Tales from a Loud Librarian

Louisiana Library Association always holds its annual conference in mid-March. This year it was in Alexandria, LA. Not much going on there, but the hotels were very convenient to the conference center, and I did not have to move my car until I was ready to leave for home. When LLA made the call for conference proposals, I applied to talk about tech tools for formative assessment. This was a presentation that I did for teachers and librarians in my district, and I thought it would be a good one for this conference. Some of these tools you migh be familiar with, but I hope that there is something new for you there: One of the tools that I discussed in my presentation was Padlet, so I asked those attending to post on a Padlet different ways that they could utilize the various tools in their library. Below are the suggestions that they posted. Use the slider bar at the bottom to see all of the nine columns. Please feel free to add your ideas to the Padlet also....

10 Best Tools for 5-Minute Formative Assessment I write regularly here on this blog, but several times a year I write a post for the Whooo's Reading Blog. Every post on their blog consists of lists of apps or websites that teachers can use to assist in their teaching or aid in student learning. They have a section just for librarians, but this time around you will find my post in the edtech section . If you use other tools that could be used for assessment, please list them in the comment section below. 

Using the LittleBits When the library received grant money last school year to begin a makerspace , I chose not to spend all the money at once. I was not sure which items would appeal most to the kids, so I took it slow. Though our school serves students in grades 6-12, it is the middle school students who spend the most time using the makerspace equipment and materials during their lunch period. The Lego cart There are class sets of iPads that live in the library, but I needed iPads that stayed in the library and would always be available to use in the makerspace. I bought 5 initially and added 2 more this time around. The iPads are used to watch videos detailing projects that can be constructed with LittleBits. Lego Wedo, or K'Nex or to find instructions for those projects. The tablets can also be used to make stop motion videos. The Sphero robots are powered by an iPad as well as the new Lego Wedo 2.0. Creation with the 3D pen I added some items that were a...

Kahoot was used as practice for the upcoming English III standardized test Students were highly engaged in Kahoot I consider myself on top of things when it comes to technology and education.Though there are many tools and tricks that I choose not to use, I try to be aware of what is new and hold it on the back burner to share with teachers in my building or eventually use it myself. Like Kahoot, I had heard about it and knew teachers that used it, but I thought that I didn't need it. Then we got a set of iPads that I could use with students in the library, and I thought that I would ditch the Activotes that came with the Promothean Board and try Kahoot . I am so glad I did because it has become a new favorite tool. I love the way that it ranks the students' answers on speed and accuracy and that the leaderboard can change from question to question so that the competition aspect of Kahoot completely engages even the most reluctant of students.  Then the...

Blog post here I was asked to write another blog post for the WhooosReading blog on a topic of my choosing. Again, I coordinated my content to a presentation that I would be making to librarians across the state of Louisiana. That was last week on March 9th at the annual Louisiana Library Association conference . In the blog post for WhooosReading, I limited my description to four web tools that I use over and over in the collaborative lessons that I create with the content area teachers at my school.  Open here to read my post titled, "Top 4 Content Curation Websites for Lesson Resources."

I usually like to participate in national events during the time that they are scheduled. This year Teen Tech Week (TTW) comes at a bad time for me. Two days this week, I will be attending the state library conference for the Louisiana Library Association. This is so inconvenient. At first, I thought of starting the celebration this week and finishing next week. When I mentioned this to some students, they said that is ridiculous, and so in the PFTSTA Library, we will celebrate TTW beginning on March 14th. Actually, I really liked that idea because it gave me some extra time to finish up the planning and to purchase the supplies.  All events are scheduled during the students' lunch periods. The last activity is online, and the students can participate anytime. I plan to post lots of pictures of the week on the library website here.   PFTSTA LIBRARY: All Reader’s Welcome Monday:              ...

Link is here Last month I was asked to write a blog post for the Learn2Earn blog . They have lots of great articles about ed tech and reading for K-12 teachers. I was asked to write something for the reading section. That is right up my alley, so I took some of the websites that I shared recently during a conference presentation and wrote about how to use these sites in a classroom or library for the blog.  Read the blog post on Learn2Earn here: " 7 Fun (And Effective!) Reading Websites That Engage Students ."

PFTSTA teacher Symbaloo I am an organizing freak. Though my desk may not always be neat as a pin (I run a very busy library), I usually can put my hands on exactly what I am looking for whether it is in print or in electronic format. My belief is that it is my job as a librarian to help everyone else in the school to be organized too. Which is why I love curation tools so much including Wikispaces, Livebinders, Diigo, Sqworl, Pinterest (unfortunately blocked at school), etc.  I learned about Symbaloo years ago at a librarians' conference but never really used it. Then at ISTE in 2014, I went to a poster session on Symbaloo. I was convinced that it would solve a huge problem at school. PFTSTA is a one to one laptop school, and the teachers try to teach with the least amount of paper as possible. As such, there are many, many on-lines google forms and responses, links, websites that are used on a daily basis by the faculty and staff. At the beginning of last ...

As librarian, I try to be the go to person to help teachers when they are looking to design a lesson where students create an electronic product by recommending sites that might fit the objectives of their lessons. Oftentimes, I am familiar with a tool because I have used it, seen it used or know other teachers who have used it successfully with their students, but I have not always had hands on experience using the tool myself. I believe that, as teachers, we cannot nor should not learn how to use every website out there, so that we can give our students opportunities to practice critical thinking by figuring out a tool on their own or collaboration by learning from their peers. Unfortunately, tools do not remain the same over time--no longer free or limited capabilities in free version or merged with another site or newly blocked at school, etc. I decided that it is a good idea for me to spend some time "playing" with edtech and creating my own products now that school...

Stem Cell Writing Assignment I have been writing a lot here about the different types of collaboration that I have been doing in all subject areas. I want to share an instance where I created the tool for a science class, but I didn't really do any teaching for this assignment. The biology teacher, Mrs., Higgins, came to me recently about beefing up an assignment that she has done in the past. She had created a writing assignment on the stem cell controversy that she has used before. Students had to take a stance on whether they believed embryonic stem cells should be used for research, or if they thought the use of adult stem cells was sufficient. She was happy with the idea of the product where students wrote a letter or a speech defending their stance. It was the research part that she felt needed some help. She was pleased with the pathfinders that I have created for her lessons, and she thought it would work well in this situation, too., Together we came up wit...

my infogr.am blog post is here New tech tools are great, and when Infogr.am launched several years ago, several of the teachers in my building began to use it with their students. We had some success and failure with this tool used to create infographics, so I reached out to them through twitter. We have kept up a relationship ever since, and this past year I became an ambassador with Infogr.am. They asked if I would write a post for their blog on the use of their tool in  the classroom.  Click here to read the post that I wrote for them . 

I have been talking lately about the different types of collaboration that I do with my teachers. This collaboration can be formal, informal, planned or done at the last minute. I like that each day is different for me and that I can be in a science class one day and a social studies class the next. Last week a science teacher visited me during her off period which was at the beginning of the day. She wanted her 8th grade Earth science students to depict geologic time periods in an infographic. Almost all the students would  be using  Infogr.am, which I have talked about before here . They were working in groups of four and had to include about 12 pictures of fossils and were also asked to create some sort of timeline to illustrate the geologic eras.  I promised the teacher that I would visit all of her classes and spend a portion of the period helping her students. This is the type of collaboration that I call the Second Person in the Room . I did not plan with...