Well in the last three years I have done 30 Cool Tools blogs. There has been so much great information and resources made available to librarians and teachers.that I did as many “tools” as I could so I could be better prepared for the new technology that is available and incorporate these ideas and technology into lessons to hopefully better engage my students.

Some of the “tools” have worked with my students, I have used coding, Google tools, breakout EDU, ebooks and makerspaces. All of the ideas I used with students have engaged them and been successful with what I wanted to accomplish. In order to use more of what I learned I have gone through all the Cool Tools I have done and pulled all the resources I might be able to use with the students I have right now. Since I know their interests and limitations I can better determine which things might work with them, One of the things that limits my use of some of these resources is the sheer number of resources available – I get overwhelmed and this frustrates me and I tend to fall back on the same old lessons. So by going through all my old blogs I can develop lessons that use many of the resources I have learned about. I am going to use many of them for several grades to see what works for which grade level and adjust in the next year or two to differentiate them.

I have ideas for using resources like editing photos using ChatterPix for a fun lesson perhaps during the week of Math state testing. I have readied Blackout Out Poetry using weeded books that are at the elementary students reading level for use in April. I think this lesson might be a good fit for many of the students. I also want to use Storybird as sometimes a computer based activity gets them interested and keeps their interest.

I have already used Storyboard That and Make Belief Comix for upper elementary last year. Storyboard That even had some lessons so I could get ideas. I plan to use these resources again this spring. And I have already used some of the Google activities from Eric Curtis’ blog and the students liked them so I will be using them again next year.

The resources that haven’t worked or need adjustments for the students I have are usually ones that need students to work on their own and could take several class sessions to complete. My students can only work on a project for about 3 class sessions so I tend to look for lessons that will only take 1-2 class sessions. But by using some of these resources and other lessons, hopefully students that are in primary now will have the stamina and drive to continue with projects and I will have more confidence in my ability to use and teach the technology so I can troubleshoot and encourage students.

Well I got an iphone for many reasons and one was that last year I couldn’t do the green screen fun cool tool. I think green screens are lots of fun. I saw an Innovation Nation episode last year about using green screens with wild animals. The reason the company was doing this was so that film companies could use the green screen footage instead of stressing out wild animals needlessly.  

I just finished this cool tool and was a bit frustrated by the second tool I used. First I used ChatterPix Kids to take a picture and add voice, stickers and filters to one of our cat’s picture. My daughters and I thought it was fun and would have continued playing with it. This program was intuitive and fun to use. I could see students taking pictures of a book cover and doing a book talk by literally having the book talk. Could also do an activity with students making characters from the book and having them talk in ChatterPix. I have just seen several activities with making potatoes into characters, these potatoes could talk about the book, characters in the books, etc.

But then I tried doing WeVideo as a video green screen since DoInk was not free and I didn’t know if I would be using it in school, so I didn’t want to pay. WeVideo is for videos so I made a video with my daughter’s help and tried to figure out how to remove the background; but that is not available with the free version. I got the video uploaded and a background but I couldn’t get any farther. My daughter has Stikbot and the green screen app that goes with it. That was fun and there are several backgrounds that can be used and the stikbots themselves can be moved all around and made into a short stop motion video.

With the students that I have, I think that ChatterPix Kids would be a great resource because it is easy to use, doesn’t require a lot of resources and with the time limit, students wouldn’t get overwhelmed with the amount of work required.

There are several articles about Google Keep and since that was one of the tools I used in Note-Taking I thought I would take a look at the articles. One article did mention that there was no ability to differentiate lines within a note and if that was needed Google Docs would be a better place for it. I do like the ability to color code and jot down things from one group within that color. Like I am trying to do no-tech makerspace or centers in the library and have several different activities in different groups. One group could be “Yarn activities” in yellow and the corresponding notes could be all the activities that could be accomplished with yarn and other supplies. And I could link to a video or website that has detailed instructions.

I liked the examples in “Primarily Google”, I got a Seesaw account from a previous Cool Tool post so I can read students a book about a problem and we could brainstorm ideas just like in the article and use Seesaw to show understanding and creativity. Will need to play around with the tool at home and then go in to school to make sure it will work there. That is one of the frustrating things, I can work with a tool here at home and get ideas but then I go into school and sometimes they don’t work with the school’s computers. But I am getting better at getting everything ready to go at home and taking what I need into school and trying it there so I don’t waste a lot of time at school because I don’t have much planning time.

