Crop those Videos

I recently ran into two different, but similar, problems.

• I found an amazing 15 minute video on YouTube to use with my class but I only needed the first 7 minutes.
• I created a video where I realized it was too long and covered two distinct lessons so would be more beneficial for the students if it was broken into two shorter videos.

I reached out to that teacher that we all know that ALWAYS have access to a digital tool and boy did he come through.

For cutting YouTube videos YTCutter rocks! Add the link and choose your sections and you are off.

For my personal videos, while I could easily upload them to YouTube and crop them from there I also got great advice about using the Photos App on a Windows computer.

Digital Citizenship, Literacy, and Fluency

I recently completed an online course titled  Digital Citizenship, Fluency. I started the course thinking it was going to be a repeat of things I already knew. Boy, was I wrong. I learned soooooo much!  As always, I will use my blog to store the cool stuff I want to revisit in the future.

TAKEAWAY #1 As our students are changing our teaching methods must also change. How do we change our methods? First, we must know our students:

http://blog.peopleguru.com/the-next-generation-generation-z

Videos

We have been using Screencasts to support our teaching. The benefits I Tto the screencasts:

• Students have access to the lesson both from home or from school if they were absent or if a refresher is needed
• Using the screencast to teach ensures all my classes, for the most part, get the same information
• When I am not available the teacher has the resources to teach the lesson
• When the video starts KIDS PAY ATTENTION!

The article Five Reasons Why Explainer Videos Help Teach Generation Z gives even more reasons why the videos are helpful and suggestions for using them in your classroom.  MySimpleShow is even FREE for classroom use!

Laws and Policies

There are three main laws and policies we need to be aware of:

COPPA – Children’s Online Privacy and Protection Act
See Common Sense Media for more info 
 
FERPA – Family Education Rights Privacy Act 
We must protect confidentiality of all student records 
Not even allowed to discuss grades with parents 
Do not discuss in email either 
 
CIPA Children’s Internet Protection Act 
Schools must “provide for the education of students ….” 
See Common Sense Media CIPA kit – a set of 45 minute lessons 

We must enable students to be leaders!

My favorite part of this entire PD was this hour long webinar Tech Tools for Digital Citizenship. At 15:00 Alice Barr, Yarmouth High School, presents the Secondary Digital Discussions project. This projet gives students the ability to interact with each other and have open discussions revolving around a variety of topics. The real world result of creating something for the middle school students really gives weight to this project.

Final Reflection

Time to reflect on another year of Cool Tools for Schools. My initial goal for this year was to go for breadth rather than depth up in order to provide a collection of resources for my teachers. I did that for a few of the “things” but then I got so excited I started focusing on using the tools in my own practice.

I explored some fun new search engines in the Search Tools Ninja activity . In the end I never really found a reason to use the different search engines but I do see value in Google custom search. So while I can’t change from Google I can make it stronger. I did create a page on our LibGuide of some of the new search tools so I have a place to refer back to and/or send teachers to in the future.

Three things I fell in love with and continue to use frequently are: Remind, Google Forms, OneNote and Online Stopwatch. I don’t know how I lived this long without them, or how I went this long without using them.

In reviewing my posts I realized I dropped the ball on my new Supporting ENL LibGuide. I had planned on creating a Guide for ENL teachers and had asked for permission to use one that was already there. I never got a response back from the institution and this fell off my radar. This will not go on my summer to do list

Timing is everything. Just after I completed the Augmented and Virtual Reality thing I was invited to the district office for a presentation on virtual reality in the classroom. I was so happy to have gained background knowledge by completing this “thing” and be able to actively participate in the conversation and assessment. It was also really cool to virtually hold a heart in my hand!

Every year when this PD comes up I always think “Maybe I’ll skip it this year. What more can I learn.” And every year I’m shocked by how much more there is to learn.  While I didn’t end up using this years PD as I had originally intended, to provide buckets of resources for my teachers, I got a lot out of it this year. Thank you! Have a great summer everyone!

Thing 16: Bitmoji Fun

For my last “thing” it is time for some Bitmoji fun!  I am embarassed to say that, while I get the concept of a Bitmoji I had no idea how popular they were. My kids were quick to inform me that EVERYONE has a Bitmoji.

Creating my Bitmoji was fun…but stressful. I mean really, do you make it the way you want to look or the way you truly think you look? Talk about a First World problem.

