Library Click: Four interactive tools to add a little heart and soul to your library website

Take your library website from static to dynamic with ThingLink, Touchcast, Booktrack, and Bookopolis.  Be inspired by overviews, examples, and curriculum ideas for all grade levels and create a website your students and staff will be excited to click! I used Emaze to create this presentation, and one of the features I used the most was the ability to add embeddable code onto slides. The only trouble I ran into was with my Blabberize. Their code did not offer the alternative iFrame coding options that my other tools used. I really enjoyed using this tool, and I think you should consider it as a Powerpoint/Google Presentation alternative.



Read my script

AASL Best Websites/Apps and Staying Current

Today I am visiting the AASL Best Websites 2015 website.  I have found three web sites that are very interesting.

1. BooktrackClassroom: Booktrack Classroom allows users to read online novels while listening to built-in soundtracks.  The music actually changes to fit the mood of the story.  For example, at the beginning of the Wizard of Oz, the music sounds very relaxing and farm-like.  As I continued to read and the tornado approached, the music sounded ominous.  How does this work? There is a cursor that tracks the number of words read per minute, and students can adjust this reading rate to actually match their own personal rates.  The website has a built-in classroom management feature where teachers can set up classes to to monitor how many pages, frequency, and reading rates of students. Currently, the website does not have a wide variety of books, and most of their titles are part of the public domain.  Librarians could use this website on an computer terminal in the library with headphones where students could read quietly.  Teachers could use this website during sustained silent reading time.

2. StoryboardThat.com: StoryboardThat is a fun website where users create their own storyboards with existing templates for characters, settings, and objects.  Teacher accounts allow teachers to create a classroom and add students; however, I was only able to create one classroom, and as a middle school teacher, this could become problematic since I teach five classes. Users can try the website without creating a login, but they are restricted to a three frame storyboard and the save function is disabled.  This tool can be used in any number of ways in the library and classroom.  Students can use the storyboard as intended, as a planning tool, to organize existing stories or poems or use it to help them brainstorm their own ideas for original films, etc.  Students can then create their digital story in another medium.  This website can also be used as a comic book creator or to create pictures/graphics to use in other products, such as a presentation tool.

3.  Tackk: Create digital, interactive posters with Tackk, which also has a streaming feature where users can comment on each other's work.  Users can easily create online websites, newsletters, and projects.  Embeddable objects include pictures, text, sounds, and videos.  Tackk can be used to create online portfolios.  Students can also use Tackk as a collaboration tool by sharing a page.

It is very important for teachers and librarians to stay current with the latest technologies and instructional materials.  I found the Daring Librarian very interesting.  Author/Librarian Gwyneth A. Jones advertises her blog as shameless sharing, and she has so much information on her blog that I could spend hours browsing it.  Her fun and funky writing style is engaging with such titles as Tweet Like a Ninja.  I especially liked her piece on the Amazon Echo and how she was using in her library. This is one blog I will definitely follow in the future and shamelessly share with my friends.

Other blogs included in this week's assignments:

• The UnQuiet Librarian
• Adventures of Library Girl
• The Daring Librarian
• Van Meter Library Voice
• Will Richardson: Read Write Connect Learn
• Two Cents
• Dangerously Irrelevant

Presentation Tools

Thinglink.com: Thinglink allows users to create interactive posters by placing hotspots on an image. Hotspots consist of pictures, sounds, videos, and plain text links.   I created a board game for my students to help them review punctuation. The website was fun and very easy to use.  Students of all ages should be able to create and share their own Thinklinks very easily. Two thumbs up from me!

Blendspace: Blendspace allows teachers to easily create interactive lessons using available resources as well as an option to add your original content.  I selected a broad category (figurative language), and I was able to compile a lesson that uses pictures, sounds, videos, and practice activities very quickly and efficiently. Blendspace also has an option for teachers to create classes and interactive quizzes for students.  I hesitate using this for secure testing, but it seems like a great resource for exit tickets, etc.  Another two thumbs up from me!





For my future reference, these are the tools we explored this week.

• Slidely: http://slidely.com
• Haiku Deck: https://www.haikudeck.com/
• Blendspace: https://www.blendspace.com/
• Prezi: http://prezi.com/
• SlideShare: http://www.slideshare.net/
• ThingLink: https://www.thinglink.com/
• Pixton: http://www.pixton.com/
• Buncee: https://www.edu.buncee.com/home
• Emaze: https://www.emaze.com/

3-D Objects

For my project, I began using Sketchup.  What a mistake! I spent hours experimenting and Googling help videos on Youtube.  My final product was blah, and I am still not convinced I created it correctly.

