Tales from a Loud Librarian

Blog post can be foun d here Here is a blog post that I wrote for Whooo's Reading The Blog on various tools that will allow you or your students to create some fun learning games. Click here to read my post  on how to create custom games. 

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...

Sporting one of the prizes for the Fast Finger Search Our school has grown exponentially since we moved into the new building three years ago. This year was the first time that three lunches were needed in the schedule. With three lunches, I have lost the ability to have the older students help with the activities for the 6th and 7th graders. While the 6th and 7th grade are at lunch the 8th-12th grade are in the middle of 3rd period and vice versa. Before we just flipped study hall and lunch for all students, so I could get the older students out of study hall to volunteer in the library for the little ones. Lunch everyday is a very long process. The 6th and 7th grade go to lunch at 11AM and the 8th graders don't finish lunch until 1:10PM. I am open every day for all lunches unless there is a class scheduled with me. Selecting a signed ARC by last week's visiting author for his prize Even though I would be sailing solo, I still wanted to have a robust slate of acti...

Example of the Flippity game board  the student's made At the beginning of the semester, I read this post describing how to create a Jeopardy-like quiz game using a Google spreadsheet  and  Flippity . I thought this would work really well with a social studies class. I approached Mrs.Hampton, who is teaching 6th grade world history this semester, to see if she wanted to try using this tool with the students to make a quiz. We really wanted the kids themselves to create the questions, so we knew that we had to wait until she had taught them several units before they would have enough knowledge to create the questions for the quiz. We also decided to make the categories of art and architecture, family life, land forms and climate, religion, rulers, and science and medicine rather than the categories by country so that it would not matter how far into the textbook she taught before the planned activity. The students could ask questions about Mesopotamia, Egypt, or Ind...