Final Reflection on 5391

So for this final reflection I tried a new app for a digital storytelling reflection, 30 Hands.  I think the students would love to use this in the library for such activities as book trailers and research projects.  You will have to listen to my link in order to hear what I thought about some of the tools we used this semester, but here is a sneak preview of some that I talk about :  .    



Link to Final Reflection on 30 Hands

References

Adapted from Hatmaker, J. (2015). For the love: Fighting for grace in a world of impossible standards. Nashville, TN: Nelson Books. 

Kapuler, D.  (2018, September 7).  Top 30 tools for digital storytelling.  Tech& Learning.

         Retrieved from 

          https://www.techlearning.com/tl-advisor-blog/30-sites-and-apps-for-digital-storytelling.

Podcasts

Podcasts have steadily grown in popularity in recent years.  They are a way for a different style of learner to learn to grow and appreciate reading in a way they may have never been able to before!
For this blog post I researched three different podcast applications, Audacity, Soundcloud and Podbean.  They each have their own pros and cons, and practical application can help the listener decide which one they like the most!

Audacity
Audacity is a great, simplistic podcasting tool.  Plus it's free!  All you have to do is set up the microphone and press record, which would be easy for the students in the library to do.  You do have to upload the file to another podcasting site though for others to be able to listen to it, such as Garage Band or Audioboom.  The website was also not as developed as the others.

Soundcloud
Soundcloud had some great podcasts and website, but would not be as geared towards students as I would like a website to be.  A lot of the songs that came up when the site was loaded would be inappropriate, especially for the elementary ages.  People can share and comment on others' podcasts, much like social media platforms, which high school age students would probably enjoy.  It is also free, but the free platform only allows 3 hrs. of recording time.

Podbean
Podbean was the platform my group ended up choosing for our podcast.  It seemed the easiest to use for the assignment we had to do.  Like Soundcloud it also has an iOS app, but Podbean's was easier to follow.  If it was downloaded on devices such as iPads, students would have a great time using it in the library.  It is also free and allows you 5 hours of recording time.  If you apply music and effects to your recording WHILE you are doing it, they are easy to follow.

Our Podcast on Banned and Challenged Books, recorded on Podbean

With all 3 of these platforms, adding embellishments to the podcast was very difficult.  We finally got it to work on Podbean, but had to re-record the podcast.  None of the free versions we tried allowed you to add effects or music to a podcast you had already made and saved.:( . (At least not that we could figure out easily!!)

Podcasts in the Library
Podcasts would be a great addition to the library that auditory learners would especially love!  If the apps were downloaded on the devices the students should be able to easily figure them out, especially Podbean.  A challenge would be finding quiet places for students to record their podcasts, particularly if a whole class was doing them at one time.  They prob would lend themselves to a station more easily, especially if students were listening to a podcast online.  I introduced the podcast 6 Minutes to my students this week and they absolutely loved it!

Ways to Integrate them in the Library :

• Summarization
• Book Talks
• Book Trailers
• Reading stations
• Comprehension Practice
• Visualization
• Announcements
• Book Recommendations
• Library Events
• Digital Portfolios

Where You Can Find Educational Podcasts :

• The Radio Adventures of Eleanor Amplified - The tales of world famous radio reporter Eleanor
• Short and Curly - podcast about all sorts of ethical questions for kids
• Tumble - stories about science discoveries
• The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd - the ongoing battle between Dr. Floyd and the evil mastermind Dr. Steve.
• Brains On! - science and kids
• Storynory - online audio stories
• Welcome to Night Vale - the local radio program for a desert town
• Freakonomics Radio - the hidden sides of everything
• StarTalk Radio - talk about all things space
• The Allusionist - the English language and all its oddities
• Stuff You Missed in History Class - events that may have been overlooked in history class
• Listenwise - content to build listening skills
• Serial - One story, told week by week
• Criminal - stories about people who have done wrong
• Revisionist History - Malcolm Gladwell looks back at history
• This American Life - themes in America
• Youth Radio - podcast by and for teens

Resources : 

Kokias, M. (2017, July 7).  18 Best Podcasts for Kids in Elementary, Middle and High School.

           Retrieved from https://www.weareteachers.com/best-podcasts-for-kids/.

Cartoons and Comics

For this post I researched the different types of cartoons and comics that students can make online in order to see which site would be best to use in my library.  I was looking for a comic site students would find easy to use so they could work independently, as well as a site that would keep their interests.