 

Wow, took me a long time to choose that Bitmoji! There are A LOT of fun options. Once I figured out how to add the Chrome extension it was super simple to add my Bitmoji to my post.

I downloaded the app and keyboard so I can now add Bitmojis to my texts and messages.

I am always surprised at how much my High School students still love stickers for their work. I am going to take the tips from this lesson and print out some stickers for my orientation lesson and as reward stickers when they complete their tasks. While the ones that were listed in the lesson were cool. I kinda like some sarcastic ones too.

 

 

I really love the ideas presented in the article Using Bitmoji In Your Classroom and can see myself including these in my LibGuide Research Guides.

While my school is not a Google school I love the article/Google slideshow Creating Comics with Google Slides and am excited to incorporate a comic into my about me page for Freshman orientation.

Love this lesson!

DIY: Office 365 Tools

I am creating my own “thing” to complement the Everything Google “thing”.  We are, sadly, not a Google school. So I am creating my own “thing” to explore the Office 365 tools that my district supports.

Sway

I learned about Sway by making a Sway. It was fairly easy to use and fun but it isn’t something I see using with my students. The big advantage I see in using Sway is that the photos are easily brought in using a built in search. The concept of photo decks was difficult to wrap my head around. I tend to be a linear thinker and Sway isn’t a linear tool. I wonder if students would be more successful with the tool.  In my mind introducing Sway with my students would be using technology just because, rather than because it meets a need. I am also reluctant to use a tool that students won’t necessarily have access to in the future. There are other tools out there that I feel are better.

Flow

I had a slight idea what Flow was. A quick glance shows that it is Microsoft’s version of IFTTT. While I don’t currently use either of these tools IFTTT been on my “I wonder….” list. There are many different things I use that I am excited to automate. For the purpose of this example I worked to sync my Dropbox files for work to my O365 Onedrive. The process to do this using Flow was really simple! It was a preset flow. I just needed to link my accounts. Now when I save files from my home computer to my work Dropbox those files will show up in my Onedrive for Business account.  Browsing through the options gave me more to think about. Specifically, when considering a digital to-do-list I will ensure it works with Flow.

O365 Planner

Holy cow! This is a gold  mine of a find. My co-librarian and I have a huge list of things to do at the end of the year. Every year we make a huge to-do-list, put our names next to the items and then discover we didn’t do the items in the right order. Planner will take care of that! We create different items for each task. Each item then got a due date and put in a “bucket”. Items are then displayed on a calendar.  PROBLEM SOLVED! One of my favorite features it the app. We now have an organized list of tasks that we can both work from and access very easily.

This was a great opportunity to explore tools provided by my district.

 

 

 

Thing 50: New AASL Standards

 

Like most new things I am facing  the new AASL standards with some excitement and some fear. What are the key differences? Are they really different? I am looking forward to getting a start with Thing 50: New AASL Standards.

Being a linear thinker I started at the top of this “thing” and continued down. What a ride it was! After the video I was more confused than ever. I spent a good hour reading the short pamphlet AASL Standards Framework for Learner Standards and trying to pick it apart and understand it. Don’t do that! Get a general understanding and keep going. It becomes clearer. As I read further down in the post I got the gist to envision different projects and digital tools as I was reviewing the standards. Things started to make sense when I looked at the grid from the angle of  “How do my current projects do this?” instead of “What projects do I need to create to meet all these standards?”.

Love, love, love the AASL One-Pagers for Stakeholders! I will be distributing these to teachers as I collaborate and to parents at open house. Viewing the standards as promotional material for my program further emphasized how I already do much of this and can tweak my library program and projects to do more.

As recommended I completed Paige Jaeger’s exercise from New AASL Standards, So What? My reflections:

• Each project I work on meets different standards. This can be good if we eventually hit them all. Bad if we are missing some.
• I am strong on teaching students to cite sources and we have a plan in place to get  better at this next year!
•  It is impossible to hit all standards all the time.
• It would be beneficial to ensure we are meeting the same standards at each grade level. That way we can build on prior knowledge and everyone has opportunities to practice.
• One thing that would be easy to implement (and I will do it this week) is Reflect on Learning
• Including either Paige Jaeger’s chart or checklist with each project and then reviewing at the end of the year would be a good way to ensure we are hitting the standards and will also help us see small areas we can tweak projects to meet more standards.

