Track 3: Thing 26 Taking the Lead: Connecting with your Stakeholders

I looked at track 16 and the DIY assignment and thought that as much as that seemed interesting, I was really very interested in Heidi Neltner's Toolkit video. I think I have done a good job building my program over the past years, by setting goals and working towards them, like mentioned in thing 16. I feel like I am more established and have a clearer vision for the library that really fits in with the school mission and curriculum. However, I feel like I don't do a great job of sharing that information well with students, teachers, parents and administrators, which is something that I needed to explore more. Therefore, I watched Heidi's video in hopes of gathering new tools and ideas. In watching the Webinar, I didn't gain any new tools for my toolkit, however, I did gain new ideas for using the tools. First off, I think Heidi made a very important point when she said that you need to assess what the needs are. I feel this assessment piece is really missing for me, yet it is so valuable. I never really thought about the idea of polling the kids using Google Forms. I can definitely see this as useful when it comes to collection development. Polling the teachers to see how I can best help them would also be very useful. I was thinking it would be great to poll them and see what information would be nice to include in a S'more newsletter. I loved the idea of a S'more newsletter because I have tried other newsletters in the past and I feel like they went right in the trash. So, by her mentioning the analytic feature, I would be able to get quick feedback to see if it is being used. In addition, she shared a resource infographic with teachers that I loved the layout for. She also suggested app smashing and making a Thinglink that would link teachers to directions or lesson idea for the app. I thought that was a genius idea.

Although, students and teachers are stakeholders that I need to improve contact with, I truly feel that I am weakest when it comes to communicating with administrators and parents. When it comes to administrators, I have thought every year of making a statistics report for them, but have been very hesitant because it would require a lot of work and I don't think it would be read. Her point about keeping your information short really resinated with me. I had never thought to create an infographic for my principal before. What a great quick way to share information. I am definitely committed to creating one for my principal this year, in which I will highlight the new programs and initiatives, the number of collaborative inquiry based projects carried out this year, and library statistics. I wish I could find a student growth statistic, but I can't really think of anything I do that I can measure that with. As for parents, I have tried to increase my presence and communicate with them more. I do a good job updating my webpage and posting information there on a weekly basis. I started a Twitter account for the library as well and I have an RSS feed for that on my website as well. Unfortunately, I do not have a ton of parent followers. Therefore, for this assignment I decided to build a fb page for the library. I really liked how she suggested making a logo for the library and using it on our Facebook, Twitter and any other media site. I then created one in Canva to be added to my new Facebook and Twitter page. Making the Canva was very easy. In fact, I am already dreaming of other ways I can use this tool. Unfortunately, I can't say the same thing for Facebook. It took me 2 days to get a Business Facebook page up and running. As it turns out Facebook no longer allows you to be able to have a business account without creating a personal one. Once you have a personal account then you need to create a business account from that page. I finally think I have it up and running and now I am in desperate need of some friends. My page is: www.facebook.com/LGESlibrary. I was able to create this personal URL by going into the "about" page and I was also able to provide a link to my school webpage. I hoping that will help to increase the traffic to my site and reach a wider audience (hopefully parents). If you get a chance hopefully you can "like" my page!

Track 2: Thing 16

I must say, that I was super excited about trying Lit Trips again. I feel like it has so much potential and it seems like such a powerful tool. I had tried creating one before, possibly for a Cool Tools Track, but had ended up running into troubles.

At first I had a great idea to create a Lit Trip for Woody Guthrie's Riding in My Car. I thought this would be perfect to go along with the trip in the story as they stop at many iconic american landmarks. I was going to create a basic one with each of the points labeled and plotted and have the students tell me what images we should add to each to fit in with the Social Studies curriculum. As students visited each place on the Lit Trip, I would have them do some research that we would add to the hot spots. It would be a second grade shared research project. However, the teachers have already taught this unit this year and although it would be nice for next year I wanted to be able to apply it to something that I was currently doing. 

I decided to use the book The Amazing Impossible Erie Canal by Cheryl Harness instead because I am currently developing a unit in collaboration with a 4th grade teacher. In addition, I also teach The Amazing Impossible Erie Canal with my Battle of the Books team. So, as you can imagine I was very excited about the possibility this tool could offer. 

I started off by watching the tutorials on YouTube that were posted on the Wiki. I then download GoogleEarth to my Mac. It looked slightly different than the one in the video, but I was able to figure it out. I started building my Lit Trip with minor struggles and often needed to refer back to the tutorials. However, in the middle of work it shut down completely and I lost all my work. This happened twice so I got a little smarted and decided I was going to save more often. Then it occurred to me that this is what happened the last time I started building a Lit Trip. I was determined to overcome this issue and keep plugging away and be good about saving. It does help if you create a story board ahead of time, like suggested in the tutorials, that way if the program quits you at least have all your writing saved in your Word Document. 