Make Beliefs Comix            https://www.makebeliefscomix.com/

Pros

• Easy to use, create, can share, print, edit and email
• Has lesson plans you can put into place in your library
• You can make such items as greeting cards on the site
• Has ideas for how special needs students could utilize comics
• Saved as a PDF easily
• Easy for kids to use
• Has a parent section as well!

Cons

• Limited amount of characters, backgrounds, etc. you can add and not a lot of variety
• Can’t enlarge text box
• Simplistic images

Toon Doo                       www.toondoo.com

 

Pros

• There are variety of horizontal and vertical layouts
• Spanish options
• You can enlarge text box
• Lots of options for  images - shrink, clone, etc.
• You can write in the boxes and color them in
• Upload pics from computer can be uploaded for background
• You can make the pic you took of a person look like a cartoon
• Easy to create

Cons

• Young kids may find it overwhelming, but older ones would love it
• Took me a while to find out how to save the image

Pixton https://edu.pixton.com/

Pros

• Has more of a professional, almost Google type of feel
• Scenes are colorful and engaging
• Kids would like being able to build and customize their own avatar, which would be entertaining for them
• You can add assignments/comics as a class

Cons

• You are locked into a certain scene at the beginning in the free version, so there isn't much creativity.
• You can't seem to move the figure around once you add it to a scene, besides changing the pose
• Not a lot is free
• It took a little bit of time to understand how to save it

My Choice : If more of Pixton was free, I would have that one as my top choice. It would still be fun to play around with. Since it is not, I would pick ToonDo to use the most in my library with my students. I think that Make Belief Comix is great, but the graphics would cater more to the younger grades.

If I was explaining it to my faculty, I would be sure and talk about how it can continue to build on student success and be integrated into what they are already doing in the curriculum. I would mention such activities as these from the Make Beliefs Comix website :

* Summaries

* Autobiographies

* Vocab words

* Digital citizenship

* Social Skills

* Help for ESL students

* Creative writing

I would finish the presentation of by showing the teachers some student examples of the comics!

Here is the link to the Tellagami I made. It was a bit hard to get the app since the creators said it has not been updated to the latest version of iOS, but I found a device I had that already had it loaded!

https://tellagami.com/gami/5OWF3F/

Videos and QR Codes in the Library

YouTube

I enjoyed visiting the different library YouTube sites and seeing how the videos are used in the library.  When I am a librarian, I think I will use videos a lot as tutorials for how to use the different library resources.   This would be especially helpful in the middle and high school libraries.   They would also be great to document events that are going on in the library, such as Battle of the Books, Book Fair, new books, etc.  

These are the YouTube sites that I visited : 

Norman High Library   https://www.youtube.com/user/TheNHSLibrary/videos

Most Helpful Video : Getting Started with the NHS Library Website

It talks about getting started with the NHS Library Website, as well as the ins and outs of website.

Video Students Would Like the Most : Norman Public Schools Celebrates Your Freedom to Read

Frequently challenged books are read and discussed.

The Unquiet Library https://www.youtube.com/user/theunquietlibrary/videos

Most Helpful Video : Finding and Using Wikimedia Commons.

Showcases useful tutorials for the library.

Video Students Would Like the Most : The student interviews, excerpts and testimonials, such as this mythology project :

Pikesville HS Library    https://www.youtube.com/user/pikesvillehslibrary/videos

Most Helpful Video : Course Advisement Video :

Walks students how to pick courses.

Videos Students Would Like the Most : Videos of events in the library, such as Senior party in the library .

BBMS Media   https://www.youtube.com/user/bbmsmedia/videos

Most Helpful Video : Instructional videos, such as headphone storage

Video Students Would Like the Most : Star Wars themed library topics, such as this one on overdue books.  

Overdue Games was a cute concept as well that students would love!

QR Codes

There are so many ways that QR codes can be put to use in the library.  Some of the ways I have heard or experienced are :

• student projects
• book trailers
• instructional videos
• book summaries
• scavenger hunts

I chose to do a book trailer on a book I love, Emmanuel's Dream : The True Story of Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah by Laurie Ann Thompson.
Here is the synopsis from Penguin Random House, the publisher.

Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah’s inspiring true story—which was turned into a film, Emmanuel’s Gift, narrated by Oprah Winfrey—is nothing short of remarkable.