I read all three of the Google Classroom articles. The “Tour of Google Classroom” by Alice Keeler has so much great information in it. And the “11 things to start…” was a refresher course for me, I have used Classroom but not much and neither have the students. So having the students use Google Classroom was a learning experience for all and it went ok but I felt that I needed to be more comfortable with it. Unfortunately, you need to use it and learn it at the same time. The Alice Keeler article had great information in it and I want to be able to access it to use as a reference guide.

I have seen Eric Curts’ Control Alt Achieve’s blog several times when searching for ideas for library lessons and have tried a few things. I bookmarked the blog itself so I can go back to it. I found art activities to use with Google during this foray into his blog. Students at my school only get ½ a year of art and ½ a year of library so the second half of the year the art students come to library and many of them love art and aren’t too happy to be in library. I try to make it fun and do different makerspace things (using some Cool Tool ideas) but the art activities can be used after pairing it with a corresponding book and art can be the extension activity. Some students might have difficulty with moving the mouse and using various tools required so probably would have to be done with upper elementary but the results are great and I have noticed that if we can print something out for them to show their work, even if it is not perfect, they are really excited and proud of their work.

Note-Taking is something I have tried to teach in the library. It is hard to impress on students how important it is to take notes on important concepts and information and not write every little thing down. Typing is faster than writing down so the first article I read was “Laptops are great, but…” I have thought that viewing things through a camera diminished the experience because you watching what was happening through a lens. So the article made perfect sense to me. And while I don’t need to address this issue with students at my school, I will talk with my own daughters about note taking with a laptop. See my last paragraph about how a laptop could be useful when taking notes.

The guidelines in the article “Some excellent note-taking tips…” would be great to expose high school students to. These are the bits of information that can help high schoolers and college students do better in class and this article also mentions that using a laptop to take notes isn’t more effective than a paper and pen.

Google Keep seems to be intuitive and uses a lot of the same concepts as any other Google application so that is a plus with regards to ease of use. I started using Keep and I noticed that there is no font, italics or bold option. So there is no way to differentiate between the lines in the note. I would have to make different notes to differentiate what I would normally bold. I would be able to do this but I would need to edit more as I developed the notes and it would take more time than to either write them down by hand or just use a Google Doc.

Voice typing is so cool. I spoke very low at first and the microphone picked up my words. While my school has been trying to do more with learning typing skills, actually having students type reports or classwork takes so long and is frustrating. Voice typing especially for 2nd and 3rd graders might open up lots of possibilities especially since students have expressed interest in writing a short book. And their writing, handwriting and spelling skills are very low so this would help with all those difficulties, but students would need to be able to go back and edit their work and if they couldn’t read their work the whole lesson might be futile. I would have to either have older students (3rd-4th grade) or very small 2nd grade classes. I did check if voice typing would type any word – it did. And, unfortunately, I know certain students will see what words they can get the computer to type. So that would probably negate having older students use it.

As a note taking tool I was wondering if you could sit near the teacher and turn on voice typing and get the computer to type the lecture. Thereby taking notes and listening attentively to the lecture at the same time. And with many schools now putting in speakers in all the classrooms with small microphones for teachers so they can be heard everywhere in the classroom it might make using voice typing feasible for middle and high schoolers. I would probably take notes by hand too as I still don’t trust technology not to break down at the worst moment.

I like Google and have tried to use Google Animation with students. There are lots of great ideas in Cool Tools using Google Slides and Drawing but my hesitancy is sharing it in Google Classroom and having students access the Google poetry or Google drawing. I need to spend time getting used to Google Classroom and troubleshooting any problems that might arise at school.

I like the “Caption This” and Blackout poetry activities in Matt Miller’s blog. The blackout poetry is something I have been wanting to do for Poetry Month in April but didn’t know if students would actually do it but using Google Drawings might be enough of an incentive to get students to try. Also, there is no waste of paper or trying to find enough black or brown markers for each student!

The Caption This activity would be great for students after a read aloud so they can express their understanding. With my students I might be tempted to have students work in pairs so they can help each other.

I love the “Create your own story cube” I have tried to make my own using Google and imported clipart from the internet. They turned out okay. I think using emojis would add something different. It would be great to have the story cube and also have students write their stories using Google. If you have enough emojis in the document, they could write a story with emojis and have words already in the document that they could use if needed. Sort of like the various parts of the “Build a snowman” activity.

I found the snowman and pumpkin carving activities previously. My daughter did it at school last year and had fun with it. Another librarian tried it with her students but the technology wasn’t working so I never tried it. I did try it today and my result is this:

Great to see how much can be done with Google and I really need to start another classroom and get using Google and have students use  it to show their work. Maybe use it like a portfolio.

