A Powtoon Video... Finally!

   I am ready to share my Powtoon video on how to choose a "Good Fit" Book. After much hard work, sweat and I will admit a few tears were shed over this project. I can say I am done! I wanted to create a video that I could use when introducing Literacy Workstations in the Fall to my students. I find that even third graders struggle with how do I find the perfect book? They end up picking a book that is way too easy or struggling through one that is above their reading level. I created a powtoon based on the five finger tip rule. I hope it helps inspire my kiddos to look for a "GOOD FIT"

 http://www.powtoon.com/p/bMOuewlumfh/

Let me know what you think~

What Have I Been Up To?

   Our latest task was a fun one indeed! In addition to continuing to work on my website (more on that later...) this week I have been using various video tools on the web. FUN, FUN, FUN!! I have used these tools in the classroom before.
   
   First up is a student favorite, powtoon.  http://www.powtoon.com/ I have used this one in my classroom many times. I must admit that while it is a student fav, it is definitely one of mine as well. A little background on me and my classroom. I am a teacher that embraces technology, who uses her Smart board daily, along with a document camera and my i Pad. My class is lucky to have a class set of i Pads (one for each student!) I know this is rare ~ but I use them everyday as much as I can! We work hard in our grade to make engaging, rigorous lessons and using Powtoons adds a (forgive me) certain PUNCH to a lesson. Let me set the background for you, imagine introducing a unit by standing there at the front of the classroom and just blabbering on about whatever topic we needed to teach........BOOOOR-ING....Can you hear the snoring? I can. Now, fast forward to the age of technology, imagine the same academic goal only for your "Hook" you intro the unit using an amazing Powtoon that takes you minutes to create----can you hear the roar, the excitement coming from the audience... I mean students? I can!! They are excited, chomping at the bit, ready for more, hanging on the edge of their seats. Get the picture? I am honest when I say, it is much more fun to teach the second way with greater rewards using technology to "hook" them. Anyways, back to my post.

   The second tool is equally exciting, animoto. You can find it at http://animoto.com/ I have also worked with my third graders using this tool. Our school spends a great deal of planning time focused on the assessment part of a lesson plan. We use various ways to check for comprehension, so it is important to keep it fresh and mix it up a bit. Anyone can plan a summative assessment using a Unit test , but why not be more engaging, live on the edge and allow students to produce an animoto as an end of unit assessment? Think about teaching Ancient Greece and Rome, who wouldn't rather create an animoto to review the SOL's taught like architecture, geographical locations, occupations, land/climate/crops. Can you imagine how fun a creative tool like this could be? We all know students learn more when they are engaged and interested. So, why not try it!

Here are some equally fabulous ways that I have used Animoto in my classroom ~

• Create a presentation during an autobiography unit on Famous Americans
• Do a book report using animoto. A really catchy book talk presentation is a Fantastic way to present to the class!
• Science topics work well ~ how about using one to teach the simple machines

   Now, last but certainly not least, is pixiclip. Pixiclip is an online digital whiteboard that allows users to add sound to their sketch. As I mentioned, we utilize our i Pads a lot throughout the day. The students can use pixiclip to capture the math problem they are working on (Great for checking their work during math problems.)  Also, back in "Assessment Land", why not use it as an exit pass or Formative Assessment to check for understanding at the end of a lesson? If you are teaching explorers, students can use this tool to trace a particular explorers route and add sound to their sketch. Check out pixiclip at http://www.pixiclip.com/beta/

   Using any of these video tools, will definitely enhance the learning / lesson. I know it makes for more exciting teaching, which is a Win ~ Win in my book!! Which tool will you incorporate into your classroom and how? Please share your thoughts and ideas!! I would love to hear from you!

What's Next for The Primary Librarian? Creating A Website ~

    I begin to turn my thoughts to our next step in this journey, creating a website. I start as every good librarian does with doing my research. I have spent a few days checking out various tools that allow you to build a website, free of charge. To my surprise, there were many out there! I narrowed my focus on two: weebly and google.

  After only a short while, I began to notice how weebly was more user friendly than the others. I was SOLD!! I feel like weebly is going to give me a number of choices and options to allow me to personalize the site I am creating. While in the developing stage of my new project, I did search around the web for some inspiration! I found several sites that peaked my interest ~

   The first one, I am sharing because it was warm, welcoming and inviting all on one page! That says a lot! Not to mention, she used a Shel Silverstein poem on the home page. Can we just say, she had me at Welcome? Check out the site here: http://librarywoodwardhill.weebly.com/ Another site, I liked because the librarian of this site has an incredible sense of  "library" humor and the site offers a lot of valuable information. Head on over to http://rhsvtlibrary.weebly.com/S to check it out!