Born in Ghana, West Africa, with one deformed leg, he was dismissed by most people—but not by his mother, who taught him to reach for his dreams. As a boy, Emmanuel hopped to school more than two miles each way, learned to play soccer, left home at age thirteen to provide for his family, and, eventually, became a cyclist. He rode an astonishing four hundred miles across Ghana in 2001, spreading his powerful message: disability is not inability. Today, Emmanuel continues to work on behalf of the disabled.

Thompson’s lyrical prose and Qualls’s bold collage illustrations offer a powerful celebration of triumphing over adversity.

Includes an author’s note with more information about Emmanuel’s charity.

I enjoyed making the book trailer. Animoto was an easier site to use and I see students having a great time with it as well!

References : 

Synopsis of Emmanuel's Dream from Penguin Random House.  Retrieved from https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/224630/emmanuels-dream-the-true-story-of-emmanuel-ofosu-yeboah-by-laurie-ann-thompson-illustrated-by-sean-qualls/9780449817445/

Thompson, L.  (2015).  Emmanuel's dream : The true story of Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah.  New York : Schwartz & Wade.

Zinkovich, B.  (2016).  Using QR codes to promote your library.  Retrieved from https://www.ebscohost.com/novelist/novelist-special/using-qr-codes-to-promote-your-library

Screencasts

For this post I experimented with Jing and Screencast-o-matic.  I had never had any experience with Jing before, but had used Screencast-o-matic for an assignment in another library course.  They had a lot of similarities, but also a lot of differences.
Jing is an application that you have to download on the computer, while Screencast-o-matic is a website that you can access.  I did not have any issues with downloading Jing, but the website said it will soon not be available on all browsers because they are in the process of changing it to a better application.
On Jing you can capture a video and a screenshot.  On Screencast-o-matic you can do a video, but you have to upgrade to the paid version to do a screenshot.
The screen capture tool on Jing was a little more cumbersome to use on Jing than it is on Screencast-o-matic.  You have to drag the square to the area you want to record, and it takes some practice to get it just right.  Screencast-o-matic has a large square that you can easily move and make larger and/or smaller.
For the actual recording specifics, both programs are similar.  You can redo and pause on both.  Screencast-o-matic allows you to record for up to 15 minutes, while Jing only allows 5 minutes.  They both allow you to save the videos to the desktop, and both save the videos to their websites.  Screencast-o-matic also allows you to upload the video to YouTube.  They also both have a countdown to recording, which is very helpful!
I liked both programs and think they would be useful in the library and/or classroom.  In the library you could record screencasts of how to do searches of the databases, or introduce new apps and downloads the videos to your website for students, teachers and parents to access.  In the classroom, you could use it to teach concepts students may need a little more help with, or explain certain parts of homework that may be confusing.  As a current classroom teacher now, I am going to try and use it to record instructions for stations and to explain new applications that I want the students to try.
Though Jing was great, I think that I liked Screencast-o-matic the best.  I think that with our Chromebooks at school, it would be the app that students would be able to use the best.  It is more user-friendly and also has a longer recording time, and I think that with as much as my students love to talk it would be a better option for them:)
Ultimately as well, I found out that when I recorded my video on Jing, Jing does not support audio recording on a Mac.  You have to download another application for it to work, which my computer was not allowing.:(.  So for the Jing video below there is not audio, but I was showing students what to do when they were using the Library resources to search about pandas.

Screencast-o-matic

Jing

http://www.screencast.com/t/hEnCoCHyGpv

After I couldn't get the Jing to capture my audio, I went to the app that is going to take over Jing, SnagIt, and made a video on there.  It has more features than Jing did, and let's you save it to several different places such as YouTube, like Screencast-o-matic did.  It also allowed you to add text and graphics onto your video.  I still think that Screencast-o-matic would be easier for my elementary school students to use, but I think SnagIt would be fun for me or upper grade students to experiment with!

SnagIt

Infographics

      Infographics are becoming more and more widely used in the United States and around the world.  PC Magazine defines it as, "An umbrella term for illustrations and charts that instruct people, which otherwise would be difficult or impossible with only text. Infographics are used worldwide in every discipline from road maps and street signs to the many technical drawings."  
In classrooms, teachers use them to show students a more visual representation of what they are learning about.  In the process, many students are able to grasp the concepts better than if they were just reading a traditional text with no pictures.  But where can you go on the web to make your own infographics if you can't find ones that pertain to your specific content or area?
There are several websites which allow you to make your own infographics, but the ones I focused on were Easel.ly, Piktochart and Infogr.am.  


