the "You May Also Like..." feature, similar to what Amazon has. It's not on every book, but enough to make it very, very cool!

One question for the library world--how can I give kids access to make more than one resource list? It appears that they can only make a personal list, but they want to make more. One list for books they want to read later, one list for favorites, etc.

Wordle

Making a 'wordle' is so fun. Simply take a text you already have and paste it into the wordle website. It automatically takes the words in your text and arranges them by frequency--the bigger the size, the more frequently used in the text. My example below is taken from a letter on our summer reading wiki, crafted for parents of younger readers and how summer reading helps them maintain their growth. Seeing those key words like open-ended questions, reading and children jump off the screen and makes it a visual delight. Plus, being somewhat font-obsessed, the font choices are great as well.
And the reason I am inspired to write about Wordle today is an article I saw from CBS News. Both Obama's speech and Dick Cheney's speech were turned into wordles. Again, one is struck by the key elements of a text and what is emphasized in each.

22 Books + Wikis = Easy

Little by little this year, I've been working on a wiki to house all the great books I come across in our Learning Hub. I got tired of random scribbles on pieces of paper of books that were perfect for one unit or another, so a wiki sounded like a great place to put them. My plan is to unveil it to teachers at the beginning of next school year and have it be a resource for them, a place where they can go to get ideas of mentor texts for our reading and writing units of study, as well the must-reads I come across while browsing the shelves.

One of the reasons it was taking me so long was that I was adding each of the titles in a rather complicated manner--making a table on each page, writing the title and author, finding the image online and then addding it to the table, etc.

And then I read on Lesley's Web-Footed Booklady's blog about 22Books. Now all I do is make a new list, type in the titles, and it creates a smart-looking list for methat embeds directly into my wiki.

I love when things make my life just a bit easier. And I think I might be officially addicted to making book lists now.

image taken from http://22books.com

TechTrain 2010

I'm bubbling with excitement here in Bangkok. My fab teaching partner, Kim, and I have just been approved to host an EARCOS weekend workshop that we are calling TechTrain 2010: Beginners Learning Technology Together.

The idea came from a conversation about how we didn't know of a workshop that was designed solely for beginning tech users. This area is a huge interest of mine, and I love helping newbies with questions and going super slow to give them the confidence they need to begin embedding digital literacy skills in their existing curriculum. Kim and I talked about the possibility of putting something together in the Asian region, and before we knew it, we had submitted a proposal to EARCOS, got accepted and Kim created this snazzy wiki (if I do say so myself).

Our main goal is to go slow and give individual attention to the participants. We want everyone to increase their confidence and leave with some concrete tools under their belt: their own RSS page up and ready, perhaps their first blog post, a sample Voicethread, and ideas of how to use these tools in the classroom.

Feel free to pass on the TechTrain 2010 info to any colleagues you feel might benefit from this workshop, even though the wiki is still a work in progress. The workshop is scheduled for January 30-31, 2010. Can you tell we are excited since we began planning today for a workshop that isn't for another 9 months?

original image by Dan Kamminga

Voicethread and Kinders

Voicethread is still one of my favorite tech tools to use due to its simple format and its appeal as an easy, fun way to record kids' voices.

Inspired by Mrs. Gamache's kindergarten class, I met with one of our kindergarten teachers here at ISB and suggested we do something along the same lines of taking a familiar nursery rhyme and changing the words. She loved the idea, and so did the kids.

Here is the kindergarteners' final project. Quick, easy and great fluency practice. Embedding something like this into a class blog would be a fabulous way to share with parents.

Organizing Ideas

I was turned on to Journler the other day during a technology session at our school, and I love it. The basic premise of Journler is that it is a place to write down ideas to have them stored all in one place. Instead of what I tend to do with information, which is writing down websites on random pieces of paper or forgetting which great idea I found on which blog, you can quickly enter them into your Journler account and categorize the information as well. It's free, fairly easy to use, and I love having different folders for keeping ideas and memories organized. Even better, you can add pictures and even use audio . My husband is a musician and is loving the fact that he can quickly record a riff or a verse to a song and have it catalogued before he forgets it. I see it as being a potential tool for student reflection.

Another Means of Connecting

View my page on Classroom 2.0

Just the other day, I heard a colleague say, "Where do you even start with doing things like reading blogs?" and I thought it was a fantastic question. How on earth does one dive into the web 2.0 forum when all of it is new? My feeling at times is that the educational world is expecting teachers and librarians to already be well on their way to integrating technology when truthfully there are many who are still on the starting blocks and not sure what to do when the whistle blows. Recently, I've found a relatively easy way to connect with other teachers around the world at Classroom 2.0 website. Any question you might have or any collaborating you might want to join or start yourself is right there for the taking. Even a question like, "Where do you even start with reading blogs?" could be posted there, and I imagine the results would be great. Actually, I'm going to do that myself and see what kinds of answers I get from others. I'll post them here at a later date.