While I know I have a long way to go I feel like I am starting with a good foundation and I’m looking forward to other AASL Standards PD I have scheduled in June and July.

Thing 15: Augmented & Virtual Reality

When I started this lesson I had a loose concept of what augmented & virtual reality is I had NO idea how they applied to the classroom.

The 10 Minute Teacher Podcast was a great introduction to the topic. I learned so much in 10-minutes! Field trips in Google Cardboard sound like a great personal learning experience. I love their points that you need to have someone watching the person that is using the headset to prevent them from walking into a door!

The podcast pointed out some cool things you can do with AR and VR but I really liked the article 10 Reasons to Use Virtual Reality in the Classroom that talks about the WHY of using AR and VR. My favorite reason: Promote curiosity and wonder. Much of my job is working on research projects with the students. Often we use literature as a source of inspiration. It would be great to have a bank of VR experiences to inspire students to want to learn more!

I tried out two apps.

• SkyMap was cool! While this isn’t an area I collaborate with teachers often it was something the students had an interest in and was fun to play with. I can see some of them pulling out their phones at night to identify stars.
• I had heard of using Aurasma for booktalks. Now that it is HP Reveal it has a much more corporate feel to it and is not something I would try to use with my students.
• Google Expeditions is amazing. I will recommend this to one of the science teachers I frequently work with. The students in her class are researching volcanoes in hopes of creating their own volcano with the same elements as the real volcano style. Being able to learn about lava flow and eruption styles in 3D would be amazing! I believe this is a topic that the students would benefit greatly with VR.

Overall I can say I now know the difference between augmented reality and virtual reality and know that I need to keep my eye out for ways to use this in the library classroom. This is new technology to be aware of but I don’t see that I have the ability to implement it at this time.

Thing 35: Supporting English Language Learners

Earlier this year I was able to attend a full day training session on ELLs. This class was enlightening as to the different cultural and educational differences and while I learned a lot there I look forward to learning more about how I can better support students as a Librarian.

The article“10 Ways to Support ELLs in the School Library” by Jacqueline Jules. My first impression reading this article was that many of these tips are better suited to an elementary library and the only things I could do differently is:

• Provide books in multiple languages in easy to access displays
• • I have been looking for something to write a grant for! Our ENL students have iPads to carry around so a selection of ebooks and print books might be good
  • Once I get the books I will be sure to keep them in a central, easy to access, location. Without making it obvious in a way that would make my High School ENL students feel welcomed, not uncomfortable.
• Provide Books and Information on Countries of Origin
  • Great idea and easily implemented!
  • Perhaps we can go one step further and in collaboration with the ENL instructors ask the students to provide items for our glass display cases. 

But then I looked at the Presentation slide deck by Diana Wendell  and it totally changed my perspective. It would be so easy to make sure that the signs in the library are printed with the main languages are students speak! One of my Teaching Assistants has run a storytime that was well loved by the students. Advertising this to the ENL teachers, incorporating cultural stories and using props would probably be a big hit.  Like the last slide says we need to start small and incorporate one new action each year. Here’s my list for next year:

1. Reach out to ENL teachers to find out what the primary languages are of the students.
2. Work with increasing the awareness of library staff  on our population, there struggles and how we can help. Without staff buy in we are not going to get far.
3. Update library signs to be in multiple languages.

I started a LibGuide page of resources for the ENL instructors but rather than re-create the wheel I found one I liked from Madison Area Technical College ELL Libguide and asked for permission to reuse it. I will update this guide and also incorporate features from the Duke University Guide to create a resource for our students.

Thing 11: DIY – Classroom Timers

We frequently do activities that are timed and while I know some teachers embed timers in their smartboard presentation I don’t always need a presentation so I was looking for something quick and dirty.

Pinterest to the rescue! With a quick Pinterest search I found three options:

Online-Stopwatch

Super quick and easy. They have a whole selection of classroom timers. It takes less than a few minutes to setup. This is a straight forward timer but it has fun options: a bomb, snails racing, a standard egg timer. It even has a video timer feature. Maybe a crackling fire during free read time would be enjoyed. I am thinking this timer could help me too. I often get distracted and lose track of time when working on lesson plans and this blog — Full disclosure: that quick search I talked about took at least 45 minutes. I have great ideas for my bathroom renovation now too 🙂 — perhaps knowing I was racing a timer would have helped me stay on track.

