#39 Digital Storytelling

I LOVE THIS. As you can see by my digital story below, I used voice thread with beginning English speakers and their English teacher to work on a lesson about emotions. The students found pictures that showed different emotions that were on their vocabulary list for that week and then they wrote sentences, read their writings and commentated on each others work. The teacher expressed that this was a very effective way to teach students not only the content but fluency and writing skills. Plus as an added bonus the students were more engaged then they would have been in a traditional vocabulary assignment.

Maria's Emotions Book

#38 Screencasting

Screencasting rocks. We've been using this a ton this year in our library and I've even done some staff development trainings. I'm attaching a screencast I created on how to search our library catalog, along with a link to my wiki containing my training materials. A few tips on screencasting - create a script - Short is sweet - Keep it simple - Try different screencasting software. They are always coming out with new tools.

#37 Photo Tales

I used Animoto to create a slide show from a trip we took to Washington D.C. to learn more about IB middle school libraries. I can't believe how easy it was to create a slide show. The free version only allowed you to create a 30 second slide show which is not very much time for many pictures. If you were to use this for your library or school I would invest in the paid account. I could easily see you getting your moneys worth.

IB Havin' Fun

#36 Comic Relief

This was fun. I helped my husband who is an art teacher make a video. It can be found at the bottom. We are also using word clouds to create promotional material for our library and teachers are using them to highlight their guiding questions. Although I was familiar with some of the tools, it was really great to find some more. This is what makes this type of training so fabulous. You find a tool and figure out how you can make it work in your setting.

# 35 Books 2.0

I think these book 2.0 resources are really exciting. It gives avid readers a platform to share their thoughts about books. I joined good reads a few years ago and even though I don’t post very often or rarely update my info, I enjoy getting the emails from my friends seeing what they are reading.

The cataloging sites and book swapping sites also seems like a really great idea for people trying to organize their personal libraries and then share their resources with others.

One of the other sites I thought was cool was the book crossing site. This was a site where you take one of your books, register it and mark it and then take it to a public location and “release” it. I looked at some of the books that recently had been found. It looked like a fun thing to do.

The sites for children’s books seemed to be a great way for kids to play and interact with literature. Some of these sites also allowed you to publish your writings and illustrations. How fun would it be for our students to be able to use these sites to publish their work?