St. Louis School Librarians Meet-up!

Join the St. Louis Suburban School Librarians Association where I have been asked to share my Common Core presentation from METC in February.  I've been adding more "stuff" to the Common Core resources that school librarians can share with their teachers. Even the title has an extra "C"! Come meet up with the St. Louis LMS next week!

Date:  Tuesday, March 5th, 2013
Time:  4:30 pm
Location:  Mark Twain Elementary, Brentwood, MO
RSVP:  Maria Barron barron513@sbcglobal.net for dinner reservations.

METC 2013 Opens!

Presentation Resources

Midwest Education Technology Conference 2013 arrives with bright excited people and shiny technology tools this coming week, Febrary 11 - 13, here in St. Charles, Misouri.

I'm so excited and thankful to be one of the Midwest Spotlight Educators for this first year.
  
Join us at the Convention Center or follow us virtually on Twitter via #METC13.

Check out my sessions:

DIY Infographics for Data Reporting
Tuesday 9:45 - 11:40 am - Grand Ballroom A

Digital Curation Ninja Skills - Tuesday, 2:20 - 3:10 - Windsor Room 1

3 C's + School Librarians = Common Core Success - 3:25 -Grand Ballroom A

Presentation Resources

P.S. If you like the magazine cover, you can make your own here.....
 Pulp-O-Mizer

Digital Curation: EdCanvas & Steampunk

EdCanvas

EdCanvas gives teachers an easy platform to share lessons complete with videos, slide presentations, documents, images, and web links in an attractive eye catching bulletin board.  EdCanvas includes a search box as part of its platform which makes it super easy to add media.  Also, it can be embedded in a teacher's webpage, blog or wiki just like the Steampunk YA book trailer EdCanvas below.  Since my blog width is a bit small, you can also just share the link: EdCanvas Steampunk YA Novels

See the full effect on the Resources page for Digital Curation.

Google Search Stories

*Google has cancelled their Search Stories platform so you can no longer create stories.

 

Here is a quick review of a workshop presentation to my high school faculty

on locating informational articles in our school library database resources.

Hopefully, this makes the connection between Common Core Standards

and the role school librarians can play in collaborating with teachers.
Playing with Google Search Stories Video Creator is more fun than
throwing angry birds at hog heads! I can see using this as intro's to 
curriculum units, assessments, and professional development.

Google Search Story - School Librarians  Want to make your own Google Search Story?   Can you think of ways to use this with students? Digital story telling combined with Google searching. Book reviews, science term word walls, and introduction for a persuasive essay are just a few examples. Students will need a gmail or youtube account  to upload their finished search stories to You Tube. Alternately, a student can finish the search story and the classroom teacher can upload the project to You Tube. Google Search Story Video Creator and video tutorial  follow after the examples. Literature Unit - Julius Caesar by Shakespeare I pulled my co-librarian, Rhonda Dobbs into the playground. With her Communication Arts teaching background, this is  the Google Search Story she devised with keywords and questions. Book Review Google Search Story A Dog's Purpose - Gateway Readers Award Nominee Science Word Wall Google Search Story Word walls are posted in many classrooms.  Why not make a Google Search Story using the terms from that list?  Easy student project to learn and define each term. Google Search Story - Science Word Wall Example Welcome to Northwest High School! Go Lions! --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Google Search Stories Video Creator Google Search Stories Video Tutorial

Happy Connections

Why connect with other school librarians? And teachers? And administrative types? plus all those other people out there like those political types?


Do you hear about Twitter and RSS and social media networking at conferences and seriously wonder, why? Do those Twitter peeps even have a life? And do you ever find anything you can use in your school library?


Here is the story of how those connections can make you literally give out a Whoo! Hooo! right in the middle of your library.

1. On Friday, I was giving a soon-to-be retiring teacher friend, Pinterest, the land of boards and pins that is the newest social media funsite. Great place to find hundreds of pictures of tulips and chocolate chip cookies.  (Yes, a social networking site that doesn't mean "work".) 
2. While the firewall was open, searched for library infographic just to see if a cool image would pop up that I could use for the MASL presentation. 
3. Recognized that Boiling Springs High School from the Annual School Library Reports wiki - Fran Bullington's blog Informia was the link for the infographic.
4. Discovered gold in her blog entry about using Piktochart to design a monthly report.
5. Fran picked up the idea from Courtney Lewis, Director of Libraries at Wyoming Seminary College Preparatory School in northeastern Pennsylvania by way of Twitter - The Sassy Librarian 
6. Then, remembered Joyce Valenza had just blogged about making posters because sometimes you just need a paper poster - Block Posters

Result:  NHS Library Report for March posted on the school website and a paper copy to put on the bulletin board or at the sign-in clipboard in the library.