After a lengthy break that involved reorganizing my storage room and a handful of M&M's, I was ready to try it again.  This time I switched to Tinkercad.  What a difference!  I loved the tutorials in the beginning.  I found them very helpful and right at my level.  After a few tutorials, I was ready to begin working on my project.  But I had no idea what I was creating.

I began playing around with shapes and letters, and my design ultimately became a miniature reading trophy suitable as a prize for a reading Olympics.  I thought that would be a fun library tie-in during Olympic years.  On the front, I created the letters R-E-A-D with a backdrop of a globe.  On the reverse side are the Olympic rings and the word champion.  After all, readers are champions in my book!  

Citation

Charlotte Cooper. Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain). Retrieved July 13, 2015.

Three-D Printing, Coding, and Robots

I am a little embarrassed to admit that until this week, I didn't have a clear idea of what 3d printing was all about.  In my mind, I was picturing an origami Cricut-type cutting machine because I had only seen pictures of objects with cut out shapes.  After watching the videos and reading the articles, I believe the hype is justified.

With the opportunity to create and print practically any object, students in schools and libraries can study first hand the things they would typically only explore through two dimensional photos.  I was most interested in reading about how museums were scanning their collections.  One of my favorite sculptures is Degas's Little Dancer, To display this statue alongside books about ballet and art, the Degas might inspire students in new ways.

Last year, I brought coding into my English classroom.  My students created narrative video games from original stories using Scratch and Gamestar Mechanic.  Many of my girls who showed no interest in gaming actually enjoyed the construction and design process of building games.  It was a fun experience, and one I will gladly improve upon this school year.

I would love to have a robot in our school! While watching the videos this week, I couldn't help but think of having a book recommendation robot in the library.  Students could talk about topics that interested them, and the robot could list several book recommendations based upon criteria such as subject, length, and reading level.  Students would love to interact with a book buddy.

QR Codes

For this week's blog entry, I explored different ways to use QR codes in the classroom. I used I-nigma to create a series of QR codes linking ten book titles from the Virginia Readers' Choice list with Youtube book trailers.  My graphic is bookmark teachers or librarians can share with students.  Using a mobile device, students can then watch the trailers in the library and check-out the books if interested.  I also experimented with QR Voice and created a qr code for famous first book sentences.  I thought this would make can interesting interactive bulletin board.  The QR Treasure Hunt generator seems very promising.  I'd like to use this with my students on a Fountain of Youth treasure hunt activity.

Videos

Animoto

In the spring, I usually complete a Titanic unit with my 6th grade English students.  I created an Animoto video for my class website that showcases some of my favorite Titanic fiction books.  To tell the story, I selected a navy blue theme to create a cool feeling.  Paired with "Moonlight Sonata," the mood of my movie matches the somberness of the disaster.  Overall, I found the website very easy to use, and I was able to create a movie rather quickly.  There were many themes to choose from as well as background songs. If you are the type of person who likes to create everything from scratch, you may become frustrated with this site along with it's 30 second time limit for free accounts. I'd like to create more book recommendation Animotos similar to this for each of the units I teach.

Powtoon
Powtoon was my favorite of all of the websites I explored this week.  However, I found it very time consuming.  I am the type of person who obsesses over details in multimedia projects, and after an hour, I only had about 15 seconds.  Most of this time was spent learning how to use the program. Animoto was much easier for me to use, but I liked the special features of Powtoon better, especially the trendy hands; however, I became frustrated when some of the the special effects I was trying to create were not falling into place as they should.  I would give students the opportunity to use Powtoon for a class project, such as creating an advertisement.  I have a class website, and I could also use Powtoon for my set induction as a way to introduce a concept or essential question.  

Pixiclip
I was fascinated with Pixiclip for about five minutes.  My biggest complaint with Pixiclip is not being able to go forwards and backwards through a video.  There is also no preview available, so you can't see your video until after you've published it.  And once published, you can't go back and edit.  That being said, I can see this as easy way for students to create a podcast/vodcast.  I like the idea of using Pixiclip to introduce a writing prompt.  I watched a video of a person using Pixiclip to give directions by using a map.  I thought I could build an activity such as that into a lesson on prepositions.

Websites: Wix, Weebly, and Google Sites! Oh My!

