So many ideas...

Today I looked at countless school library Weebly websites.  It was fun to look at them through a more critical eye.  I found lots of things I liked and lots of things I didn’t like.  Below are some of the things that I liked so much I want to remember to do this on my own library sight one day…

http://bhslibrary.weebly.com/   I love that this school library sight has a direct link to their library catalog and the Public Library catalog…a great way to extend into the community.  This would be a great resource for older students doing research AND parents!

 http://lowelibrary.weebly.com/   There was a lot that I liked at this school website.  First of all, I enjoyed that they had an online reading log that engaged summer student participation.   They also had some great resources under the student tab: databases, reading challenges, tools for projects, student showcase, kid’s search engines.

http://elementarylibrarian.weebly.com/1st.html  Here there was a clear lesson plan for the year with expectations of what each class would learn about in library throughout the year and activities to do at home.  I LOVE the parent link here as it gives all the information parents need to know to read with their child.  What a great resource to have for teachers to send parents to.

http://neslibrary.weebly.com/  Love the Shelfari widget.  Would like to learn how to add this to my own website.  I played around with it a little bit and haven’t figured it out yet.  I think it would be great to showcase each teacher throughout the school year.  They could build a shelf with their favorite books (no matter what grade or audience).  Here is the link to get your own shelf… http://www.shelfari.com/widget?WidgetId=237297

http://deslibrary.weebly.com/  This website seemed to have winning books selected by students.  That would be so much fun.  It is much like the Caldecott project we just finished up in our Children’s Literature class.

SO MANY FUN IDEAS!!!

A few good programs...

A few programs I use or think might be useful:

ChatterPix is a program that is installed on the I-Pads in my classroom.  My kids enjoy using this program and we have used it for various assignments.  They did a shape hunt.  They took pictures of different objects in the room.  Then they made the objects talk.  They recorded themselves saying things like, “I am a door.  I am a rectangle.  I have 4 sides.  2 sides are long, 2 sides are short.  I also have 4 vertices.”  They also used this program when we were learning about Famous Americans.  They took pictures of the people we were studying and each student had to say one fact about that person.  We have a cord that allows up to hook the I-Pads to the Promethean boards.  They kids love watching the ChaterPix they make!

In the library, I think it would be fun to take pictures of the characters in books and have the characters tell about themselves.

Blabberize is another program that seems to work like ChatterPix.  There aren’t as many features but it can be used on the computers and the pictures and sounds can be embedded or shared, which is a nice feature for older students and teachers to use.

Although I don’t have experience with the program Audacity.  It seems like a great program to create a Podcast.  At our elementary school, the librarian is in charge of the morning announcements.  I think a Podcast would be a fun and different way to do morning announcements in the classroom.  I also think that it would be a great way for teachers to create digital study guides. 

I was so excited to discover the podcast "Let's Get Busy."  It features interviews with authors and illustrators.  As a teacher, a station that I have in my classroom is the author study station.  Here is where I set up books that are written by an author.  We read the books and learn a little bit about the author, the pictures, characters in the books, etc.  This bank of podcasts are a great resource to use for this purpose.  Recently my class has read a few of Jon Klassen's books.  I would love to show them the interview with him on the podcast.

Let's Get Busy Podcast (2015).  Retrieved 6/11/2015 from http://lgbpodcast.blogspot.com/.

She's Happy!

I enjoyed playing around with some of the websites that allow you to add audio.  I think adding audio to a picture is fun!  There are a million ways to use this in the classroom. Below is an example of my daughter, Olivia, and I playing with blabberize.com.



Here is a link to our image: http://blabberize.com/view/id/1300977

Picture and sound created using Blabberize (2010). Retrieved 6/11/2015 from www.blabberize.com.

24 Books to Read in Under and Hour

I really liked the infographic “24 Books to Read in Under An Hour” and have embedded it below.

There were many reasons I thought this particular infographic was effective and well designed.  I will start by talking about the three effective principles of design that are stated in Presentationzen DESIGN.  In my opinion, this infographic had all three principles: restrain, reduce, and emphasize (Reynolds, 2014, p 152).  The designer showed restraint by focusing on 4 basic facts on how reading benefits the reader.  It then moves on to suggest 3 times a reader could easily fit in time to read a book, using 3 simple pictures.  As you scroll down, there are then 24 books that the average person could read.  This could sound overwhelming, but the designer simply has 2 book covers featured at a time, shown with a watch of how long it takes to read that particular book, leaving the emphasis on the goal: how long it takes to read that particular book.  After reading the chapter on color in our text book, I found great appreciation in the skill the designer used with each of the books and watches (Reynolds, 2014, p 84).  He used a technique where he match a color in each of the book covers and used this particular color on the face of the watch that represented that book.  This was effective and created harmony as I scrolled down the page.  I enjoyed looking at this infographic and felt it was simple, clean, and easy to read.

 

Reynolds, G. (2014). Presentationzen design. United States of America: New Riders.

Infographic taken from: EBook Friendly (2015). 24 books to read in under an hour. Retrieved from http://ebookfriendly.com/books-under-hour-infographic/ CC.

**A question about citation: This image said that it can be shared because of Creative Commons licensing, but I could not find any other information about the type.  I cited with just a CC, is this best practice?

My attempt at Infographics...

I created an infographic that I could use with my first graders.  When creating my own infographic, I struggled most with the free constraints.  The three websites listed in our sandbox all had challenges, the biggest being the free images that were available.  I think it would work best with using photos of my own.  The infographic I created compares wild and tame animals.  I would love to add more pictures and may take some of my own this summer at the zoo so that I can use this next year when I teach this unit.

Here is the link to my infographic...
https://www.canva.com/design/DABS4Cxp6vc/syTsQy1bHaOdj-Ul5dhw_w/view?cc_from_uid=UABSl0f2sx4&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_content=DABS4Cxp6vc&utm_medium=email&utm_source=sharebutton


Infographic created using a template on Canva.com (2015).  Retrieved June 3, 2015, https://www.canva.com/#your-designs. 

My Whole World

I want to introduce all of my readers to my family.  This picture was taken on a special day...the day we became a family of 4.  Meet Jesse, Olivia (who turned 5 today) and Allison (who is now 1 1/2).

Photo modified using Tuxpi.com: Photo Editor. (2015).  Retrieved May 27, 2015, http://www.tuxpi.com/