Thing 26: Media Skills

I love this kind of stuff! I truly think that the creative use of media can be one of the most effective ways to market your library program and the wonderful things that happen in and out of your library space. When I first started reading through the introduction of this "thing" and the "photos in education" ideas that followed, I was set on how I would apply this activity to student learning. However, once I got to the learning activity ideas, I became self-indulged in the new tools and how I can use them to help market programs and activities that are happening in the library.

I started off by playing with Collage Maker in BeFunky. It was interesting because it didn't not require me to login and allowed me to quickly build media for a variety of templates using my own photos or photos from Pixabay or Upsplash (which I had never heard of). This tool was easy to use and much like Canva, although it had fewer free options and designs. It was simple to drag and drop, edit text, font, and save to a variety of options, including Google Drive 

I was excited to try out the template that allowed me to add a header to my YouTube channel. I made my original header in less than 5 minutes and was super excited about the ease of it. Then I quickly
ran into trouble. When I tried to upload my header to my channel, it cut off half the image. This was extremely frustrating since the template was designed specifically for YouTube headers. I ended up spending another 30 minutes trying to find an image that would work for the small layout the was actually being featured in the header and working it so that it was just right. So this simple task turned into a much longer task than it needed to be.

I decided to experiment with a different feature and see how the ease of that was. I used the collage template as a way to build a graphic with photos, so that I could highlight all the students who had already finished their January Reading Resolution Challenge (featured in my last "thing."). Again this was fairly easy to use, but did lack a lot of cool options that were only available in the paid version. I became frustrated at first because the templates didn't have the amount of boxes that I needed and it seemed that only the paid version would shuffle them to work for the number of photos I had. After much exploring though, I discovered that I could start with more boxes and just delete the ones I didn't use. I played with all the features and tried to add banners and icons, but they were extremely limited in options. I decided to try and use the "photo editor" tool, but besides allowing me to alter the brightness, shadows, etc. I didn't have many options. As a result, I ended up with a basic collage, which looked good, but I didn't feel was as "eye-captivating" as I would have liked. Nonetheless, I was able to create a collage that I put on my Facebook and Twitter feeds.

I will definitely use this tool again to highlight my readers who reach their goals for the "Reading Resolution." It is a quick way to build a collage and post immediately. For anything that I want to look a little more professional though, I will stick with Canva. I can also see myself using it with my primary age students to build graphics and introduce basic media skills with. 

Thing 20: Social Reading & Book Stuff

I was kind of excited about this "thing"! It has been months of me investing hours each week trying to get SORA up and running. I have spent so many frustrated hours trying to figure out why my elementary students are still seeing books that are in the High School collection. Permission levels have been reset through BOCES and through the high school collection, I have worked closely with Overdrive and my tech dept and finally I think I am at the point where I can roll it out with my students. I approached this assignment excited about actually getting to work with Sora in a positive way. For this "thing" I wanted to work on looking at SORA deeply and building lessons for second and third graders and their teachers, where I could rollout the new app to them and showcase titles, tools, and features that will be of interest to them for their academic and personal reading endeavors. However, I ran into yet more roadblocks.

I started by looking at the titles that I thought our students would love. I wanted to use these titles to draw students in. I decided to take advantage of "Thing 25: Green Screen" fun to promote, which you can learn about in more detail under that post.

Then I began thinking about the features that would be appealing for both teachers and students. I loved the idea of being able to assign a book individually to students. I decided to venture into learning more about how to do that with the hopes of creating a screencast for our teachers so that they could easily do it with their students, but then I ran into two dead ends. One I realized that you can only assign Advantages titles, that for some reason I could no longer see in Marketplace or the Sora App and two I realized that my teachers won't have access to Marketplace so they couldn't assign a title. Yet another roadblock with the new product. I am in touch with BOCES to see how to at least troubleshoot the Advantage issue, but in the meantime, I decided to move past this option.

What to do next... I was not going to let SORA defeat me! On to a new idea. One nice thing I love about SORA is how easy it is to read in your browser. Although I had originally wanted to use SORA with our 3rd and 4th graders, I decided that I might be able to reach and positively impact the 5th and 6th graders. They each have their own laptops and don't typically consider using them to read digital books. I decided that I would build a screencast showing them how to do it and ask the teachers if they would share it with their students during ELA WIN (What I Need) time. This would be a new way for me to reach students without being present and hopefully provide students with a helpful and worthy reading option. In addition to sharing the screencast with the teachers, I also embedded it on the library website.

