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Favorite Tech Tools
As a school library media specialist I like to place applications on my library site. Since we see increasingly more apps on a daily basis, it’s somewhat confusing to remember which ones are the best tools and for what purpose, so the page, as you can imagine, is changed regularly to meet the needs of my students and teachers. I divide the apps into three main categories for student use: Social Tools, Research Tools, and Presentation Tools. Graphite.org from Common Sense media keeps me abreast of what’s up and coming. It’s mind boggling to keep track of new apps. I also love Symbaloo to keep things organized. I use Screencast regularly to send teachers screen shots and videos of ideas that pertain to their curriculum. Before presenting a lesson, Screencast’s video feature allows me to save my lesson, record it, and save it for kids who are absent. It’s interesting, because I find that kids tend to pay more attention to a recorded video than they do a live presentation.
Social Tools: Using social media is an excellent way to teach students about the responsibilities of having an online presence . One of my goals is to use Twitter as a tool to communicate with students. There are a variety of ways that this would be useful. Teachhub.com offers 50 ways to use Twitter in the classroom. One that particularly interests me for an upcoming project is to have kids re-tweet articles, news stories, opinions and other interesting tidbits relevant to a project we’re beginning in January. I’m going to try it! As a librarian, I also like the idea of asking students to use the mini format to record their reactions and responses to movies and books that they read for pleasure or for informational purposes. Building personal relationships with students is important, and what better way than through their mobile devices?
Shelfari is such a fun way to communicate with other teachers and with students. It’s owned by Amazon, and of course they want to sell you the book, but it’s such a great tool to get kids interested in reading! Kids love to know what their teachers are reading. I’ve embedded my Shelfari page on my library website and have noticed that kids pay attention and really enjoy communicating about books. It’s also a great way to search for books that share the same genres.
Research Tools: One of the best resources I’ve found for research is EasyBib. The user-friendly interface allows students to cite, research, take notes, and avoid plagiarism in a simple, easy to use one-stop package. I love the professional online seminars EasyBib offers to teachers and it has been a lifesaver to me as I teach kids how to create a works cited page and how to take notes, summarize and paraphrase. It’s relatively inexpensive, too, for a subscription.
Presentation Tools: Voicethread is an excellent presentation tools, but it provides the ability for kids to communicate as they create presentations for projects. Kids are reluctant to use VoiceThread because they don’t like the sound of their voices. However, it provides good practice in recording and it’s a great tool for teaching kids how to edit. I find it to be user-friendly, and a great interactive way for kids to make presentations.
Glogster is a really fun, creative application that allows students to express themselves by creating funky, out-of-the-box online posters. It’s time consuming because it’s easy to get wrapped up in the graphics and colors, but for someone who is non-linear thinker and loves to have fun, this app is really incredible. I love the way it can be embedded into a Wiki space or a web page. I’ve used it with projects I’ve created for students. Students really struggle as they begin a research project and Glogster has been such a great tool to help kids get started. I pre-research sites that are credible, especially primary sources and have the kids use the Glogster page as a place to begin their research. Looking up websites, databases, and primary sources ahead of time also gives me an idea of what kind of information is available for a specific topic. The educational subscription is relatively inexpensive, too.
In the past three years, I’ve used Animoto quite a bit, especially with middle school kids. The music component and the pictures really engages kids in some fun, authentic learning. Animoto gets better and better as the company improves the site. The captions are short and succinct, but it can be a good lesson in editing for students if a teacher takes the time to make sure the captions are edited correctly.
As a school library media specialist I like to place applications on my library site. Since we see increasingly more apps on a daily basis, it’s somewhat confusing to remember which ones are the best tools and for what purpose, so the page, as you can imagine, is changed regularly to meet the needs of my students and teachers. I divide the apps into three main categories for student use: Social Tools, Research Tools, and Presentation Tools. Graphite.org from Common Sense media keeps me abreast of what’s up and coming. It’s mind boggling to keep track of new apps. I also love Symbaloo to keep things organized. I use Screencast regularly to send teachers screen shots and videos of ideas that pertain to their curriculum. Before presenting a lesson, Screencast’s video feature allows me to save my lesson, record it, and save it for kids who are absent. It’s interesting, because I find that kids tend to pay more attention to a recorded video than they do a live presentation.
Social Tools: Using social media is an excellent way to teach students about the responsibilities of having an online presence . One of my goals is to use Twitter as a tool to communicate with students. There are a variety of ways that this would be useful. Teachhub.com offers 50 ways to use Twitter in the classroom. One that particularly interests me for an upcoming project is to have kids re-tweet articles, news stories, opinions and other interesting tidbits relevant to a project we’re beginning in January. I’m going to try it! As a librarian, I also like the idea of asking students to use the mini format to record their reactions and responses to movies and books that they read for pleasure or for informational purposes. Building personal relationships with students is important, and what better way than through their mobile devices?
Shelfari is such a fun way to communicate with other teachers and with students. It’s owned by Amazon, and of course they want to sell you the book, but it’s such a great tool to get kids interested in reading! Kids love to know what their teachers are reading. I’ve embedded my Shelfari page on my library website and have noticed that kids pay attention and really enjoy communicating about books. It’s also a great way to search for books that share the same genres.
Research Tools: One of the best resources I’ve found for research is EasyBib. The user-friendly interface allows students to cite, research, take notes, and avoid plagiarism in a simple, easy to use one-stop package. I love the professional online seminars EasyBib offers to teachers and it has been a lifesaver to me as I teach kids how to create a works cited page and how to take notes, summarize and paraphrase. It’s relatively inexpensive, too, for a subscription.
Presentation Tools: Voicethread is an excellent presentation tools, but it provides the ability for kids to communicate as they create presentations for projects. Kids are reluctant to use VoiceThread because they don’t like the sound of their voices. However, it provides good practice in recording and it’s a great tool for teaching kids how to edit. I find it to be user-friendly, and a great interactive way for kids to make presentations.
Glogster is a really fun, creative application that allows students to express themselves by creating funky, out-of-the-box online posters. It’s time consuming because it’s easy to get wrapped up in the graphics and colors, but for someone who is non-linear thinker and loves to have fun, this app is really incredible. I love the way it can be embedded into a Wiki space or a web page. I’ve used it with projects I’ve created for students. Students really struggle as they begin a research project and Glogster has been such a great tool to help kids get started. I pre-research sites that are credible, especially primary sources and have the kids use the Glogster page as a place to begin their research. Looking up websites, databases, and primary sources ahead of time also gives me an idea of what kind of information is available for a specific topic. The educational subscription is relatively inexpensive, too.
In the past three years, I’ve used Animoto quite a bit, especially with middle school kids. The music component and the pictures really engages kids in some fun, authentic learning. Animoto gets better and better as the company improves the site. The captions are short and succinct, but it can be a good lesson in editing for students if a teacher takes the time to make sure the captions are edited correctly.