Reflection: Technology I've Learned This Summer

I consider myself to be fairly tech-savvy. I try to keep up with the technologies available to me at my school, and I use technology often in the classroom. My students submit their essays, and I comment on them, through Google Drive. I have students create presentations on the computer and do research through our school databases. Some techie assignments we have done in the classroom include creating podcasts and collaborative websites. Other teachers have come to me for advice on how to do things on their computers. However, I have learned so many online tools this summer that I feel like I knew so little before. I feel proud of what I have accomplished and how many tools I have tested this summer, and I know I will go back to school more confident in my tech skills, and equipped with many new project ideas. I now know of many more ways to share information online and to get my students doing the same. That's a great feeling to have as the end of summer approaches rapidly. I'm in the position right now that I am preparing for my long-term sub to start the school year for me, but I feel good about my abilities to communicate online and keep updated with everything I will need to do. 

Blog to Follow: Free Technology for Teachers

I've been following Free Technology for Teachers (both the blog and on Facebook) starting this summer, and I am amazed at how much its creator, Richard Byrne, knows about technology. He has such wonderful insights into how to use technology in schools, and gives tips and ideas from his own experience. How does he do it? Some times he posts multiple times per day! I have learned many things from his blog and have been inspired to do new things in my own classroom. He has given tips on how to apply (in new ways) some sites and applications I already use as well. I enjoy reading his posts and his thoughts on new tools, and I will definitely continue to follow his blog for the wealth of new ideas he shares.

Syllabus made with Piktochart

I just made my syllabus for this year's English 8 class using Piktochart! I'm pretty excited about it. I don't know yet how it will do as a printed version, but it looks great on my class website and I wanted to share it here too.

AASL Best Websites Spotlight: Canva

My website spotlight for today from the AASL Best Websites for Teaching and Learning 2014 list is Canva. Canva is a design tool for a variety of media. You can design your own posters, flyers, cards, invitations, ads, or digital designs for social media like Twitter and Facebook banners. Canva is free to join, and has many free images, but also has many images that are one dollar each, so you can spend more to get higher quality images. However, I think uploading images is the way to go. While making some designs in Canva, I could easily upload my own pictures to include. There are many background layouts available for the different types of designs, as well as patterned backgrounds and interesting text boxes. It has tutorials and a design challenge when you sign up to help you figure things out, but it is so easy to use that these are really just for fun. I think this website would be great for making flyers for different school events or clubs. There is one design choice for Kindle book covers, so it would be a great tool for making alternate book covers for display in a classroom or library.

Here's the simple Twitter header I made for my Twitter page:

AASL Best Websites Spotlight: Recite This

My website spotlight for today from the AASL Best Websites for Teaching and Learning 2014 is Recite This. It is a very simple tool for creating a nice display for quotes. All you do is type in the quote, then choose a template, and it creates the page for you. The image of the page can be downloaded, shared on social media, or emailed. It is that easy, and free. I already created a couple for displaying in my classroom. I think this could also be used in a variety of ways in the classroom. Students could write a one sentence description or summary of a concept or reading for quick assessment, which can then be displayed in the classroom. Students could keep their page in their notebook for quick review as well. Another idea would be asking students to find a quote related to a theme, or choose a favorite quote from a book they have read. These would be great for student-created bulletin boards. 

Here's one of the quotes about writing (from Stephen King) I made for my classroom:

AASL Best Websites Spotlight: Kaizena

I'll be sharing some of my favorite finds from the AASL Best Websites for Teaching and Learning 2014. Today's spotlight is on Kaizena. Kaizena is a way to give feedback on documents. What I love about it is that I can sign in automatically through a Google account. My school has Google accounts for all our school accounts, and I already have students turn in essays through Google Drive. I always make comments on their drafts, so Kaizena will be a great addition to what I'm already doing. Google Drive only allows for text comments, but Kaizena also has options for voice comments and links as well. I am going to try it out for the link comments. If a student has a grammatical or mechanical error that is prevalent throughout their work, I can add a comment with a link to an explanation of the error and how to fix it. With link comments, adding a link to a comment once will save it for future use; every time that comment is made, the same link will automatically be linked to it again. This will be extremely useful as an English teacher, because I often find myself making the same comments time and time again. Kaizena will be a time saver on giving feedback to student papers, and then students can individually check out the link to some sort of tutorial or minilesson on what they need to know to correct their own papers. I don't know how many times I have to explain commas splices and run on sentences each year, so hopefully Kaizena will save me some of the repetition.

