We Give Books

Pearson has an amazing site that gives books away for free! Wegivebooks.org has almost 200 great books that you can read online for FREE and when you sign up, you can actually give a book each time you read a book. ALL FOR FREE! How amazing is that? Right now they have a Read for My School campaign which will give a book to the school you designate. Laurel Hill Elementary would love some free books so feel free to read for our school! Of course, you can also designate your own school to receive free books. It's easy, fun, and FREE! What's not to love?

ABC's of North Carolina

I hate to say it but I may just be a little crazy over VoiceThread. As soon as I used it the first time, I thought of all kinds of cool things my students could do with it. For the past couple of weeks, some of our 4th graders have been working on the ABC's of North Carolina and putting them into a PowerPoint presentation. I just had to take it a step forward and turn one (or two, or three....) into a VoiceThread. It makes it so much more fun to present their work with their voice plus more people can experience their projects. Here's one of my favorites:

Voice Thread

Last week I was faced with a problem.  I had the cutest little first grader come to me with a book he had made for the library.  This book was nicely bound with yarn and "printed" on copier paper.  Library books take a pounding.  They're shoved into book bags, tossed around on the bus, chewed up by dogs and babies....you get the picture.  Obviously this was not what I wanted for this aspiring author.  How could we preserve this great work while still making it available for others to read?  The answer to our conundrum was Voice Thread.  Voice Thread allows you to upload pictures and comment on them by recording your voice.  It is the perfect technology tool for students to share their work.  It took no time to scan his book, upload the pictures, and record his story.  We logged in through my account but it was easy to add the students picture and name to my list of identities.  I would definitely suggest doing this with younger students so that they don't have to worry about logging into their own account. Plus it gives me the ability to login and share his video on our school website and in this blog.  His class watched it on the SmartBoard and his parents were able to watch it at home.  Of course, Voice Thread could be used for more than just students reading their stories.  Check back soon to see the creative ways we're using it at Laurel Hill Elementary!

New Tools

It has been quite a while since I've last posted. The beginning of the school year is always a hectic time but this year seems to be busier than ever.  I decided that I am going to set aside 15 minutes each week just to update my blog.  Hopefully I'll stick to it!

Yesterday I attended a fabulous technology workshop at my county's central office.  Anthony Dove from NC State's Friday Institute worked with members of our District Technology Team on screencasting and Google Docs.  I was so excited about the screencasting because just the day before I was worried about my fourth graders missing a lesson on composing emails because I was going to be out.  That will never happen again because from now on I will record my lessons using Screencast-O-Matic and have my video tutorials available for my classes.  Screencast-O-Matic is a free, web-based screencasting tool.  I'm hoping to post some of my examples to the blog soon.

We also had a refresher course on Google Docs.  I played around with Google Forms and we came up with loads of ways we could use them, from video request forms to discipline referrals.  I can't wait to do a tutorial using Screencast-O-Matic on how to use Google Forms and share it with the teachers at our school.  I also learned that you could upload videos to Google Docs and embed them in blogs and websites.  This was HUGE for me  because our school system's website is not compatible with the Flip Video format.  We were having to convert videos then upload them only to have School Fusion "optimize" them for streaming which degraded the quality of the video tremendously.  By uploading the videos to Google Docs, the quality was saved and they look fantastic on our website.

How come I didn't know about this???

Somehow today I stumbled upon Google For Educators.  The path that led me here was full of twists and turns.  I think it started at my delicious page then took a left turn at a blog that I really like which led me to a list of people I might want to follow on Twitter and I landed at the Google for Educators page.  There are tools for the classroom, posters, quizzes, and more.  I love it when I find something new (even though it's old)!  So I figure I should share in case I wasn't the only ostrich with my head in the sand out there!

Playing around with Web 2.0 Tools

      North Carolina is in the midst of some pretty nasty budget negotiations.  Regardless of the outcome, public schools are going to suffer in many ways.  One of the many ways that concerns me is the lack of funding for technology.  So how can teachers' meet the needs of 21st century learners without money for technology? Well, they have to be creative! Thankfully there are many FREE  Web 2.0 tools that teachers can use to enhance instruction.
     Today I've been playing around with some Web 2.0 tools.  I'm hoping to do a research project on using Web 2.0 tools to motivate reluctant readers so I needed to see what was out there.  I've had a ton of fun just trying a couple of them out. 

Kerpoof Studio is so much fun! Kids can create a movie, write a story, make a picture, or spell a picture.  The studio has backgrounds, characters, and ideas to spark kids creativity.  It is user friendly for both kids and adults.  It also has lesson plans and ideas for educators.  I highly recommend this site for elementary teachers and librarians!

Storybird is another really cool site.  They provided the art, you provide the story.  You can even send stories like greeting cards.  

Let's Get it Started

Here goes nothing! My first adventure in blogging begins now.  I consider myself to be very tech savvy but mostly as a consumer of information, not a producer.  For my educational technology program, I need an online professional web presence and I'm assuming my Facebook profile doesn't count!  I'll be using this blog as a way to share some of the great things I'm doing not only in my online courses, but in my role as an elementary school librarian.  I'll also share other blogs, websites, and articles that are interesting and relevant to the ed tech field as well as document my journey towards my Ed.D.  I titled the blog Tech Trip because I feel like I'm on this really cool journey that is fun but causes me to stumble every now and then.  Kind of a corny play on words but so true! Enjoy!