Easel.ly
Pros

• Good templates and visuals
• Site is very versatile and easily to manipulate
• $3 per month

Cons

• The free version has limited things available, such as graphs, templates, etc.

Piktochart
Pros

• Lots of templates and icons
• Nice animation features

Cons

• $29 a month
• Not as easily to manipulate features

Infogr.am
Pros

• Animation features
• Works in a lot of browsers
• Infographic can easily be manipulated

Cons

• Few images/icons
• $18 per month

I struggled a lot with which site to pick because I saw pluses and minuses with them all, and tried out each one before I made a final decision.  Ultimately I chose Easel.ly, because I found templates and graphics on it that I liked the best.  The site also seemed easier to manipulate and change features compared to the others as well.

The article I chose to use for my infographic was 10 Facts about Americans and Facebook from the PEW Research Center, 2019.

Citations

Gramlich, J.  (2019, February 1).  10 facts about Americans and Facebook.  Retrieved from           

     http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/02/01/facts-about-americans-and-facebook/.

Tolisano, S.  (2010, June 16).  Infographics - What?Why?How?  Retrieved from

      https://langwitches.org/blog/2010/06/16/infographics-what-why-how/.

Instagram, Facebook and Twitter

For this blog I investigated Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, 3 of the social networking sites that you can use to communicate about your library and learn about other libraries.  Each one of them are unique and different, but all have their advantages to using them as a librarian.  

Facebook

I have a personal Facebook page, but do not have one for a library.  Many librarians are using the "Pages" section of Facebook.  Libraries such as the Barbara Bush Middle School Library in NEISD use it to publicize events in the library first and foremost, so that the community will know and attend.  They also tell about curricular activities that are happening in the library, and some use FB to share ideas about other things that libraries can do.
Facebook is not as popular as it once was, I think in part to how political is has become.  I also think that it is a forum that many use more personally than professionally.

Posts on Facebook by Libraries : Most are pictures of events in the library or books that they want to highlight.

Pros of Facebook : 

• You can communicate about your library to others.
• You can follow other librarians to get ideas.
• It is easy for others to find out more about your library.

Cons of Facebook : 

• It is a public form, full of opinions and a lot of political viewpoints.
• People can comment on your posts and pages, and they may not always be favorable.

Twitter

I have been utilizing Twitter for over 2 years now (@mrssjennsclass) to share events that happen in my classroom and at my school.  Before I started utilizing it I was nervous about joining, mainly because I didn't realize how public or private I could make my Twitter feed.  But now that I am someone who "tweets" I can see the advantages behind it.

I checked on the Twitter pages of several people who are well known in the library science field.  

Kathy Shrock @kathyshrock

    Kathy is an Ed Tech presenter.  On her feed is shares about her sites, as well as helpful tech tips for educators.  

Linda Braun @lbraun2000

    Linda is a former YALSA president, librarian and learning consultant.  A large part of her feed she uses to advertise all things YALSA.

Alan November @globalearner
    Alan is an author, educator and host of the BLC Conference.  He talks a lot about advocating for education, inspiring educators, workshops and networking.  He also hosts a lot of talks on Twitter.

Gwyneth Jones @GwynethJones

   Gwyneth is a librarian and presenter.  She has a very eccentric style and maintains a popular website.  On her feed she highlights education and other librarians.  She also talks a lot about tech - mainly Google.

Jim Lerman @jimlerman

    Jim is an "architect of ideas and implementation," educator, designer, author and speaker.  He has links to various articles which deal mainly with education, creativity, teachers and counseling.  Like Gwyneth, he also has a very active website.

Pros of Twitter :

• Sets you up with other professionals
• Lets you communicate happenings
• Great connection tool

Cons of Twitter :

• Anyone can ask to follow you
• There is a character limit on how much you can share on a post

Instagram

I have maintained a personal Instagram account for several years and am just starting to build a professional one (mrssjennsclass).  I love how it is full of mostly images, and does not have as many political views and opinions. 

How Librarians and Teachers Can Use Instagram :

1. Library Events
2. Highlight favorite books
3. Curriculum lessons
4. Student work - perhaps a portfolio of sorts
5. Connect and follow other librarians

Pros of Instagram : 

• Simple to use
• Less opinions 

Cons of Instagram :

• Less people seem to have an instagram page

What I Would Pick to Showcase My Library :

All of these social networking sites are wonderful and established in the internet world.  If I had to pick just one, I would pick Twitter.  It seems to be the best at helping you share about your library, and also connects you to other professionals in your field!