I love building websites! I have prior experience using Wix, Weebly, Smore, Google Sites, and even my own website designed from scratch in Photoshop and assembled in Dreamweaver.  Right now, I am leaning towards using Weebly because although I know how to design a web page from scratch, I have time constraints that, as a professional, I have to deal with.  My free time is limited, so I need to be efficient with my choices.

Lord Selkirk School Library
This library connects a school-wide adventure theme into the library as well as the library's website.  The greenery in the header matches the library photo, which is a display of African safari animals and books. I thought the background of this website was particularly effective at matching a theme without being over-the-top.  This website is designed for both parents and students, so while the elements are fun, there is enough white space to make the site clear and useful. The font colors match the other colors used in the website.  The fonts, however, are from different families, which seems to be an oversight rather than a design choice.  I am not a huge fan of the two columns underneath the picture.  I don't know if there is enough information that necessitates two columns of equal size.  I wonder how this would look with a big/small combination.

Lamoille Union Middle and High School
While I don't care for the overall "look" of this website, I have to applaud the librarians' creative ideas and social media integration.  Many of the websites I've looked at today are very static and boring, but this one is dynamic and full of life.  When I read this Wix website, I wanted to visit this library and  meet these librarians.  For me, this is a great place to let my creativity explode, and for my website, I would like to use similar ideas but different visual techniques.    

Audio Files and Podcasts

HauntingVisionStock (Photographer). DeviantArt.com. Vintage Little Girl 2 [Web Photo]. 2009 November 2.  CC By 3.0. 

Blabberize
Blabberize combines photos with audio files.  Creators can place a "mouth" on any photo to create a talking effect.  I would like to use this in my classroom for students to add their own voice to art inspired writing.  I need to make the mouth move a little more on my Blabberize, but I have had a family emergency today, so I didn't have a chance to tweak it as much as I would like.

Vocaroo
Vocaroo has two qualities that appeal to me: simplicity and embed-ability.  I love resources that require no special logins, passwords, or email addresses.  It's much easier for students to use, and students can focus more on what they are recording rather than how to use the software.  Sharing recording online without going through a conversion process is also very appealing for classroom teachers.  I enjoy being able to easily embed the audio into my class blog. I might have students record themselves reading their own writing and an editing technique.  After the recording, they can listen to their recording while reading their drafts, allowing their ears to pick up on mistakes the eyes may have overlooked.

AudioPal
AudioPal is similar to other audio tools I have used in the past where users can record themselves by computer, phone, or even text-to-speech, which always sounds a little unnatural to me. To retrieve your recording, you have to have an email address, which can be problematic to use in schools. However, once emailed, the file can be embedded into a website such as this blog.  During March Madness, I could create an interactive website/tournament bracket where students could create their own mini-book talks and vote for their favorite books.

Podcasts
I explored TechTalk4Teachers, which is designed to help K-college level teachers keep up with latest technologies in their classrooms. The website features links to blogs, audio podcasts, and video podcasts.  There really is a little bit of everything. As I browsed, I found a topic that is very timely for this time of the school year- Digital Organization!  I am a little obsessed with organization, constantly trying and experimenting to find the right system that will work for me.  This year in particular I have felt a true need to improve my organization, so I decided to give this podcast a try.  Here are a few tips the author shared.

• Avoid sub-folders in sub-folders in sub-folders.  Try not to have file paths longer than three or four folders deep.  
• 3-2-1 Back-up Rule: 3 copies of anything you care about using 2 different formats and 1 off-site back-up.  
• Organize folders first by year and then by course number/committee/etc.  If you organize your files by school year, you can copy and paste files from one school year folder to the next.If you include a reflection file inside your school year folder, you will already have a list of what worked well in the lesson and what improvements you would like to make.  In the new school year folder, you can then delete anything you don't need without the fear of completing losing a record of what you completed in previous school years.

Infographics

Gdsdigital (Photographer).  Flickr: Creative Commons (2010, April 26).  Record Breaking Tornados [Web Photo]. CC BY-ND 2.0 (no changes).

I had a difficult time trying to find an infographic that wasn't too busy.  Even this one has a lot going on within the picture, but I thought the information was at least organized in a neat and orderly way. The graphic designer used a high quality photo that bleeds to the edge of the frame.  I like chart on the left; it shows the amount of damage by storm with the smaller numbers on the bottom and the larger numbers on the top.  The circles increase in size creating a tornado shape.  Very creative!  The dark background contrasts nicely with the white font.  The sans-serif font is consistent throughout the graphic.  The headings are simply a bold version of the same font as the text. The title of the graphic is aligned left on the top line, which is a logical location when reading from left to right.  The arrangement of the other graphics surround the tornado, but in an orderly fashion.  The middle column graphics are aligned left and graphics in the right column are all aligned to the right.  This creates a sense of a order in what could potentially be a messy graphic. 

