LSSL 5391 Digital Tech for School Librarians ~ Final Reflection

    Wow! This 10 week Summer Semester has flow by! I have learned some cool tech tips to take back to my library and implement when we start school in just a few short weeks. 

    I chose to share my final reflection using Buncee. I use Buncee to share news on my social media posts for library news in my district, so I pay for a subscription. There are thousands of templates that have already been created, and you can edit them and make them your own or create what you want from scratch. Buncee also allows you to share your creations by email, link, various social media platforms, code, and email. I first heard about Buncee at TCEA this past year, and I have been using it ever since! If you are in a position at your school where you post on social media often, it is worth checking out!

YOU CAN CLICK HERE FOR THE LINK!

or you can just see the finished, download product here! :) 

Congrats to everyone who has completed this class and has another semester down! Best of luck to you all in the fall!

Podcasts

 Soundcloud

Soundcloud serves as a music listening and music releasing platform. There are both free and paid subscriptions. If you have a premium account, you can schedule releases pin your most popular episodes to the Spotlight section, receive unlimited hosting time, analyze in-depth stats on your podcasts’ performances, send direct messages to fans, and engage with fans in the comments section of your podcasts. It is all the benefits of a social media account rolled into one neat, accessible package.

Audioboom

Audioboom is a podcast service that distributes to a variety of different platforms, including Apple Podcasts, iHeart, and Spotify. The paid version is $9.99 a month or $99 a year. If you exceed more than 10,000 plays an episode, you can gain sponsorships and free membership.

Podbean

Podbean is an easy and powerful way to create and promote podcasts. It has everything you need to start a successful podcast. Podbean podcast hosting also distributes your podcast to all destinations: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts. They have basic free plans, unlimited plans, and business plans available. 

Anchor

Anchor by Spotify is the platform my group (Erin, Ana, and myself) used to publish our podcast. We created our podcast on how teachers can successfully implement and manage their own classroom library. I prefer Anchor because I have used it in the past, and it is straightforward to use and navigate for beginners. It is also the platform I have found that has the easiest way to add background music to our recordings. 

You can check out the podcast we created HERE!

Erin Bowman, Ana Lopez, and I collaborated on what we wanted to share in our podcast. Erin wrote the podcast, Ana read and recoded it, and I added the background music to our finished product. 

Looking for an educational Podcast that’s just right for you? A quick google search will give you countless options to explore and find what fits your interests and needs best!

Cartoons and Comics

For today's blog post and our Module 10 assignment, we explored some different sites that allow you to make your own cartoon or comic. Since graphic novels are all the rage right now, I really love this idea and think it could be a really useful tool for teachers and students. I explored three different websites that allow you to create cartoons or comic strips. 

Oopsie! The first site was Toondoo.com and it has been shut down, so I was unable to review or use this site.

The second site was Pixton. I registered as an Educator and then I couldn't get back to the comic I created because I had to join as a student and it wouldn't allow me to join with the same email address, but I did take a screenshot of the comic I created and here it is:

I created a quick comic about dinosaurs because the majority of the free backgrounds and characters/animals I could find were indeed, dinosaurs. The site is easy to navigate and create with, but the free options are extremely limited. 

The third site was makebeliefscomix.com and it is free! You can create an account for free, name and save your comics. After a few minutes of exploring and playing around with the tools, it was pretty straight-foward and easy to navigate and create a comic. You can covert your comics to eleven different languages besides English. This site allows you to review and edit the comics you create. You can also go back to a comic that has already been saved and edit it. You can save your comics by downloading, sharing on Facebook, emailing a copy to yourself, or printing. I definitely think students would enjoy creating their own comics on this site. Here is the simple comic I quickly created using makebeliefscomix.com.

I would use comics with my teacher-colleagues as a fun, creative way to promote upcoming events like a book fair, feature a professional development opportunity or new arrivals in the library, or a reminder that overdue books and materials need to be returned to the library. So may possibilities!

Screencasts

Hi everyone! Today we are talking about screencasts. For this assignment, I chose to use Screencastify. My district has a subscription with Screencastify, and it is what we have used since the Covid pandemic, and the shift to virtual learning started. When the 2020-2021 school year began, I was a virtual teacher for the first semester. My class consisted of 22 kindergarteners who were full-time at-home learners, so I used Screencastify A LOT to teach parents how to navigate our school website to access important information for at-home learners. I also used it to teach parents and students how to access materials in Google Classroom and how to use the tools in Seesaw, which we used as our main learning platform for grades K-2. I love Screencastify because you can show students (and parents) exactly how to do something without just trying to explain it. It is so helpful, saves time, and clears up any confusion that might occur otherwise. Screencast-O-Matic had a lot of comparable features to Screencastify and it also seems user-friendly. I simply prefer Screencastify because I am familiar with it and have used it for over a year now. 

Below is a Screencastify video I made about how to change a call number for a MARC record in destiny. 

