Thing 20: Tools for creating websites, pathfinders, portfolios and more

So I decided that I would use Wix, a free website creator to create and publish my own professional portfolio.  The kids and I have used Wix before as a project/assessment piece for a couple of classes and it is really easy to learn and to use. I have to admit, however, it's taken me a bit of time to even get two pages together and I still need to add four more! It requires more thinking about what exactly I want to put in, what mission or purpose I have in sharing that information, and what format is best to display that information. 

I can understand why my students like using this, but I can also understand their frustration about the amount of time and re-dos they put in.  I find myself putting a page together and then spending another half an hour re-ordering or reformatting the information to make it 'present' better. 

I would have never thought to do this without this class.  It's a really great way for my kids and the wider community to see where I came from and what I believe in.  This was a great suggestion!

Here's a link to the work in progress and no, that's not me!  Changing the pic is still part of the ongoing project.  http://edisonhs.wix.com/sheets-professional

Thing 10: Productivity Tools

The students and I have used diigo for a couple of years now and we also tested out Box since we are always looking for ways to share and access documents.  We like diigo for its ease of use and ability to share marked up documents with each other.  However, now that our friend NoodleTools has iCyte built in we have now shifted away from diigo a bit more.  iCyte not only starts a citation within NoodleTools, it also allows students to add highlights and notes.  The ability to have the integration with one login really simplifies things for us at TAE, especially since we are not on block scheduling and those 40 minute periods fly by (especially if the internet is slow).  Diigo is nice if we are just doing a cursory review of a topic and simply want to share ideas and information in a less formal research setting.

The ability of Box to allow the online collaboration was a major consideration for me in choosing a resource to explore.  Students all have access to a teacher drop box, but not to shared drop boxes.  It seems that when they are working collaboratively the student who is absent is always the one who has the group project in their student drive and then no one can access it!!  Box integrates with Google Docs which is also a plus!  Also, it lets us share some bigger files from either home or school so that was a plus!  We have only tried this a couple of times with my smaller classes but it seems to be working quite well. 

I'll be looking through the list for other resources to use as we come to the end of the school year so that we can better integrate some of my new finds from the Cool Tools program next year!

Thing 19: Online Learning & DIY PD

As far as my learning plan goes I truly value any opportunity to take a class either at the college or professional level.  In the past several years I have been lucky to receive some credits from the credit pool at work which have allowed me to take several graduate classes from a local college.  I have also participated in the offerings provided by our local School Library System through BOCES which have included several wonderful speakers including Marc Aaronson and Kathleen O’Dean.  BOCES also offers a monthly Mandarin support group as well as super opportunities, like the Cool Tools program, to our librarians.  I have also found some really great webinars (freebies) offered through vendors and other library listservs as well as exploring some information on my own (like the Google Power Searching course which I took two years ago).  I really like the webinars and I think that they provide excellent opportunities for learning on your own time (even if you can’t attend ‘live’ most of these are archived).  Although some of the vendor webinars include a ‘plug’ for this and that, many of those offer eminently qualified folks providing the information and it is almost always on current library topics, such as Common Core, Inquiry-Based Learning, RTI, etc. 

Since we all need to keep track of our learning for our continuing education hours for NYS, I think webinars and online courses are great ways to obtain hours while really increasing our knowledge as librarians.  I know that many districts are able to provide PD credit for participation in these types of programs, or they if you get so many hours you can convert those hours into credits (which you may be compensated for).  I am very interested in pursuing National Board Certificate and have been to one seminar on this offered, again, by our BOCES.  I am still not sure if I have the time and money to invest at this point but I am seriously considering this as an option in the future.  I truly believe that we are better teachers when we are participating in school too.  We can share our struggles, successes, and failures with our students and it helps them, and us, become more passionate and dedicated lifelong learners. 