As I continued building, I started rethinking my purpose for this tool. I originally thought I would build the trip with the points set out and then the students would individually be able to add to it. I realized very quickly that this wouldn't be an option. My other thought was that the students would build their own Lit Trips, however, I consider my self pretty savvy and I was struggling with the tool. Again, I didn't want to "toss the idea out the window" because the benefits of the tool seem so powerful. My next thought was that all the kids have IPADs. I started asking myself all sorts of questions: "Is this something that they can even use on the IPADS?" "Is it going to be more intuitive or less intuitive than the computer version?" So, I began researching and exploring.

When exploring the options for the IPAD, I started off getting very excited that there was a free app for Google Earth, which I installed. I was then able to find directions for uploading my Google Lit Trip to the IPAD. The process was very simple. You access "maps" though your Google account and upload the Lit Trip that was saved on your computer. Then you go into the app, which requires you to sign into your Gmail account. Once you are logged in you should be able to go to "my maps" and it should be there. Unfortunately, mine was not there and I have no luck getting them to appear.

I decided that I was going to give-up on using Google Earth to make Lit Trips and decided to use the Maps app that is available through our Google Accounts at school. This much simpler and very intuitive. The 2 downfalls that I noticed was that you aren't able to format your text as nicely and I haven't found away to make it like a movie, which you can do in Google Earth. The students have to individually push on each of the hot spots. The nice thing is that you can share it and the students can add to it, which makes it collaborative. You could give students the task of adding hot spots to key locations, which would be a great learning and/or assessment tool.

My next concern was that I wanted these maps to be interactive so that students can drop points on the map, add pictures and comment on discussion questions. I found that when I shared it with the students that they weren't able to make an individual copy of the map. I was able to figure out a way to have them download the map add it back to their maps, in which they could then interact with their own copy and send it back to me. That was a great solution for on the computer, but I wasn't able to figure out how to make a copy as nicely on the IPAD's. Although, I think it is possible by saving the map to the students drives, it is way to many steps and there are lots of roadblocks along the way, like pop-up blockers.

After a long tedious process, I was able to complete a Lit Trip using the Google Map app in our Google suite. I will definitely be using this on the computers with our 4th grade students. However, I am not sure that I am ready to do it on the IPADs yet. My advice to anyone looking make a Lit Trip is that if you want a movie Lit Trip to use in a center that does not need to be interactive and collaborative, it would be worth venturing into Google Earth. However, if you want the students to create maps or interact with maps that you create, I would use Google Maps.

Below is my original Lit Trip that I started building on Google Earth, followed by my final Lit Trip that I created using Google Maps:

Thing 17: DIY

I love that we were able to complete a DIY thing during this track. It gave me to opportunity to not only explore a new tool, but find a way to promote the library by creating a PSA. Ever since I started at Lake George, I have been working hard to promote the WISE model of Inquiry. In fact last year, my aide, who is a fantastic artist, and I designed a poster for the WISE model that is now displayed in every classroom. The poster has really catapulted our student and teachers understanding of inquiry and the idea of learning how to learn. I really wanted to build on this momentum and further promote inquiry and the library. I decided that I should build a PSA for the library.

I had heard lots about PowToon and was looking for a reason to learn more about this tool. I decided that I would create a PSA using PowToons. I love how professional the videos look that are made on PowToon and was hoping that it would be intuitive. I have to say that you can easily make a basic video by dragging and dropping with this tool. However, once I got into the timing of making images pop-up and fade away it got a little tricker. I eventually learned how to use the timeline tool at the bottom, but I know that when I make my next video I will need to teach myself again. That part of the tool certainly isn't as intuitive as I would have liked.  However, I wouldn't let this stop anyone from using this tool though. It has so many great images, templates and styles to choose from and the great part is you can mix different themes together. You can add uploaded images that searches free to use and share images, unlike other tools. It also allows you to embed video and add music from a long list of quality choices. The opportunity for creativity is endless! I know that I will be using it again and am already considering opportunities for student use.

Our sixth grade team is doing a writing unit using the theme of teen activism. I can certainly see the students making PSA's for their causes as an extension to the writing unit. PowToons would be a great tool for them to use because it certainly can be differentiated for all abilities. We use I-Movie at our school for most all our video creations and I think this is a great alternative since many students do not have I-movie on their home computers. There of course is a premium option, but I feel that the free version is quite expansive and perfect for what we as a school would need.

Below is the PSA that I created for the library. I uploaded it to youtube and have embedded it on the library website. If anyone would like to use it, they are more than welcome to!