Summer Time at the Library

During the summer public libraries offer great programs and activities to get the community involved. Our local library offered "Messy Experiment Day". They had stations involving exploring, creating, analyzing and playing with OOBLECK.

Great experiment kids.

A photo posted by @amycolicher on Jun 29, 2015 at 10:31am PDT

What is OOBLECK?

A photo posted by @amycolicher on Jun 29, 2015 at 10:32am PDT

Experimenting at the public library

A photo posted by @amycolicher on Jun 29, 2015 at 10:36am PDT

Afterwards my kids were asking to go in and check out more books for their summer reading logs!

Final Reflection

As I reflect on this fast and furious summer session of Digital Technology for the School Librarian, I can truly say the content lived up to the name. I learned, used, analyzed and reflected upon a vast amount of technology tools and resources. Throughout the course, I strengthened technology skills I already had and gained new experiences as well. So where do I begin?

Blogging- 

I had a blog on Blogger before signing up for this course and was familiar with how to use it. I did how ever learn all of the additional ways it could be used in my role as a teacher librarian. After learning about Instagram, Vine, screencasts, podcasts and comics, I realized emedding and sharing these digital tools and how to use them would be beneficial for students, parents, co-workers and other educational professionals. Another aspect of blogging I learned was the use of blog readers. After exploring a few, I decided to use Feedly. It is such a fantastic tool to keep all of the blogs I follow accessible in one location. Genius!

Infographics- 

I have seen many infographics, and they are continuing to grow in popularity. I had never attempted to create one of my own. They look very simple and straightforward, but a lot more thought and planning go into creating them than I originally thought. A successful inforgraphic clearly represents selected information and the intended message, but it is attractive and pleasing to the eye at the same time. I used Easel.ly to create my first infographic. It is a great program with a large selection of templates to choose from. It was simple to use, had a great variety of tools and gave multiple options to store and share finished products. I will be using it in the future to advocate for the library, share information with patrons and create yearly reports. I also plan on teaching students how to create them to process and share information they learn and/or as a presentation tool for special projects.

YouTube- 

I thoroughly enjoyed exploring school YouTube channels. On those channels, I discovered all of the possibilities of having my own library channel could offer. Some of the videos I watched that I will definitely be using in the future include parodies of popular songs rewritten to communicate library expectations, deadlines or upcoming events, screencasts, book trailers and presentations.

QR Codes-

While I had seen QR Codes before, this was my first time creating one of my own. I think they will be great for adding to bookmarks for promoting a book of the month, special events like book fairs, for access to the library’s YouTube Channel, blog, website……Oh my, the possibilities!

Comics & Cartoons

 Comic books, graphic novels and manga are hot, hot, hot right now. Pixton and ToonDoo are great tools to use to jump in and create your own. I had so much fun playing and brainstorming with these programs. I will be using them to create comics about library expectations as well as to reinforce reading and language arts skills. I look forward to teaching students how to create their own too.

Instagram & Vine-

I think Instagram and Vine were the biggest surprise for me. I have seen plenty of them posted in various social media before, but I had never pondered how I could use them for and/or with my students. Once I started thinking about it, playing around with them and seeing how my fellow classmates were using them, a light bulb went off! I had so much fun thinking about promoting books, showcasing students, promoting the library and challenging students to create their own images and videos. So many ideas began swirling around in my brain I overwhelmed myself.

So while I am a bit traditional in my love for printed books and browsing bookshelves, I do see great value in the use of digital tools in the library. The way in which patrons search for, use and share information today has become heavily technology driven. As youth become increasingly immersed in digital tools, educators need to be proactive in teaching how to use these tools effectively and responsibly. I plan to use all of these digital tools I have just shared with you to hopefully spark a lifelong love of reading and information in my future students.

Instagram & Vine

Instagram and Vine have been around for a while, so I'm just late to the party. I was aware of what they were and have viewed other people's Instagram pictures and Vine videos, but I had not signed up myself. Sometimes some nudging is in order.

Through my graduate studies, I have become increasingly aware how many children, tweens and teens use mobile devices and are active social media participants. Instagram and Vine are two apps that a large number of youth use.

So, I bit the bullet and joined the party. I wanted to find ways I will use them as a teacher librarian.
This is what I have come up with so far:

Instagram
The Harry Potter fanatic in me couldn't resist using Instagram to give my young Potter fans reader's advisory of what they could read next.

What do I read next? 

Study like Hermione!

I also thought of using images at the beginning of the school year when teaching about how to care for books properly. This one is obviously a "Do Not Do This!"

#thatwasQuick @overquick

A photo posted by @amycolicher on Jun 25, 2015 at 2:42pm PDT

I used Overgram to write text on the image and then opened with Instagram.

Vine
 The Origami Yoda series by Tom Angleberger is awesome, so I wanted to show students how many are in the series and the origami they could create to go with the books.



I made this next video to use when practicing the skill of inferencing.



I had so much fun with both apps! I can't wait to see what all I can come up with, and I can't wait to see what students will come up with as well!

Screencasts

Screencasts are a valuable tool in the library. You can create and post them for students and teachers. You can create them to teach and/or remind students and teachers how to navigate the library website, online catalog and databases. They are also useful for instructions on using various websites, conducting searches, analyzing validity of sources and citation tools. The possibilities are endless.

• Here are 2 screen cast tool examples:

Jing

Jing is easy to download. I found it really unique in that it hangs out in the top right of the computer screen as a sun just waiting to be used. When you touch your cursor on the sun, it gives you rays of choices. Jing can be used to capture a screeshot as well as caputer video for a screecast. So, you just capture the portion of the screen you want and click video. The downfall to this tool is that it uploads the content to Screencast.com. So, you have to go to a separate place to access your content and choose which method you want to share.

Screencast-o-matic
 
Screencast-o-matic was a great tool. First, download the free software. Once complete, chose the portion of the screen you want to video and click record. You can record and save it in one location. I chose to upload it to my YouTube channel. One feature I really liked was the highlighted cursor. When I pointed to something on the screen, a yellow circle  highlighted what I was discussing. I will definitely be using this tool for my future screencasts.

Teens and Libraries in Today’s Digital World

Rainie, L. (2014, April 9). Teens and Libraries in Today’s Digital World.    [Slideshare Presentation]. Retrieved from: http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/04/09/millennials-and-libraries/

This presentation shares the attitudes of millennials towards libraries. It also explores how teens today use libraries to meet their needs. Internet and digital tools have become second nature and a priority in their everyday lives. Rainie explores the positive and negative impact technology has had on teens educationally from a teacher’s perspective. While students are becoming increasingly more independent researchers, they are also prone to finding quick answers rather than analyzing the data they find. I think that all students need to be taught the learning process. All subject areas like reading, writing and mathematics have a process, and the effective use of technology is another process that needs to be taught.

The data collected in the presentation shows teens primarily read for academic purposes more so than for pleasure, and they utilize the library for that reason. Even though they are patrons, this group does not recognize the impact libraries have on the community. I gather in the mind of a teen, they think if there is no library information can be gathered from the computer or somewhere else.

So the question is posed, what is the academic future for millennials? Opinions are diverse. Technology is not going anywhere but rather becoming a part of everything we do. So educators and libraries need to provide the necessary tools and support the future of education.

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