Unfortunately, due to budgetary issues, there is virtually no funding available from my district for PD so I have applied for some grants in order to fund some of my adventures in learning.  Some I have received gratefully and some I haven’t but I keep applying and keep finding fun and exciting learning adventures along the way.  My most recent endeavor is a graduate course in Writing and Critical Thinking so that I will be able to be certified to teach ACE English.  I am excited about the class but a bit overwhelmed by the amount of work (since it’s a short term things are fast and furious).  I now can empathize with my more Freshmen who seem to have six tests at a time during benchmark time!  My next steps will be to try and find funding for my National Board Certification and begin that in the fall and perhaps look into becoming a Microsoft Certified Trainer.  I have to say I love school (both teaching and learning) and if I win the lottery I will be pursuing my Ph.D. in curriculum!!  Cross your fingers for me J

Thing 9: Databases and Search Tools

I am thrilled that you asked us this question in this forum.  I am fortunate enough to have a Superintendent who really supports our online access here at TAE and we are lucky enough to have a budget for databases in addition to those supplied by NOVEL.  We have several between the high school and the middle school which include Biography Reference Center, World Almanac, Geography & Culture, Culturegrams, Science Power, World Book, and EBSCO's Ultra package.  I highly recommend the Ultra package at the high school level.  It is extremely affordable and really gives students that 'college' experience when it comes to searching and finding articles.  We've had it for three years now and teachers and students alike are thrilled with the variety and materials we are able to find within the database.  In my opinion, it definitely offers more than the NOVEL databases and is well worth any extra cost. 

At the high school we use EBSCO a lot and I have the kids do an entire unit on searching including advanced search features like full text, date range, using subject terms, and peer reviewed articles.  I've also taken the Google PowerSearching class and found it extremely helpful and a great resource.  In fact, I've shown it to my kids within the searching unit.  They especially love the part where you can drag in a picture and find where it is from and the color select on image searches!  I highly recommend this class to all of you.  It takes a bit of time, but it's well worth it. 

I haven't used the custom Google search feature much.  In fact I'm preparing some links for Regents prep so I think I will try that out and post it to my webpage at www.heightsschools.com/taelibrary.  Hopefully it will be a hit. 

I just used instaGrok with my freshmen to get background information on their unit papers.  It was a great hit, especially with those visual learners.  Packs a lot of bang for the buck and they liked the notes section (of course).  I have recommended SweetSearch to the social studies teachers especially and I'll see what feedback that receives soon.  We also use Only2Clicks which is a favorite among faculty here.  It's easy and let's you post lots of stuff in a great visual format. 

Thing 16: You Pick!

Ok - I admit I had a terrible time picking!  I just wasn't sure what to do or accomplish here.  Finally I decided that I would offer my students the joy of learning to use something old in a new way!  So, I offered a 'class' to my kids that have already graduated and are in college on the new features of our favorite NoodleTools!  I also used this lesson with my Juniors and Seniors but it seems that the alumni were much more interested because they are actually seeing the reality of what I said in high school is really true about college - you must cite CORRECTLY or it's not good!

For those of you who don't know, NoodleTools is a subscription citation tool but it's so much more than that.  It has three levels of citations available - beginning, junior, and advanced - to allow students at all levels to become expert citers!  It offers students choices of APA, MLA, Chicago, etc., and there are help boxes with each field to tell students where to look to find the information they need and how it should look when they type it in.  It allows for annotations and even helps students know how to create their in-text citations.  After you enter your citation information, NoodleTools will print your bibliography and provide all the formatting including alphabetizing, spacing, italics, etc. 

New features of NoodleTools allow students to create their own timeline/checklists of items that need to be completed, create notecards, use the tags in the notecards to drop and drag into an outline, start a citation directly from a website with iCyte, and share and collaborate with faculty or other students.  NoodleTools also allows students to link to GoogleDocs to write and share their paper.  Teachers and students can leave notes/suggestions for students and they have added a highlighting and archive feature so that if a page is taken down you can still access it and, like Diigo, highlight for notes.  I think the iCyte and outlining features were the most popular with the college students but the notecards are really great for the high school crowd as well. 

In the span of a 40 minute class I was able to show the students all the new features and have them explore and on their own.  NoodleTools is truly a collaborative, full-service citing service and WELL worth the little bit we pay for it.  Their rates are really low!  A much better resource for teachers and students than citation machine or so of the other freebies out there in my opinion. 

The opportunity to pick allowed to see with new eyes an old tool and allowed my students, both current and former, an opportunity to expand their resources when it comes to citing responsibly.  Thanks for the opportunity and freedom with the module.