Just in case, you want to try your hand at turning your library stats into an infographic, just follow Piktochart's instructions along with Fran's model. Try to keep the happy dancing to your library workroom.

See more details on how the statistics were collected on the MASL Spring Conference 2012.

~Credits:

Works Cited

"Block Posters." Blockposters. Web. 21 Apr. 2012. <http://www.blockposters.com/>.

"Informania." Informania. Web. 21 Apr. 2012. <http://informania.wordpress.com/2012/04/15/infographic-monthly-library-report/>.

"Piktochart- Your Infographic Tool for Customized Design." Piktochart- Your Infographic Tool for Customized Design. Web. 21 Apr. 2012. <http://piktochart.com/>.

"Postering with New Tools « NeverEndingSearch." Postering with New Tools: NeverEndingSearch. Web. 21 Apr. 2012. <http://blog.schoollibraryjournal.com/neverendingsearch/2012/04/15/postering-with-new-tools/>.

"The Sassy Librarian." The Sassy Librarian. Web. 21 Apr. 2012. <http://thesassylibrarian.blogspot.com/>.

Pinterest vs. Scoop.it

Social bookmarking comes in many flavors.  I still keep my Diigo account mainly because I have a bookmarklet attached to my toolbar. Let's admit it - Diigo is pretty much just rows of text and you have to remember to tag everything or you will never find it again!

Two new social bookmarking tools are showing up in school library circles as ways to build their PLN's, and use as a curation tool. Realize what you are looking it - both of these social bookmarking platforms have been developed for the business of marketing products.  Educators are looking at both of these because of the ease of building a website of bookmarks. 

Scoop.it starts out with topic selection and adding keywords to the Scoop.it creation dashboard. With a click, Scoop.it searches the web for articles, blogs, and more that pertain to your search. You have the opportunity to curate - pick your favorites - to add to a glossy looking online magazine. Scoop.it sends by email new recommendations you can scoop to your bookmarked topics.  You can explore Scoop.it by searching for topics that other people have scooped.  In searching for e-books, the unquiet librarian, Buffy Hamilton, has already curated "eBooks, eReaders, and Libraries". Follow other people's topics and explore awesome topics.  Yes, you spend hours just reading Scoop.it.

I've started one Scoop.it on the topic Depth of Knowledge, Blooms's Taxonomy, and formative assessments for researching for the school library curriculum.  Scoop.it didn't find many articles with its search so I had to do my own searches then post the articles to the dashboard. Time-consuming since most articles don't have a visual image and I really wanted images for the magazine format.

Quoted right from Pinterest, Pinterest is a Virtual Pinboard. Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes.

I heard about Pinterest last summer from elementary teachers attending a summer workshop.  They showed me Pinterest boards with elementary school teacher ideas.  Last August, when I searched I just didn't find much for high school teachers or librarians.  Well, that has changed in the past few months.  Pinterest is the hottest social bookmarking platform especially for women.  It's like scrapbooking and shopping all rolled into one package.  You can search for topics, when you find a "pin" you can  "re-pin" to your collections.  Organizing into categories, you build "boards" into a visual websites.  Similar to Scoop.it but there is definitely a greater number of teachers connected to the Pinterest community.

I've posted two school library related boards:  AASL Top 25 Websites for Teaching and Learning 2011 and EdCampSTL Smackdown 2012.   As I worked late at night on these, my email was open in another window.  I realized that "ding" sounds I was hearing in rapid succession, were my "pins" being re-pinned and the boards being "liked" and "followed". Talk about the power of social networking! Even today, more followers have added themselves to 30 for the AASL board and 28 for the EdcampSTL board.

Which one works best for you?  Personally, I think the Pinterest is more fun while Scoop.it does look more professional. Since I log in with my Twitter profile, guess what? Everyone connected with my Twitter shows up on the opening page with their latest "pins".  Looks like many of us love food, fashion, and books!  Click on the Follow Me button.  If you want an invitation, I still have most of mine - at least until METC is over!

Thanks Debbie Fucoloro for the idea for this bit of blogging!