Thing 14: Bitmoji Fun

I have to admit, I created a Bitmoji a long time ago and hated it so I thought I would attempt this again. I love all the neat things I see people doing with them on social media and to promote different aspects of their programs and I wanted to join in the fun. When reading over the options of things to do, I was super excited to try out GBoard because I thought it would create a more accurate "mini" of me. Boy was I wrong and so disappointed!!! I ended up looking like a guy in most of my minis. It really is a disappointment because I love what you can do with it once you have it created. Oh well... so it was back to the drawing boards for me. I ended up redoing my Bitmoji and was a little more pleased with it. It still isn't perfect but definitely better.

Once I settled on a Bitmoji, I added the Chrome extension. What a "game changer" for me. I love how easy it is to drag, drop and create Bitmoji's right from your toolbar.

After I added the extension, I began exploring the "Creating Comic's with Google Slide Link."  I instantly saw how I could use these slides to market programs. While I had been looking over some of the links on  "Thing 20" I had come across a PDF of "100 Reading Resolutions", so I decided I would promote that by both creating a New's Reading Resolution Challenge and a Bitmoji slide to promote it on the library website. Of course, I couldn't stop there I also created a Google Form for students to sign-up (which I embedded on the library website), where I used the Bitmoji as my header image. I am so excited to launch this new challenge. I will be debuting it through social media on New Year's Day!


It looks like this simple "Bitmoji thing" has turned into a year long project for me. The kids are going to love it and it will be a great way to keep kids motivated throughout 2019. I am still thinking about how I give them monthly rewards that aren't just material things and will also be motivating for them to keep going each month. I am notorious for having fun lunch groups as rewards, but that will be really hard to do across 7 grade levels with different lunch times. I am taking suggestions if anyone has a good idea.




Before I sign-off, I went back through "Thing 20" and found the "100 Reading Resolutions."  I am posting an image with a link to the PDF here in case others are interested in using it.

https://www.scholastic.com/content/dam/parents/migrated-assets/printables/pdfs/printable-100-new-years-reading-resolutions.pdf

Thing 16: Media Skills

I thought that I would spend some time exploring some new (new to me anyway) media tools for this last assignment. This was the perfect way to end this years course. I must admit, I got a little carried away and spent a little too much time "playing" with these tools. There are so many cool tools out there!

The first tool I explored was Quozio. It was simple to use, free and very practical. I even added the bookmarklet to my toolbar so that when I see a quote in an article, I can easily create a quick image of it to display. I chose to use it a little differently for this assignment though. I am making an I-movie to advertise my Summer Reading Circle program and thought this was a perfect tool to create a question for the students without having to use the limited text options on I-movie. The quote turned out great! I could see myself using this tool for Facebook and Twitter as well.

The next tool I explored was Stencil. This tool reminded me a lot of Canva (which I love). I think I could easily learn to love this tool as much as Canva. The free account only allows 10 projects a month, but for my purposes that is fine. I don't feel like there are as many free options as Canva for images and backgrounds, but uploading images is an option. I do like that all the free images and icons are at the top of the selection list, unlike Canva which has the free content scattered throughout the options. I also kind of like the quote feature although I didn't use it for this assignment. I did however use all the other tool options for this assignment. I created another image for my Summer Reading Circles I-Movie and was able to do it within 10 minutes.


After exploring Stencil I decided to explore, the Noun Project, which I had never heard of. It is a really neat concept. I created a simple book icon. I added the color blue to it, but it didn't work. After I went back I realized that I needed to upgrade to the Pro version if I wanted to add color. As simple as the tool is, I decided that it was way more valuable than I had originally thought. I started downloading as many icons as I could and created a folder on my desktop so that when I wanted to have icons I had my own little library to pull from. Then I thought of an immediate use for some of the icons. I am going to be providing online PD for some of the faculty next year (in a similar fashion to this class), and I needed images (icons) to use for each stage of the inquiry model. I quickly used this tool to find images and imported them into my website.  I am so happy that I this tool was part of the assignment. The timing couldn't have been better!

This was one of my favorite things, because it allowed for me to play and be creative. I will be coming back to this "Thing" in the future to explore a few more tools!