Conference Presentation

Below is a sample presentation created for VAASL, where I will be presenting at the Fall Conference. This is not the actual presentation, but a practice run for how I will present. You can see my HaikuDeck slides below, and if you click on the link below the slides, you can also read my sample script with estimated time for each slide. Let me know what you think. Am I almost conference ready?

Conference Proposal - Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires

Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality has so many possibilities! I have loved playing around with this technology, and thinking about what it could mean for school use.  I didn't know that this type of technology was available for cell phones. I had only thought of it as being more advanced devices like Google Glass. Augmented Reality is taking an image and overlaying it with a video so that your video comes to life on the image you have scanned. Matt Mills' TED Talk explains and demonstrates it wonderfully. Aurasma is an awesome site for creating these video overlays, or "Auras," that can be simply scanned and viewed after others subscribe to your channel.

I am definitely going to be creating some book talks and share them this way. Then students can scan some books in my classroom library and see my book talk about it. I am also going to have students do book talks this way, so that students in other classes can see them too. I really wish our school had devices for students to check out to use this technology. This will have to be a technology day activity, where we have a BYOD day to work on it. Students who are technologically advanced could probably do this at home as a book project to share with their classmates. If we had devices in our library that had this capability, we could have book trailers linked to books in the library (student-created, of course!). It could become such a great tool in the school. 

I also love the idea of having Augmented Bulletin Boards, as mentioned on the Kleinspiration blog. When we have our Talent Showcase at school this year, I am definitely going to incorporate this into our displays! Students can explain their work without having to be hovering over what they have made; they can record a presentation to share. I could do these with my own phone or students could record with our school Flip Video cameras and I could add the Aura through my Aurasma account later.

Displayed here is a QR code to easily subscribe to my Aurasma channel (you must have the Aurasma app to do so).  For those of you in my LIBS 602 class, I overlayed my PowToon video from last week onto our book, Presentation Zen Design, if you want to check out my first created Aura. I also added the video to an image of the rug in my school's library, which has a reading emblem and "GSMS Library" on it. I haven't had the chance to test that one yet, but will try it when I go to the school. I'm excited about this technology and exploring its use at my school.

QR Codes

Harper Lee Quote shared using QR Voice

I have thought about using QR codes in the classroom for a while, but have never organized all of the thoughts and ideas into an actual activity. I think that will change this year. The ideas abound for what can be done with these simple codes. They can be used to simply share contact information, and I am going to do this for back-to-school night so that parents and students can save the school phone number and my email address on their phones automatically. I already saved this code to my website, and will print it out to put outside my classroom door as well. I will probably also do one with the link to my website, just to make saving it a little easier.  One challenge with using these is that my school doesn't allow students to have their phones during class, but exceptions can be made for a great educational opportunity. I want to develop such an activity for my students this year, so that they can explore content in a new way. I love all the ideas in Connect Learning Today's article "Exploring the Educational Potential of QR Codes."

One way that I think would be fun for using QR codes in the library is to share event information, such as book fairs, with a link. Another fun idea, which I read about on the blog The Adventures of Library Girl, is to do a "book+resource mash-up" by adding a QR code to a book that links to some online resource that explores or adds to the knowledge shared in the book. I think this is an excellent way to get students to extend their learning beyond the pages of the book. Library Girl had teachers collaborate with her on this project, and also stated that she had many teacher and student recommendations for "mash-ups" after the project was underway and on the shelves. This is an idea that would just keep growing. 