Below, you will see the infographic I created.  My advanced English students participate in the Virginia Readers' Choice award selection, so I created a graphic that lists the last three winning books.  I used Piktochart to create it.  Of the three tools, this one I found it the easiest to use.

Piktochart: This was my favorite of the three sandbox tools.  I had no problem customizing my design to fit my needs rather than trying to make my idea fit their design.  There were plenty of themes and photos to fit my needs.  The graphic assembled quickly, too, which is always a plus for me.

Easel.ly: I also liked this website, too! I found it very easy to use and easy to create customizations.  I liked Piktochart more because it had more graphics built in.  I could see myself using Easel.ly with my students, too.

Canva: Canva did not work well in my Chrome browser, so that was an immediate turn-off for me. I gave the application another chance in another browser.  I thought the layouts were very creative and beautiful, but they weren't easy to customize.  At one point, I became frustrated because I needed a plain text box, and I couldn't find one.  I like how the application allows the user to build other graphics besides infographics.  

Creative Commons and Public Domain Photos

Hancock, J. (Photographer). Flickr: Creative Commons (2014, July 22). There's No Place Like The Death Star [Web Photo]. CC by 2.0 (no changes made).

Hancock, J. (Photographer). Flickr: Creative Commons (2014, July 22). 

          The New Girl [Web Photo]. CC by 2.0 (original changed to 

          trading card).

On Big Huge Labs, I used the Trading Card creator to make a trading card for a fictional character. This would be a fun project for students when we are studying characterization.  We could also create an entire set of cards that represented the characters, setting, conflicts, and themes of our stories or novels.  Big Huge Labs also has a Magazine Cover creator that I could use with my students to personalize covers for our writing portfolios. Finally, I enjoyed playing around with the FX filters.  I was able to convert a photograph to drawing students could actually color on paper.  

ImageChef: This website has many fun framing options.  I could easily see myself using this to create writing prompt graphics for my students.  Students could use these to create exit tickets.  I especially liked the beach frame and Grumpy Cat.

Tuxpi: I am going to use this website with my students next week.  We are in the middle of creating our writing portfolios where we are publishing the best pieces of our writing from the school year to put in a special booklet to carry home.  My middle school students will enjoy all of the theming options for their photos!

Design Matters and Type Choices

Hello everyone! Welcome to my blog, the Sunny Side of Life.  I decided to name my blog after song lyrics from one of my favorite songs, "Look for the Silver Lining," which is also featured in my Tagxedo. For the past eleven years, I have been teaching 6th grade English at Short Pump Middle School in Henrico County.  While I love my job and my students, my passions are changing.  My favorite part of the day is reading picture books to my two year old daughter at bed time. I am very interested in becoming an elementary school librarian. I am a natural optimist who loves old movies, picture books, sewing,and graphic design.

Design Matters
For my blog, I tried to create a sense of balance. I created a dark wooden background that would contrast with the light background where my text is placed. I love to decorate, and my designer eye is always drawn to light text on dark backgrounds; however, I recognize how hard that can be on a user's eyes when reading lengthy text, so, I am practicing restraint and keeping my focus on communication rather than decoration. In my blog's banner, I wanted to create a visual representation of my personality so visitors would get a sense of who I am in one, short glance. I selected a sunflower field as my background to represent optimism and used a public domain photo of Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz to symbolize my love of classic children's literature. I added the blue banner behind my text so my title would be easier to read.  All three of these elements feature the same color blue (#65b0f2), which I also included in my Tagxedo as well.

Type Choices
My web banner features two different styles of text from two different families.  For my title, I wanted to grab readers' attention, so I used a larger font called Phosphate Inline.  My title features all capital letters, but this will be the only place I use all caps on my blog. I also spaced the letters out a little more on my blog so it would be easier to read.  The second group uses the font BrushScriptSTD, which is a script font. This line is not as important as the title, and I used the script font for decorative purposes only.  The font is small so as not to pull attention away from the title.  The primary text of my blog is Trebuchet, a sans-serif font, which our text book recommended for computer screens.