For the record, the tech blogs on my RSS feed that I somewhat faithfully read at the moment are
Cool Cat Teacher
Always Learning
The Fischbowl
Utech Tips

Vokis Rock!

Get a Voki now!


The WOW factor is through the roof on this one for me! I've been looking for a creative way for my third graders to show what they learned from a simple research project in the library, and I found it. My husband came home today and told me about voki.com, and we both spent tons of time creating our voki characters. It's a widget that allows you to customize an avatar and then record 60 seconds of voice. You can then embed it on a blog. What a fabulous way to take a traditional research project and turn it on its head by having the kids present their information this way. And I'm positive it will be incredibly motivating for the students!

Voicethread FBA

I am well into a Voicethread project with a 4th grade class, and we all seem to be enjoying it. It's team teaching in the library for me and giving the kids a chance to learn some great technology while working on their voice in writing. Making the Simpsonized avatars was a hoot, and we are encouraging them to think of this book review as something for their peers instead of for their teachers. The conversation should be among them and not a traditional book report of setting, plot and theme--our goal is for them to say what they would say in person to a friend about why he or she should read the book. As a model, I made my own Voicethread digital book review of a favorite of mine, Mr. Putter and Tabby. Please note that it takes a minute to load.

A teacher sidenote--Voicethread is incredibly user-friendly and mine was done in minutes. The only trouble I had at first was finding out how to edit it (the little wheel in the left corner by the title).

Digital Storytelling with Voicethread

Wow--I was just turned on to Voicethread via the Learning 2.0 site that was set up for the recent Shanghai conference. In a nutshell, you create a digital story by adding images and adding your own words over the images. At first, I thought it was similar to Photostory, another great and simple way to use photos and audio, but the difference with Voicethread is the conversation that happens AFTER the product has been made. Students can comment on each other's work by adding their own words, and a little icon with their picture pops up on the side. I've joined a group of teachers from around the world in a wiki project called Books Go Global! where we will be using this with 4th graders to create book reviews. Wesley Fryer, of Moving at the Speed of Creativity, has great samples of books reviews done by his own children. The Voicethread site has a large amount of sample projects to give you ideas of how to use them in the classroom. Some ideas bouncing around in my head...

COUNTRY REPORTS--fabulous way to jazz these up AND allow kids to comment on each other's work or their personal experiences in that country

ART CLASSES--create a slideshow of works and have students begin audio conversations commenting on the work, like an audio blog. Sharon, thought this might be great for Tetrablink!

SCHOOL COMMUNITY--our 2nd grade does an "Our Cool School" project where the students interview the workers around campus. Making a Voicethread of that and sharing it with schools around the world would give a wonderful global perspective of how those jobs are the same and different.

The Flip Camera

Finally, an affordable video camera for schools! The Flip is compact, lightweight, runs on double AA batteries and downloads directly to your computer instead of using tapes or memory cards. For about 150 US dollars, you get 60 minutes of video capability. It's incredibly easy to use--just point and hit a button to record--and for this low price, librarians and tech teachers could order several for the price of one digital video camera. I bought one myself and while the quality is not the same as a digital video camera, it has VGA (640x480) resolution and is more than enough for what the majority of teachers and students would need and use.

Cool Product--CPS

I'm taking a tech class at the moment, and we are learning about many interesting new tech tools to be used in the classroom or library. CPS means Classroom Performance System, and they are hand-held clickers that allow you to take a survey quickly and with immediate feedback. You can create a test with the software and have students take the test from their seats. What a fabulous way of assessing kids quickly but also jazzing up the test process! There is a 30 day trial offer where the company will send you the bag with 32 clickers and the base to try for one month. All you are responsible for is the return postage.

I'm already thinking that a fun introduction for teachers would be to create a short, lighthearted test to have them take during a staff meeting as a demonstration of the coolness of the product. The final part would be an invitation to collaborate with me in the library to come up with a test together to do with the students.

Step-by-Step Tech Training

Until I figure out how to upload video to this blog (my own tech challenge!) to demonstrate a few tech things I've tried recently, I will direct your attention to a very cool blog I found put out by PLCMC (Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County). The folks over there have presented a challenge to their employees to try 23 things related to Learning 2.0 technology. It's self-directed, very easy to navigate and walks you through things like Flickr, creating a blog and YouTube. A fabulous way to tackle some new tech!