American Association of School Librarians Best Websites for Teaching & Learning 2015

Three Favorite Websites

My Storybook - Digital Storytelling            https://www.mystorybook.com/

This website and app is extremely user-friendly.  Students can create their own books and use a variety of stickers and scenes to enhance their text .  My Storybook also has drawing tools, a variety of color options, and the ability to upload pictures. Students can read others' books, as well as create, print, share, and publish their own books.  In the library, this would be fun to use collaboratively to create a class book as an extension of familiar literature.  Students could use this tool to display their understanding of some content or subject recently studied.

FlipQuiz - Manage & Organize           http://flipquiz.me/

Educators and older students could quickly create a "Jeopardy"- style game board with this tool. Clues/questions are placed under categories with point values assigned to each.  Students choose a category and point value to receive a clue/question to answer.  The number of categories and teams/participants can be adapted as needed.  Librarians can use this fun game to review genres, parts of books, story elements,  practice for Book Bowls, etc...

Gooru - Curriculum Collaboration                http://goorulearning.org/#home 

Gooru is a free website that teachers and students can use to search for online resources and lesson plans to use and create personal collections of various subject matter.  Users can also view and edit existing collections as needed.  This would be an excellent tool to use to create collections that would be readily available for students' reference on typical study topics and how-to tutorials. It would also be an easy, user-friendly way to provide resources to teachers.

Presentation Tools

Emaze        https://www.emaze.com/

Emaze is very user friendly.  This tool can be used in a classroom of young students.  It has a good selection of templates available to create simple presentations and the icons are easy to locate and understand.  Students could take pictures of their class projects, insert them into the template, and add their text.

Slidely       http://slidely.com/?tid=0

Slidely is another presentation tool that can be used with younger students.  It takes only a short time to add photos, music and stickers.  Slidely could be used for students to present pictures of shapes in their environment and label them appropriately with stickers. 

3-D Printing, Coding, and Robotics

This week’s readings were some of the most interesting readings to date.  I’ve heard people mention 3-D printing and now I have some understanding of what it is and how it can be used.  The concept is fascinating! Three of my favorite ideas for utilizing 3-D printing in a school or school library setting are creating props to be used in a stop-motion animation project such as making a digital book report, improving authenticity of learning by producing and using 3 dimensional objects that are related to topics that are being studied, and using 3D printing to create products that represent students’ solutions to contrived problems.

Another great way to promote students’ development of higher level thinking skills is coding. Coding requires the user to develop the skills necessary to think through steps to solve problems, understand cause and effect, and it promotes increased stamina to find solutions to problems. These skills are necessary for good decision making in everyday life and they will help students be more successful in any occupation they pursue. There are numerous resources available to get students engaged in activities that foster understanding and mastery of programming skills.  From utilization of board games for very young children to sophisticated computer games and creation work spaces for older students, opportunities for digital learning can be obtained in schools.

Robots can offer assistance, motivation, and entertainment. In the library, robots could be used to assist students with research or accomplish other tasks that are multi-step processes.  Robots can provide verbal instruction of task steps for students to follow and they can ask questions that would prompt students to verify that the required steps had been followed and all elements for completion of a task had been carried out.

Sources

Powell, B. (2014, November 17). ABC Eyewitness News: 3-D Printing is changing how elementary school students learn. Retrieved July 11, 2015 from http://kstp.com/article/stories/s3622112.shtml

Sansing, C. (2015, May 4). School Library Journal: 3D printing, worth the hype? Retrieved July 11, 2015 from http://www.slj.com/2015/05/technology/3-d-printing-worth-the-hype-the-maker-issue/#_

Tahnk, J. (2015, April 27). Huffington Post: Cool products for teaching kids how to code. Retrieved July 11, 2015 from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeana-lee-tahnk/neat-products-for-teachin_b_7138030.html

Yam, K. (2015, April 14). Huffington Post: Cherry robot helps kids with pain during hospital procedures. Retrieved July 13, 2015 from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/14/medi-robot_n_7057168.html  

Creating a QR Code

This QR code links to the website of my favorite photographer!    
http://christistandleyphotography.com/index2.php#!/Home   QR code created using QR Code Monkey Retrieved July 5, 2015
                                                                                              http://www.qrcode-monkey.com/