   So, what have a learned from all this research? I know I will be using weebly to create the site. I want the website to be warm and inviting, but I also want it to be fun too! Stay tuned here for updates on my latest adventure!

Creating Lilly the Library Fairy: My Very Own Voki

     Adding audio to my blog, what a fun assignment! I decided to create my very own talking avatar using Voki. This service allows users to create a custom speaking avatar that you can save, send or embed in a blog like I did! I created Lily the Library Fairy.

    I can think of many ways to share this technique within my classroom or school. How about a morning message; a greeting that plays to welcome parents to Open House in the Fall with key points about our year/expectations; Introducing a new theme or unit. This could be a great tool to really capture the students attention! 

Head on over to  http://www.voki.com/    to start creating your own talking avatar!

What kind of avatar will you create?
                          
                                                      

Educational Podcasts ~ Finding Inspiration in Education

   I know I have already blogged about using Podcasts in the school or classroom. I wanted to share with you one site that I use when presenting to staff, colleagues or parents, known as Ted Talk http://www.ted.com/

This site has a great wealth of  "Talks" or mini-presentations that motivate, inspire and persuade you to really think. Specifically, there is one particular TED talk with Dr. Rita Pierson, an amazing educator, who sadly passed away a year ago. I play this particular moving lesson often as it inspires me, reminds me of the importance of my job and encourages me to work harder at being a better teacher. I have watched this many times and still get goosebumps. I am placing the link here, please take a moment to view her powerful Ted talk. This talk is quite powerful!

http://www.ted.com/talks/rita_pierson_every_kid_needs_a_champion

How will you inspire a child in your school?

Using Podcasts in Your School

   I am very excited to write about the educational tool of Podcasts. Podcasts are an exciting tool to use in your instruction. Podcasts are simply a recorded broadcast that can be accessed by people to listen to at any time. There are lots of reasons to utilize podcasts in education. I have used podcasts during our "One School, One Book"Project. Each year our area participates in a program in which all the area districts are reading the same book each evening at home with their families. This is an effort you might want to look into to help promote family literacy through engaging activities. Each evening the different schools, read the same chapter at home. There is a comprehension question the next morning that is broadcast on the local radio station. Students  submit their answer to the question to possibly win a prize at their school. I was in charge of this program at our school and needed to come up with a way to help students engage and increase participation.
 
    One idea I came up with was to do a podcast and put it on the school website for parents, teachers and students to access. I asked teachers, principals and school administrators to each read a chapter. Each morning the students were so excited to guess who would be reading the next chapter. It was a great, FREE way to increase participation, really build excitement and A BUZZ about the project. In my class, there were students that did not have access to the Internet at home (we are a rural community.) So, I created a QR code for the podcasts. I am very lucky as all my of my students have their own i Pads to use to scan the code and listen in on the story during Morning Arrival. I felt it was a huge success and allowed accessibility to the story by all. Here is a link to the One School, One Book website: http://readtothem.org/our-programs/one-school-one-book/

Here are some additional ways I have used them in school:

•  Can be used to highlight student work or class projects
• Relate news or important events 
• Librarians can use them to tell stories or have a book chat   
• Grade levels can use them to help with teaching of a particular unit ~ Example: If you are teaching a unit on Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, why not do a podcast where students' prepare a script with facts about each civilization; compare and contrast the two and then you can put in on the school website to be accessed and used as a FUN and catchy way to review for benchmarks or testing. Students working in such a fun  and innovative way really promotes higher level thinking and increases comprehension and understanding. 

   How can you use Podcasts in your school?

How Do You Create An Infographic?

   While trying my hand at creating my very first infographic, I headed over to http://www.easel.ly/ to begin creating! Using their templates made my job very easy. To be honest, the hardest part about this process is coming up with your topic. Easel.ly had a variety of "Vhemes" or visual themes that you can choose from or you can use a blank canvas and build one yourself. There were options for selecting shapes, objects and text  (oh my!) I found it very easy to work with for the most part. I am not alone in my struggles to blend colors with their templates. It was hard to match my colors to what was already preexisting in the template. I also found it difficult to line up my numbers and text accurately. There is a grid tool that is quite helpful when attempting to line up text and images. Here is what I came up with to show our Top Read Aloud Stories for the week (Of course, you know I had to read The Giving Tree one last time!)  ~

   I can imagine using this in my third grade classroom. Students would need a bit of training and guidance in the selection of a topic and the best way to present that keeping in mind ~

• visual aesthetics (use and selection of colors, themes and images)
• utilizing the less is more principle 
• representing accurate data

How will you use this tool in your classroom?