Thing 27: Power Up Your Browser

I love starting new "thing." It gives me opportunity to explore new tools that I would never have thought about looking into before. I decided to take this opportunity to explore new add-ons and extensions. People are always mentioning to me different add-ons and I wonder why I don't take the time to search around, so here I am capitalizing on that opportunity.

"Pocket Icon" (Image created in Awesome Screenshot)

I started by reading 50 the Best Google Chrome Extensions. I saw that in the assignment "Pocket" was mentioned and it was mentioned again in this article, so I decided to start with that. I was very pleased with the simplicity of this extension, both in layout and setup. I instantly added it onto my desktop, ipad and phone. Now I will be able to save all the articles, videos, and images I want and view them at a later time without the need of internet. This will be wonderful when I am traveling this summer... a time in which I plan to catch up on all my reading.  I was extremely impressed with a few of the features. First, right after I added the extension, it placed an icon on my toolbar as a saving shortcut. Then I went to find an article on Twitter to try my shortcut out and I noticed there was a "pocket icon" as an option, right in the Twitter post. Second, I loved how they make recommendations of articles based on what you currently have saved. Then the final feature that I loved was that it recognized other things that I have saved in places such as Facebook and asked me if I wanted to add them to my list.

The next Chrome extension that I tried was Awesome Screenshot. This extension allows you to capture all or part of a screen and it lets you annotate, edit and blur parts of the image. It can then be shared as a URL or dragged to your desktop as a .png. Although, I love the capabilities of this extension, it wasn't as seamless to use as I had hoped. Even though there is a shortcut button for your toolbar, I couldn't get mine to work. It would allow me to select the area that I wanted to capture, but when I went to capture the image, nothing would happen. However, if I went directly to the website itself I could upload an image and edit it with ease. Once I edited & annotated the image, I dragged it to my desktop and used it to showcase the "Pocket icon" on Twitter. As you can tell the annotation was cut off and when I went back to edit the image again. It wouldn't let me change my previous annotation, I could only add a new one. So that was a little frustrating. I was going to try and make a new one, but you are only allowed 30 free ones before you need to pay. I can really see myself having a need for this tool, so I decided not to waste one of my free ones on making an additional one for this assignment. I was also hoping that you could trash one of your items and your numbers would be replenished, but they weren't. :( Overall, it seems like it will be a useful tool for me and am glad that I took the time to explore it!

After trying 2 of the extensions that were mentioned in the assignment, I decided to do a little "shopping" of my own. I was super excited when I found "Google Tasks." I use tasks while in my mail, but I didn't realize that there was an extension for your toolbar so that you can access it from wherever you want. I am one happy women! I now have an icon with a little checkmark on my toolbar and all the items that I had added when I was in mail are all in it. This is going to be much more convenient for me. :)

I loved this assignment and am going to start searching extensions and even add-ons in the future. I felt like this was a fun "shopping experience" 

Thing 29: Open Educational Resources

I am embarrassed to say that before this assignment, I really knew very little about search tools that existed for Open Educational Resources. I spent some time in the beginning of this assignment getting a better understanding of OER's by watching the OER video embedded in the assignment and reading through some of the resources. I particularly found the FAQ: OER for K-12 Educator pdf useful.

After reading through the materials and getting a better understanding, I started exploring many of the search tools that were suggested. Each of the tools opened a new window of excitement for me, so much so that I spent way too much time searching on some of them. My excitement quickly turned to, "How can I share this with my teachers without overwhelming them?" I decided that sending out the resources in a newsletter might be best and limiting the resources to my top 3 choices, I really didn't want to overwhelm them.

In my newsletter, I started off by giving them a brief overview, which included the video that I found to be useful and a link to the FAQ resource. Then I provided a brief description of resource with a link to the material, followed by an invitation for further help if they were interested.

From the list of OER search tools, I picked the tools that I felt had good content for Elementary teachers, were user friendly, and offered a variety of resources. Here are some of the features that I loved about each of the resources that I chose:

OER Commons
I loved OER Commons because of the search ability features, specifically that you could narrow your search between educational levels (lower primary and upper primary). In addition, I loved that they had a STEM Literacy section with resources that include templates, resources to prepare educators and teaching materials.