Classroom Screen

Talk about a feature rich, easy to use tool!  I could write a paper on classroom screen and it’s features. Notable things about classroom screen:

• Timer with sounds. Can be displayed as analog or digital. *drawback is you need to reset the timer each time. Whereas in online-stopwatch you can just hit restart if you need the same time.
• Ability to set the background and add text to it. You can even set the background to be a live camera. They advertise that no video is saved but I don’t know how I feel about that feature.
• Cool traffic stop light
• Icons to indicate desired sound level for the activity
• Ability to run a poll for students to vote by tapping the smartboard
• NOISE MONITOR!!!!
• You cannot save your screens. You must set it up each time you wish to use it.

Testing and Verdict

I ran a speed dating book talk with each of these tools. In this book talk students spent a set amount of time at each station. After the timer went off they moved to the next station. I really thought I would like Classroom Screen more since it had more features. However, here’s what happened:

• Online-Stopwatch was so easy the students were able to do it themselves as they were changing stations therefore freeing me up to work with other students.
• The noise monitor in classroom screen didn’t read correctly based on where my microphone was built in. I think I would need a different microphone.
• I couldn’t preset the voting question for the end of class and in the hectic end of class didn’t get to it.

For my book talks I will use Online-Stopwatch but I am keeping ClassroomScreen in my toolkit. It is so robust I am sure there will be time it suits my needs!

 

 

 

 

 

Thing 47: Productivity Tools Part 1

There are so many productivity tools I want to explore in Thing 47! I will be doing this “Thing” in two parts. For Part 1 I will work on getting a work and personal OneNote account organized.

I have three reasons to explore these tools:

1. After haphazardly using Evernote for years I realized they made a change. With the free version you only able sync two devices. Since I want to be able to use it with my laptop, iPhone, and iPad this means I have to pay or finally move my personal life to OneNote.  I am not going to pay. Time to move.  Side Note: I have to laugh at myself since I have no idea how long ago they made this change is this really a problem 🙂 But seriously, there really are some things in Evernote I want to keep including lesson resources I refer back to periodically.
2. I have a OneNote folder I share with a coworker and would like to know how to use it better. I feel there are many things I can do with OneNote that I am not taking advantage of.
3. Another reason for working with OneNote is my home filing system (and hopefullly eventually my work filing system). My husband loves OneNote and uses it frequently for everything. I am in the process of getting stuff out of our house and want to shrink/eliminate my filing cabinet. I am hoping to find a way to do that and still share all the information in it with my family.

I used this article to Import notes from Evernote into OneNote. At first I tried to transfer files usingEvernote on the web with the .enex file but that seemed to only transfer one note at a time. Next I downloaded  and synced Evernote for Windows and followed the steps to import. I got the message that it couldn’t find my Evernote files. So I searched in Evernote Help and figured out how to use exporter to export entire notebooks. I exported my notebooks one at a time but it brought all the pages within the notebooks so that was fine. I had to export some notebooks since I tried the “Organize by tag” feature and realized that wasn’t what I wanted. This took a lot longer than I had hoped. In the end I have a lot of stuff in OneNote and need to figure out how to organize it in a way that fits my needs.

To help me better understand the layout and how to use it I watched some short YouTube videos.

• Michele Christensen‘s Video shows how she organizes her notebooks. Great inspiration when trying to determine how to share and work with others. Her tips at 6:48 on when to create a new notebook are really helpful! And yes, I clipped that list and added it to my OneNote 🙂
• Doug Thomas’s How I Organize OneNote – Great for an overview of the different features. NOTE: Features at the end are a promo for added tools. Not free with OneNote.
• Microsoft OneNote Tutorial – Great tutorial showing the various features of OneNote. The tutorial shows the Mac version but I was easily able to locate the features in Windows.
• Clear Your Desk with Microsoft OneNote – Shows both the features of OneNote and the practical application of the various features.
• Nancy Nogueras’s How I set up my monthly pages video might be useful if you want to start using OneNote as a planner.  She discusses the use of Onetastic as an addin. 

I could watch these videos and play with my OneNote files like this all day! But it’s time to get started using it for myself and exploring before using it with students. Very exciting!