Video Creation Sites and My First PowToon Video

Here is my first attempt at a PowToon video. It wasn't too difficult to make; it just takes a while to get used to the controls and putting things in the right place on the slide (you have to pay attention to the time bar at the bottom for everything). This site is fun because it has little cartoon people that have different expressions and body language, and some are animated. It has several options for adding text and images, which is useful. They have templates you can start with, but I thought it was harder editing their templates than starting from scratch, so I used a blank one to start my video. It also has music to choose from for some ambience. The hardest thing was really deciding on the content I wanted to include, and then getting my video into a share-able format when I finished. PowToon gave me an embed code, but it didn't work, so I exported it to YouTube instead, and used their embed code to share it here. There isn't a download option, so you can only save your videos online. This video format is awesome for expressing ideas about different topics because of the many expressions the cartoon people can have. I can see students using this for making stories or sharing their own tips like the ones I did in my video.

Another video site I looked at was Animoto. I have seen people use Animoto before, and I know that it is great for making videos. I tried a few different templates and options before deciding on sharing my PowToon instead. You can upload pictures or videos into a slide show type of format, but it has so many templates and designs that it is much better looking than a simple slide show. Plus, you can add background music and text easily. These can be very beautifully made! I think this is a good alternative to regular slide shows, because maybe it would get students in the habit of narrating, not reading, their presentations. This would be a great site for creating book trailers!

I was also intrigued by PixiClip, which has a whiteboard look to it. I played around with it for a while, and it is very easy to add text and pictures, including a doodling option in which you just use your mouse to draw a picture. It reminded me of the app DrawSomething, because when you play it back, you see how the person drew it. You can add narration, pictures, and videos to this one as well. This would be fun to use for teaching someone a step-by-step process because it just follows exactly what you do in the order you add it to the screen. I plan to use all three of these sites again.

Library Website Attempt

Here is my first attempt at creating a library website. I decided to continue working with Weebly, a free website creation site, to make it. Weebly has tons of templates to choose from, and is easy to use to embed content and add text and links. It is user friendly on the creation and the navigation sides of using the website. I have only worked on the home page so far, but I think my ideas are starting to come together to make something coherent. Please let me know what you think!

Mrs. Williams' Library Site

Library Website Update

I have been toying with different tools for creating my library website, and have actually started two, just to get an idea of what I want to do: a Weebly and a Google Site. I have been playing around with the settings on both, adding content, and trying to figure out the controls.  The Weebly one is a bit more user friendly, but not quite as customizable when it comes to fonts and colors. I didn't like being forced into a template with it. However, Google makes some of its organization and embedding a bit more difficult than Weebly does. I think I am leading toward Weebly right now, but will keep exploring for now before I decide which to publish and share. Does anyone already using one of these have any tips for me?

Creating a Library Website

In looking at some Free Tools for Creating Websites, I was considering what would be the best platform for me to create my sample library website. There are many great options to consider, but I think I will be going with a Google Site because my school system already uses Google mail and apps, so this would be the best to seamlessly integrate into many of the tools we are already using. However, I also know that my school system doesn't use Google Sites for their webpages. Maybe my site can persuade some librarians or teachers to change their minds about their hosting site! 

I found these library webpages that I am going to use as examples when I start working on mine:

• Brookline High School Library: This one is a Weebly, and I love the look of it. It is so clean, and I like their scrolling pictures (including their mission statement!) and their embedded content. It is easy to navigate and has a lot of good ideas that I want to use, such as the slideshow of teachers' reading choices and the Padlet collaborative question.
• La Salle Prep Library: They use a Google Site, so it is probably more representative of what I will be working with. I love the side navigation and how it links to classroom resources for every subject. They have several ideas that I really like, such as the "Library in Your Pocket" app suggestions (with embedded QR code) and the "got books?" page for students to request new books.

With so many creative librarians out there, I feel that I have a high goal to aspire to in creating my website, but seeing some of the great examples and variety of content out there is inspiring me. I'm excited to get started! I'll be posting a first attempt at my main page this week.

Creating audio for the classroom

Record music and voice >>

I like Vocaroo because it is easy and doesn't require any downloads or email addresses to use, although those are among the possible options. The audio can be emailed, embedded into a webpage, shared through social media, or downloaded. One negative is that it must be recorded as it will be in the final version: no editing. This is difficult for longer assignments, but would be a great option for short presentations or reflections.