Open Ed
Although I didn't find this search tool as visually appealing, it was user friendly, with great advanced search options, even allowing the user to search by publisher. This search tool also provided resources in a large variety of formats such as videos, audio, lesson plans, games, interactive homework and much more. I felt that this would be extremely beneficial in an elementary school because of the discrepancy of instructional needs. Finally, our teachers could really benefit from the resources specifically designed for NGSS.

Curriki
Personally, I loved this search tool for all of the information and media literacy resources. However, I also thought that it was a great tool for teachers and students as well. The resources were laid out in a user friendly way. There was also more resources than just lessons and units, there were resources to further teachers and student understanding. I also liked the variety of formats of the resources, from links to downloadable files to webinars (there is a great one on teaching NGSS in a first grade classroom). A nice touch to this tool is that the resources could be reviewed, making searching for good resources a little easier. I will say that I didn't find a couple of resources on here with broken links, so having a review or being able to write a review is helpful.

Thing 35: Web Presence (including LibGuides)

I explored "Thing 35: Web Presence" not because I don't have a web presence, but because I thought my website needed a little boost. I have used Weebly for several years, which I love and after reading the "Brown Bag Teacher" blog post, I felt confident that I am already utilizing the tools and features that were highlighted by Catherine Reed.

I decided to explore the list of library sites that were posted in the assignment to see if I could get any ideas for my website. After exploring all of the sites, most of which were middle and high school, I determined that my site really lakes a "reading presence." There are a lot of resources on my site, highlights of student work and programs being offered. However, when it comes to supporting book lovers, book recommendations and generating an excitement for reading, I feel that I have really "dropped the ball." Therefore, I chose that to be the focus of this assignment. Little did I know how tedious this process was going to be.

I started of viewing other websites and looking for ideas and resources that others were using that I would like to include on my page. On the Springston School Library Blog they had links to different resources for book recommendations so I decided to start by including several of those on my site: The Book Seeker, Everyone's Reading, and Literature Map. I also loved how on their site there were pictures of kids reading or celebrating reading and I knew I wanted to capture that as well. For this assignment I started by including pictures that capture readers, but eventually I would like to include and imovie on this site.

On the Staples Library Learning Commons site, I liked the idea of displaying resources with a Symbaloo, but I didn't really feel like that fit with what I visually wanted for my website. In the past, I had used Shelfari and I loved the visual layout of that. I started out with the hopes of building shelves for my page, but unfortunately, I was extremely disappointed to learn that Amazon is no longer offering this services. I next looked into other options such as Goodreads, which isn't as kid friendly in my mind and I even read an article "12 Alternatives to Goodreads"  so I decided to start with that. I tried many of the suggestions, but they were most sites to help gain recommendations, not to provide them by building a shelf. Some were pretty cool though. Next, I tried to see if I might be able to embed my book shelf from Destiny Quest. I couldn't seem to find a way to do that either, I could print my shelves or email them, but not embed them. I then found an article on Shelfari Alternatives and found many of the same ideas that I had before, with a few additions. I tried Shelvable, which was simple and had a great layout, but I wasn't able to embed my shelf onto my site. I like how this site offered a great deal of information about each of the books from the description, to book details, to Goole Preview. Booklikes had a lot of potential as well. I like the look of the shelf and I could add a widget to my site, however creating shelves and adding books wasn't as easy I would have liked.

In the end I decided to go with Symbaloo, but I am open to suggestions. The nice thing about "Book Lovers" page on my website with Symbaloo pages of recommendations for each grade, K-6. The formatting is a little funky, but overall, I am happy to have a resource for students, teachers, and parents to find recommendations.
Symbaloo is that I am able to connect the kids to the catalog and they can go directly to see descriptions, detail and whether the book is currently available. Since that point, people have suggested Library Thing, but I was well into building my Symbaloo pages and didn't want to switch gears at that point. The Symbaloo pages took an extremely long time to put together, but I now have a

I will continue to add and tweak as new ideas and resources come to me, but at this point I am happy to say that I have an exciting "boost" to my website! In the longterm, I hope to work with Sarah Olson, our High School Librarian to also give our site/s an additional boost, by including a feature similar to what is on East Syracuse Minoa Central Schools site. They have the words "Lead-Learn-Innovate" on their with a direct link that takes you to a Google Slideshow of what each of those things means in the library. We would like to play with that idea for our mission or maybe goals and mantra. Sarah and I might even team up for a "DIY Thing" for that.