I think primary sources are so interesting because the person was there when they wrote/photographed/or made the primary source. Oftentimes primary documents were not made to convey information like news media but were photographs of people and their lives, their diaries, etc. In other words, things that were not made for others but fortunately, these document survive and we can use them to glimpse another time.

Primary sources need to have context with what students are learning so they can associate it with their learning but primary documents give an extra layer to their understanding. Many of these ideas are talked about in “Engaging Students with Primary Documents”. This is a great resource because the pros and cons of different types of primary sources are discussed as well as tips and questions to ask when examining the resources.

NY Heritage is an interesting site since it’s all about NY and “The Green Book” would be a very valuable primary source for a project tie-in to something like The Watsons go to Birmingham. The family is travelling and discussions could include mapping their route using “The Green Book”. Extension activities could include finding additional primary sources like diaries talking about personal experiences during the time period.

Another librarian developed a lesson with primary documents and the book Esperanza Rising, which the 5th graders were reading. So I used the documents that she gathered to give a lesson on primary documents. It did not go as well as I had hoped because even though the students were reading the book for over a month, most of the classes hadn’t gotten far enough into the book to have much of the information needed to make inferences. I am not making that mistake with the next book project, they still haven’t finished Esperanza Rising so I now have more time to develop a lesson with the next book.

Many of the lessons that were in the resources listed were for middle and high school. And I think I would need either a lesson that corresponds to something that Grades 5-6 are learning or have a stand alone lesson in library that is engaging to the students. I would also have to scaffold the lesson so that the students were aware of what I was looking for with regards to connections and background information.

There are so many resources around to find a new book to read and I am so glad. With so many books being published every month, it is hard to figure out which books to read. We have so little time and I don’t want to start reading something that isn’t all that great. Good Reads is a great resource that I have used before. I even checked it out for this to see more of what it offered and found some more books to read in the coming months. I checked out the GoodReads Choice Awards for Young Adult Fiction and Middle Reader Fiction. I could have lists of these books in Destiny so that they would be easily accessible to me during the school day and most importantly, by using Destiny to make lists; I know that the books are actually in the library.

Checked out Library Reads, sounded like a great resource but as I was looking through it, I realized that it was only for adult books. It would be great to find a site like this for YA books. I did register for NetGalley when I realized that I could select Young Adult and Middle Reader books to check out. I am always looking for new books and there are too many to choose from and this might make it easier for me because it narrows my choices. I also like to read these books to help choose books to recommend to my daughters who are in elementary through high school.

I checked out and registered for SeeSaw. I liked the getting started activities for Grades 2-5. There are writing activities but also an activity called “Capture an Experiment” using Snap Circuits. I have 2 sets of them and have been trying to figure out how to use them in the library during centers. This might be the perfect opportunity to introduce Snap Circuits and a new resource that might entice them to try the Snap Circuit activity and then do the tech activity on SeeSaw and not get so discouraged that they stop. If I can figure out how to have two students work on the activity together and use SeeSaw together to complete the activity they would be able to have a better chance to complete the activity.

Since the students in my school mostly read series books and graphic novels, these resources might be of certain help finding new books or series to read before I buy them for the school but I will use the finding books tools to find books for myself and my daughters since they are big readers too.

I think portfolios are a great way to not only see what the students are accomplishing but also what is working in my teaching as well. If their portfolios are well-thought out then my instruction, preparation and rubrics were appropriate. Another good aspect of digital portfolios is that instead of giving the students their work back, a teacher can keep copies of their work (especially teachers like  librarians) to show growth over the years. One thing that is great about digital portfolios is that the types of content that can be put into them. Some students are great writers, others would do better with an art medium or video to show their understanding.

“Every person should publish for the world” is an interesting article. I like the idea of having students publish for an audience that is not just for the teacher or others in the school. The article mentions that having students write for different audiences but most students know that different audiences will never read their writing, only their teacher. This, of course, is not how it is in the real world neither in the workforce or in higher education. Using digital portfolios and letting others outside the school read student work is an interesting idea. I would worry about what platform to use that would keep students safe from people who would give feedback that would not be appropriate or helpful to students. Students should not have to deal with caustic comments about their work. For that reason, Youtube just doesn’t seem like a great match for students. My daughter’s school uses Flipgrid which is only videos (I believe) and Edublog could also be a good forum to use for students. I worry about concerns from parents, teachers and the district so letting the world see student work is something that I would have investigate further and get the input of other teachers and administration.