I have had a podcast assignment in class before. We used Audacity, a free software program. It is great because you can stop and start as many times as you need to, and edit the audio in many different ways. If you want others (who don't have Audacity) to be able to hear your recording, you'll need to download a file converter as well to convert the .aup files to .mp3, which is not too difficult but can be time consuming if you do it for your students after they record, like I did. Then I posted the file using SoundCloud, a great audio sharing site, and linked them to my class website so that students could hear each others' podcasts and parents could hear their children's projects. It was definitely time consuming, but rewarding in the end. 

Podcasts for the Classroom

InformED recommends these 50 Educational Podcasts, and I checked out a lot of them, but my main purpose was looking for something I could actually have students listen to in the classroom. To that end, I like Grammar Girl and How Stuff Works.  Grammar Girl has many interesting English topics included, although many of her "Quick and Dirty Tips" would be too advanced for many of my students to follow. I am a long-time fan of How Stuff Works, both the articles and the podcasts, particularly Stuff You Should Know, which has a wide variety of general topics, Stuff Mom Never Told You, which covers women's and gender issues, and Stuff You Missed in History Class, which specializes in all things historical. Some of these are not always classroom appropriate, so I would suggest listening to them ahead of time to anyone planning on using them for class. For my own professional use, I like LitTech as well. It discusses educational issues centering on literature, libraries, and technology. 

My First Infographic

Here's my first effort at creating an infographic.  It took me a very long time to decide on my subject, but then learning the tools was fairly easy. Piktochart is a great site for creating infographics! I use Goodreads for keeping track of my reading, so finding my reading numbers for the statistics was easy too! Here's the link to see it bigger: Books I Read. I would definitely use Piktochart for teaching infographics to students. I think I would make sure to discuss with them the importance of keeping things simple and uncluttered, with more pictures and facts than words, and leaving some white space (or in the case of this one, black space). Letting the charts speak mostly for themselves is important as well. For my infographic, I left out numbers on the charts as much as possible, and used numbers to depict other aspects that weren't in charts. Students definitely need some guidance when it comes to making aesthetically appealing presentations. Remember: less is more.

New avatar from Bitstrips

I officially have an avatar! I created this through Bitstrips.  You have to have a Facebook account for this site, which can be limiting for some.  It is fun because you can create comics of yourself with friends who also have a Bitstrips avatar.  It even showed me my friends who are already on Bitstrips and what their avatars look like.  It would be fun to have students create their own avatars for when they post to a class website or blog, to keep a bit of anonymity on the web. I know most kids don't care about that, but as a teacher, it is reassuring to know that I am not making students be too exposed when they participate in online activities. Overall, I give this tool a thumbs up!

Boy reading sketch created at SnapsTouch

Lost by Tim Pierce (CC BY)
Modified

Here is the same boy reading, but for this one I turned it into a sketch.  I had originally tried using dumpr.com, which looked promising, but kept getting server errors when I tried to upload.  Maybe their servers are having a bad day.  I really wanted to create a sketch type of picture though, so I found snapstouch.com, and it worked perfectly.  It has several options, but I used the Sketch effect, and changed it to the darker option.  I think this would be a fun website to use for art class, because students could sketch-ify any photo they want, print, and then color it!  I could even print out copies for them to work on shading and value.  

Boy reading photo edited on Tuxpi

Lost by Tim Pierce (CC BY)
Modified

I love this picture of a little boy reading by himself in a bookstore, and then when I looked at more information about it, I found out it was taken at Brookline Booksmith, which was one of the bookstores I frequented when I lived in Boston.  It is an amazing independent bookstore that offers lots of awesome events.

I modified the photo to make the boy the focus of the picture, and the bookstore stretching out around him.  I used the tuxpi.com online photo editor.  This site is a way to add fun effects to photos.  This could be fun for a scrapbooking type of assignment or to add interest to photos in presentations.

Reading Poster created at Big Huge Labs

On the platform, reading by Mo Riza (CC BY)
Modified

Movie-style poster created at bighugelabs.com

Creating movie-style posters for books is already one of the options I give students for reading projects.  Using this online tool would make it even more fun for students to put their ideas together.  They would need to be careful with the images they find, or (even better) take their own pictures to upload for the poster.  

This could be a poster I could actually hang up at school, so I like how it turned out, but I wish the site allowed cropping of the uploaded photos.