Thing 8: Collaborating, Connecting, Sharing

For Thing 8 I selected Prezi (www.prezi.com) and TodaysMeet as well as a response app called Socrative (www.socrative.com).  I chose Prezi because one of the Social Studies teachers was looking for a collaborative way to have groups summarize and share information from a unit.  Prezi now offers the ability for students to collaborate and create Prezis in real time.  The students find it a welcome change from the boring world of PowerPoint and since they could work on different parts of the project at the same time it was really awesome!  In fact, one of our students that was out sick actually logged in during class so he could work at home with his classmates.  The Prezis were great and really allowed students to showcase the big ideas for their peers in a format that kids found very easy to use and fun to interact with. 

I also used TodaysMeet with a class to respond to a lesson.  I first used this at a conference in February and thought that it could be very useful for students to respond to instruction both during the actual class and after they go home to think about what they learned.  Is it very easy to use and allows learning to extend beyond the classroom.  I know we've all attended a meeting, class, or workshop and then on the drive home had a great idea that we wish we could share with the group.  TodaysMeet allows chat-like postings to easily be inserted and others can respond or not.  For a more in-depth response for the classroom we've also tried Collaborize the Classroom which provides the students an opportunity to respond and discuss postings.  TodaysMeet and Collaborize both provide a way for students to work/interact from home or school but TodaysMeet is more tweet-like, where Collaborize has a bit more substance.

Socratic was a great way to have my Freshmen actually use their phone in my class for something other than texting their friends!!  It's unbelievably easy to setup and use and allows instant feedback in the classroom.  There is multiple choice, true/false, short answer, quizzes, exit tickets, races, etc.  The multiple choice and true/false are autograded, you can combine question types, and reports are downloadable in Excel format.  Compatible with any device that can access the web and FREE it's really a great alternative to the Promethean and clickers that sometimes work and sometimes don't!  My freshmen LOVED it and we will continue to use it.  Works great with vocab and other grammar type exercises. 

Thanks for the great opportunity to explore these fantastic tools!

Thing 18: Digital Tattoo & Digital Citizenship

I think that we try to be very proactive at our school about talking to the kids about their electronic life.  At the beginning of the school year I address all grade levels to discuss the school's Acceptable Use Policy as well as our Plagiarism Policy.  During that discussion I also talk to the kids about how things they send on their electronic devices outside of school can affect them at school (like mean and inappropriate Facebook postings, texts, or tweets). 

We also incorporate a lot of our discussions about safe use of the internet within the English curriculum.  Since I push into to every English class during the year the staff and I discuss that being good consumers of the web involves more than just discerning between good and bad sources - it means using our electronic information appropriately.  We discuss simple things like email names being appropriate (no one wants to email a prospective employee at an email address like 'drinktothis@abc.com'!), making sure the kids understand there is NEVER a delete button on electronic items (they float out there forever), and making sure they don't give too much information about themselves out there in cyberspace.

At one point the kids had a training for parents and other adults on what Twitter, Facebook, and other social media does and how to use it properly.  I also have an internet safety document posted for parents on my library website. 

After reading some of the articles in this module, I think I am going to change it up next year and have my Freshmen complete a "Digital Passport" portfolio which I would create for them and have them go through it as part of their English grade.  I think I can design something online that would work but if anyone knows of anything like this at the high school level I'd love to hear about it. I like the "Digital Recap App" article and I think I will use that in part with my Freshmen as part of their writing prompts on Wednesday.  I do agree that students need to experience online 'living' in order to create their own personal understanding of digital citizenship, however, I think those experiences need to allow students to explore within certain parameters and with the guidance of someone who really 'gets' the cyberworld.  Parents, and many teachers, lack the web skills to guide their students safely through the maze of the online world so we really need to focus our efforts on training faculty as well as students in the perils and pitfalls of their electronic life.

Having said that, I think I will offer a training to staff on our next half-day on using the internet wisely and ask to include the support staff as well.  I bet 30 minutes of discussion will at least generate some ah-ha moments for many of our staff!

Thanks for the brain food from this lesson.  It was a great way to reconnect with my current practices in this area and to expand on them.