Answer Garden, FINALLY!!

Write the title of a book that inspired you as a child.... at AnswerGarden.ch.

Well, after much, much, trial and error and a very helpful post from Tara (Thanks, Tara!!) I can finally share my Answer Garden. I can think of so many ways to use this in my classroom. Surveying my class as an exit ticket for comprehension of a lesson or material, Favorite topics/authors, Suggestions or book picks and the list goes on and on. Please be sure to post an answer to my GARDEN!

Inspiring Positive Behavior with My Sign

In a previous post, I wrote about being a school coach for Positive Behavior and working on materials to use in our school next year. I wanted to try out http://www.imagechef.com to see how I could use that program to create some motivational images for classrooms. I chose the Mountain Sign option and then all that I needed to do was type in my text!! That was it! Easy as 1 ~ 2 ~ 3 ! I find myself telling my students all the time to think positive and believe in yourself. So, that is what I put on my sign ! What do you think?

Using Big Huge Labs In The Classroom

     I was very excited at trying Big Huge Labs for this post. I have heard about it from other educators but never found the time to experiment with it. So, with a little time on my hands, it was OFF to http://bighugelabs.com/ I went ! I am guilty of always thinking about things to do with my kiddos in the future. With this school year coming to an end and my eyes beginning to focus on the 2014 ~ 2015 year, I began to brainstorm ways to use this in my third grade classroom. The first week of school we do some team building, sharing and get to know you activities. With summer still fresh in our minds, I thought why not create a magazine cover to use as a conversation starter. So, here is mine ~

     It was really quite easy, at Big Huge Labs, I registered (all you need is an email--which was great as I do not use Face book and so many programs require Face book accounts.) I selected the option to make a magazine cover and began creating. Knowing that I was going to use this at the beginning of the school year, I wanted a WOW moment from my image. I headed over to http://pixabay.com/ which I like because you can use the images here freely without attribution. I grabbed this Gorgeous sunflower image because it made me feel "HAPPY, HAPPY,  HAPPY." I then played around with my magazine lines and fonts. You can edit, change or redo anything during the process that you are not happy with ( I did this quite a bit)

     I think I will be using this program not only for this application but using the jigsaw application for word study activities, the movie poster and billboard are next on my list to explore. I am a Coach for our school and am working on Positive Behavior Intervention Plans for next year and think the Motivational Poster Tool will be a great resource, too! Please let me know your ideas and thoughts for using this in the classroom or library !!

Could This Be The Happiest Place On Earth?

     While searching for fun photos in Google Images to upload to my blog, I came across this
A M A Z I N G photo of the Stockholm Public Library. While searching I specified that I wanted images that could be reused with modification.

    I then uploaded my photo to  http://www.tuxpi.com/  where I put my creativity to the test. I must admit that I am a novice at altering photos using this software, but it was really easy to use !! I adjusted the brightness, contrast, saturation and hue of the photo to make it really P O P off the page!!  Then I decided to add a bit of text to my image. Just to finish off the photo, I decided to add the frame around the entire image. This was a FUN project! I can see using this idea when my teamie is teaching Ancient Greece and Rome to use with my kiddos for a presentation. Take a look at the final product ~

 By Marcus Hansson from Göteborg, Sweden (The best days are not planned) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Creating My Avatar ~ Who Knew It Could Be So Fun?

The Primary Librarian

                                                         

    
     Because I am a teacher, I was reluctant to use my picture on this blog. So, how can I use my creativity and desire to become more familiar with technology and programs that we can use in the classroom to benefit instructional practices? The answer, have some fun and create a mini-me or an avatar. An avatar is just a picture or graphic image that one can use to represent themselves when photos are not an option. I used the website www.doppelme.com/ to create a version of myself for this blog. I must admit, I had a lot of fun with the various options that you could select when creating yourself. I decided to create a FUN avatar. I did not take myself too seriously when I made my avatar. Take a peek and remember to tell me what you think.


     I am a Language Arts teacher and am already thinking forward to the next school year (anyone who is a teacher, knows that before summer begins, our minds our spinning with planning and ideas to use for the next school year) I know it is crazy but true!! At the start of school in September, we always write a short autobiography as a getting to know you activity. I think this year, my students will add the creation of their own avatar! I know they will have a blast doing it! What do you think? Let me know your ideas for adding this program to the classroom.