My Life In the Library

Videos and QR codes are more tools that are beneficial for students and teachers in the library. YouTube provides endless videos that students and teachers can search for to learn about a specific topic and get directions how to do a task. Animoto allows users to easily create videos from photos and video clips. QR codes give students access to content with a quick scan. YouTube YouTube is a great tool for any educator, including librarians. The videos on YouTube can be helpful to librarians in many ways. There are videos that librarians can use to show students about topics they are learning about in the classroom. There are procedural, how-to videos that students can be shown to learn how to do a task. YouTube is also beneficial for librarians to access other library channels to learn how to do things in the libraries as well as inspiration for ideas. Here are some great videos for students from library channels on YouTube. Calypso Gilstrap Channel 1. Most helpful video for...

Screencasts, Instagram, and Flipagram are three more technological tools that can be utilized in the classroom and library setting. While screencasts have been used by educators for some time, Instagram and Flipagram are typically thought of social media tools for teens and young adults. I will admit, before this blog I would have never thought to use either of these tools in my library or classroom and I'm glad to have had a change of heart. Screencasts are a great tool for giving audio directions while your audience can see the computer screen and can see exactly what you are clicking and doing on that screen. Screencasts allow you to be "live" with the audience, as if you were giving a presentation in front of them that they were following. Screencast-o-matic is one of many screencast tools that can be used. There is a free version, which limits the amount of recording time, but even with that limit there is plenty of time to record a long enough video to keep your s...

Infographics are a way to visually represent data from research or surveys electronically. We have been asking our students to create charts, graphs, and diagrams for years. With an infographic, we are asking our students to create the same visual representation, just using technology instead of paper and pencil. Infographics make it easier for readers to view and understand data. The visuals give readers a better understanding of what they have read and give their eyes a break from a large expanse of text. Infographics are great for our students to view as well. Diana Laufenberg, in her interview with Katherine Schulten, explains that "infographics work in the classroom because they grab students and allow an entry point to learning. They sum up pages and pages, even chapters, of information that would take a reader hours to process," (Schulten, 2010). There are many websites and applications that can be used to create infographics. Easel.ly, Infogr.am, and Piktochart are ...

Social media is a large constant in all of our lives, as adults and especially as teens. We spend countless hours of our week posting information about of lives and our interests, as well as interacting with our friends and families through social media. According to Adelstein and Barbour, 2015, "95% of all teens between the ages of 12 and 17 are online". We've always known as educators, and Adelstein and Barbour reinforce, that in order to really get students to understand their learning, we must tie it to their interests. Two of the biggest players in the social media outfield are Facebook and Twitter. Facebook has been around for a while now and has gradually changed from a site for college students to connect on to being open to anyone around the world. Artists, actors, athletes, and every day people of all ages connect and post on Facebook daily. But what about using Facebook with a school library? I began looking for school libraries with a Facebook page and found...

Blogs are an ever present part of the web, but keeping track of all of your favorite blogs can be a challenge. Luckily, there are Blog RSS Readers to make keeping track of all of your blogs manageable. This website , by Zapier, was a great insight into the world of RSS readers and the pros and cons of popular blog readers used today. After researching the suggested readers, I decided to go with Feedly. I chose Feedly because I appreciated several aspects of the reader. You can't beat the price of free, it is very easy to use, and I loved how it gave me suggestions of other blogs to follow when I put in links. I also liked that Feedly worked seamlessly with most social media sites. Armed with my new blog reader, I was now on the search for school library blogs to follow. The first blog I found was Library Learners . I was drawn in immediately to all the posts about library centers for different months of the years. As a first year librarian, I would love to implement library cen...