Videos and QR Codes in the Library

 YouTube 

The purpose of the first part of this assignment was to explore the YouTube channels of four different school libraries. Featuring a school library on a platform like YouTube can increase student engagement and generate interest. It is also a great way to keep administrators, school staff, and families informed about what is happening in the library at your school. Students and staff can share book talks, make important announcements, or share research projects. YouTube is also a great way to share how to navigate a school website or an OPAC system in the library by using a program like Screencast-O-Matic or Screencastify.  Most of the videos on these four YouTube Channels are pretty dated, but some have stood the test of time better than others!

 The Norman High School Library

https://www.youtube.com/user/TheNHSLibrary/videos

Students would enjoy the video titled Norman Public Schools Celebrates Your Freedom to Read because teachers share passages from their favorite banned books. The video titled Getting Started with the NHS Library Website would be helpful to students. The Librarian for NHS does a great job of explaining each tab and link on the website. It is a resource that is beneficial to both students and parents!

 

 The Unquiet Library

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQNFeBXPQbHh0UGaHrSgQQg

On this YouTube Channel, several teachers from different subject areas are interviewed about how their students used the library and the collaboration that took place between themselves, the librarian, and the students. I think students would enjoy listening to their teachers’ take on their collaborative projects, and I think these types of videos are great for parents and administrators to see. The video that I think would be most helpful to students is titled How to Export a Bibliographic Data File from LRC to EasyBib. This is a great video (or was a great video at the time) that students could watch to learn how to complete this task and reference it later for a refresher as needed.

 Pikesville High School Library

https://www.youtube.com/user/pikesvillehslibrary/videos

This YouTube Channel had the most videos out of the four school channels that I explored. Students would like the videos from this channel that they are in or that they helped create, like the Back to School Night or AVID Summer Bootcamp videos. The most helpful videos for students from this channel would be the videos where each teacher explains their subject’s AP course. That would be a great resource for parents and students to watch together as students plan what courses to add to their schedules as they are being created.

 BBMS Media

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

This channel also had several videos and was my favorite! They are all so cute and clever! I think the students would enjoy all the overdue parody videos, and there are several of them! Those videos include a lot of students, and I’m sure they like seeing themselves and their friends when they watch them. The videos that would be most helpful to students are the tutorial videos on how to use NoodleTools to create a book or website citation and how to print/export a final works cited page. The library media specialist at this school definitely put in a lot of time and effort to make this YouTube channel fun and informative!

Animoto & QR Codes

I used Animoto to create a Booktrailer for the picture book Nobody Hugs a Cactus by Carter Goodrich. It was one of my favorite picture books I shared with students this past school year. 

The following synopsis for this book is from Goodreads: 
      Celebrated artist and lead character designer of Brave, Ratatouille, and Despicable Me, Carter Goodrich, shows that sometimes, even the prickliest people—or the crankiest cacti—need a little love. 

    Hank is the prickliest cactus in the entire world. He sits in a pot in a window that faces the empty desert, which is just how he likes it. So, when all manner of creatures—from tumbleweed to lizard to owl—come to disturb his peace, Hank is annoyed. He doesn’t like noise, he doesn’t like rowdiness, and definitely does not like hugs. But the thing is, no one is offering one. Who would want to hug a plant so mean? Hank is beginning to discover that being alone can be, well, lonely. So he comes up with a plan to get the one thing he thought he would never need: a hug from a friend. 

Check out my Booktrailer created with Animoto by Scanning the QR code below: 

QR codes can be used in the library to create Booktrailers or Book Talks. They can also be used to share Screencasts that can share important information with students and parents. The possibilities are endless!

Infographics

Infographics can be used as a powerful tool that easily allows people to receive information through the use of visual data, charts, and statistics. Infographics transform information into memorable, attention-grabbing, and even persuasive graphics. Infographics are useful because they have the ability to captivate readers and share information quickly without having to read a lengthy text about the same content. I found the information shared in Module 7 interesting and enjoyed exploring these three sites that allow you to create your own infographics. Here are my thoughts on each one:

Easelly

Using Easelly, you are able to design your own infographic completely from scratch and upload everything you would like your infographic to include on your own, or choose from Easelly's premade templates. The choices for backgrounds are also extremely limited. You can only choose the color of the background on the free version. The other two sites have much more available to choose from. Easelly is very limited when it comes to images and templates, but can unlock many more if you upgrade to a paid subscription. Easelly was my least favorite of the three sites I explored and has the fewest free options available.

Infogram

Infogram offers a variety of templates for infographics, reports, social media posts, slides, and posters. I feel like the usability of Infogram is very similar to Pikochart. Infogram offers four paid options and some neat features that include commenting and engagement tracking. One thing that I did not like about Infogram was that you cannot download your work without upgrading to a paid version. You can only share it online through the free version. 

Pikochart

I decided to use Pikochart to create my infographic. I think that the tools were easy to use and it reminded me a lot of google slides. I was able to upload the images of my own that I wanted to use with ease, and I liked the preview feature that you could easily navigate in and out of to look at your work as you went along. Pikochart offers two paid options (Pro and Team), but I feel like it had the most free options without having to upgrade to a paid version. You are also able to download your work once you are finished creating it. I enjoyed using it to create my infographic, and it was by far my favorite. I can see myself using it again in the future.