Google is everywhere and since our district uses it, I think that would be a good platform to use since so many teachers already use Google so they are familiar with it and how it works. As mentioned in several of the articles, eportfolios aren’t used often because teachers would have to learn how to use it and show students what to expect and how best to use it. There is so little time to do those things. Also, several of the platforms do cost, for me cost is everything. If it costs, I don’t use it because I can’t afford to keep buying things. Using Google because of teacher’s basic familiarity with it could be the best platform. To combat teacher hesitation I will try to familiarize myself and use it with a class. Then I will approach a teacher to collaborate with on a research project. Black History Month is coming up and that might be a good opportunity for collaboration. I’ll see how it goes and if it doesn’t; I can always try again.

I did a physical Breakout last year during our back-to-school PD which was fun, engaging and challenging. The facilitator said that there was one available that would be more for upper elementary for us elementary librarians but while I would love to use these, I didn’t know if the students would get too discouraged if they couldn’t figure it out quick enough.

I checked out the digital Breakouts and got an account so I could use some of the free digital Breakouts with students. For some students, they were a big hit; challenging enough so that they were not bored but easy enough that with perseverance they could figure it out and unlock all the locks in the time allotted. Those that unlocked at least two were quite pleased with themselves and had a great smile on their faces when they left. Unfortunately, most of my 3rd-4th graders could not open the locks, they were discouraged. I changed it by having the whole class do them on the smartboard so even if they had no idea, they could observe how they worked and some even were able to contribute; which made their day (and mine).

I really liked the game design tutorials; it gives you insights but also quite honestly makes me realize how complicated designing these games and their clues can be. Never really thought about the background story but for students that would be a big component to get them to actually want to continue and unlock all the locks.

I did find several Breakouts that teachers made by using Breakout EDU Digital Sandbox with Google. These are all free but a couple I checked had expired links and unfortunately instead of having a lock with an associated clue, the locks and clues were on the page so students would have to decide that a certain clue went with the directional lock or the number lock, etc. I tried these with students also but they were too difficult for the students to solve without knowing what type of answer they needed to be looking for.

I will use the digital Breakouts with students again but the physical Breakouts I think would be great to use but the cost is a factor and also there is the problem of losing pieces. Maybe someday I will use the Breakout EDU that is available to the district as a special club or event.

At the elementary level there is not as much need for discerning fake news and unreliable websites but I have done lessons with 6th grade with digital citizenship, fake websites and finding information through multiple websites and using databases.

Really need to have librarians in the classroom (with one-to-one I don’t know how often classes come to the library at the MS or HS level) when students are doing research so they can teach on the spot to answer questions or explain when students are actually doing the research. It’s great to have lists of things to look for (“A finder’s guide to facts”, NPR) to have guidance on what to teach to students but it is making this information engaging and accessible to students that is difficult.My first reaction to the article “Nothing on this page is real”, WOW! That people will ignore perceived obvious discrepancies in an article and still believe it because it reinforces their beliefs no matter how absurd the claims might be, is scary and disappointing. I don’t know if there is any way to change people’s inherent desire to have their beliefs validated but we do need to make sure student’s can recognize fake news. Student’s are hopefully young enough not to have their beliefs so ingrained that they will use common sense to see fake facts for what they are and question them.

The lessons seemed to be mostly geared towards middle school and high school but I really liked the “3 fast, free lesson plans to fight fake news”. With so many ideas and options on the web for lesson plans, these seemed to have everything needed to explore actual news articles and it gives you more in depth information about how to spot the misinformation.

The Allsides website is fantastic. Love to be able to see how different news outlets spin the same news. When I was in high school a teacher had us watch one of two news programs in the evening and we would watch a third news program at school using one of those new VCRs. First time I realized that each news program might cover the news a little bit different. So maybe just introducing the concept that news sources tell the news differently than each other can open the eyes of some students so they question what they are reading or seeing. While I would love to introduce this resource to students or a teacher for use in their class, I don’t see anyone in my school at this time being able to use this. The reading level would be too high for the students. But I did introduce the website to my 9th grade daughter to know about and maybe show her teachers.

I had seen “Factitious” previously but never used it as I don’t think the students I have now (inner city, low achievement) would be able to work through the game without resorting to guessing. They are usually not motivated to try and if they become discouraged they will stop. But think I will try the game after having a discussion about fake news. I may be wrong about the engagement level of a game like this for the students but a couple may start to think about the information that is available and how accurate it may be.

All in all, I think my best hope is to plant the idea of being wary about things you read and see especially if it something that is fantastic or feeds into your own beliefs or bias; and hope some students will not be swayed by information until they check it out for themselves.