Many Worlds, One Li-Bro-rian

I made it!  Woo!  It's that time of year again, the end of the semester!  But oh we aren't done yet, I still have on more assignment to go. It's the reflection itself.  Nope sorry, you don't get to here me ramble on the semester here, you get read a story about it!  I used Bookcreator to write a story about my time in LSSL 5391.  In order to view it though, you do need to be using Chrome.  here is the link: https://read.bookcreator.com/6bT8LO67WKMYytuUvGtUngB6U5E2/wOjet-u8TziTcS5-ze94Tw Look at my story to get my thoughts and a look back on the semester.  Before I end for the day, I would like to give a shout out to my partner this semester, Jaime Vezurk.  One of the best partner's I've had the pleasure of working with, and without whom I could not have done some of my assignments (literally).

Today's blog is all about podcasts! Years ago, before Ipods were Iphones, I had participated in a teacher workshop that was all about podcasting.  While it had seemed mildly interesting back then, today it is something that has really blown up!  The information gathered from the class I'm taking now has really renewed my interest in not only listening to them, but bringing them into the classroom.       Podcasts can be a great way to reach kids, who are already glued to electronics as it is.  There are a multitude of them out there with a variety of subjects.  These can be used in the classroom as an additional resource to get kids to learn about a certain subject.  I currently teach Food Science at the high school in which I work, so I started looking for food, science, and food science related podcasts. And lo and behold I found them!  I've been thinking a lot lately how to get around the old and tired lecture to a presentation,...

Ever wanted to create your own comic online?  Well today I'll show you a few tools that you can use and give you my thoughts on them.  Comics can be a great way to connect to students and make a lesson much more interesting.  I've used comics in a few different ways in the classroom, like using particular graphic novels as part of a lesson and having students create their own comic strips.  One of my favorite beginning of the year activities is having the students create comic strips demonstrating lab safety rules.  Though they usually do them by hand, I do give them an option of turning in their work digitally.  And now I have a few more tools to offer! Pixton Pixton is a pretty neat tool that even has educator/ student accounts.  The interface is pretty easy to use, and it has plenty of options in the graphics you can put into your strip.  With an educator account, you can set up a class for your students to join.  The program has you c...

     In today's blog I'll be talking about some video streaming sites, and one way to access them.  First up is Youtube.  I've been instructed to look at 4 specific channels, and select videos from each that I think are particularly helpful, and attractive to students.  Calypso Gilstrap: https :// www . youtube .com/user/ TheNHSLibrary /videos There are only 6 videos on this channel, so all of them are easy to find from the link above.  There are a couple of helpful videos here, in particular I like "How to use EBSCOHost" because it helps students learn to find good articles for their research.  My favorite video is "Tiger visits the Norman High Library".  I think the kids would get a kick out of seeing their mascot partaking of the library's services. Theunquietlibrary: https :// www . youtube .com/user/ theunquietlibrary /videos   This channel has quite a few videos, much of which are either showcasing student work or givi...

   Today I'll talking about screencasting.  A screencast is a essentially a video of your video screen.  I first became of aware of these when I started my library science classes, as a few of my professors used them to demonstrate various processes on the computer.  They are very useful for showing details on how to access things on the computer or even show how to do an assignment.  Now that I've experienced making them, I plan on using them for my classes the coming school year.  I already give a lot of instructions online for each class, now I can also leave video for them demonstrating what I want them to do.  I could even make screencasts on how to access and use the resources available on the library website.     I tried out two different screencast programs.  The first I tried was Techsmith's Snagit.  This program is not free, but does offer a free 15 day trial.  One thing that was kind of neat, is that the p...

    Inforgraphics are a visual way for representing information.  Using them is a good way to draw the eye to information you're trying to get across, and is handy in summarizing information.  There are lots of tools available online that one can use to create one.  Here I will review a few of them and then show you an infographic I made using one of the tools.       First up is Easelly. One can access this tool by visiting https://www.easel.ly/   and creating an account. The basic account is free, but one can upgrade to a pro account if they wish to gain access to additional resources.  The infographic creator is pretty simple to use.  You can start out with a pre-made template and edit how you want.  There are options in lettering, graphs, charts, and media.  You can import your own graphics or even embed items from the internet like Youtube videos. When you are finished, you can download your product as as a picture fi...

Today I'm going to talk about some different social media platforms, their educational uses, and educators that already use it. Facebook I looked at school library pages for this section of my assignment.  What I found is that school libraries posted about recent school events, what was happening in the library, promoted work of the students, and had funny library memes.   An advantage to using Facebook is you get to promote your library and your school.   Using a social media platform like Facebook gets the word out about what the library is doing.   So many people have no idea what the library is all about, so this helps garner support for the library and its programs.   A disadvantage would be that Facebook isn’t particularly popular with teens.   They’ve moved on to other platforms, because now all of their parents are on Facebook (which could be a plus too). Twitter Here I will share some information about prominent edu-tech tweeters. I tried...