Productivity Tools

I looked at Evernote and Zotero because my greatest need is to find a way to quickly capture, store, organize and retrieve information that I run across on the Internet or social media.  There are so many great ideas, but who has time to stop and read or implement everything right when you learn about it!

Evernote

Evernote is intuitive and easy to use. The search feature is great because it looks at the contents in all of my notebooks simultaneously and highlights the searched term in each document like a CTRL+F search. 

Another cool feature is that my tags are automatically organized like entries in an index.

Zotero

I had dabbled in Zotero before but recalled that it functioned best in conjunction with Firefox. I mainly use Chrome, so that was a drawback. However, Rosie Castle alerted me to a new Chrome extension that makes it easier to save PDFs and webpages from Chrome.

Zotero is commonly used by college librarians to teach citations. I teach my students about using Creative Commons licensed images which we use a lot in student projects but citing them is laborious. I found a YouTube video (created by a librarian!) that shows how to quickly save an image to Zotero then drag the description into a word processing document where it magically transforms into a citation. To choose the citation style (MLA, APA, etc.) in Zotero go to Settings>Preferences>Export. This works with both Microsoft Word and a Google Document!

How will I use them in the future?
As part of another professional development opportunity (Cool Tools for School), I read an ALA Technology report about how librarians are using curation tools to teach critical thinking.  Students think critically as they gather and filter information sources for research. So, I might try using Evernote with upper level students. I think that Zotero may be a little advanced for my K-6 students.

Personally, I think that I will use Evernote as my primary curation tool but use Zotero for research purposes so that I can easily cite sources and create a bibliography.

Lesson Plan Implementation

Danielle Turner and I collaborated on a project with her combination first/second grade students using FaceTalker and Book Creator.

1. Danielle chose 4 women who were influential during the Civil Rights Movement and divided the students into four groups.

2. To provide background knowledge, the students listened to an article on their subject (Ruby Bridges, Rosa Parks, etc.) read to them from World Book Online. 

3. Miss Turner worked with the groups to read to the students and have them list facts learned about their courageous woman.

4. I came to the classroom to talk about plagiarism and citations. The students created human citations with the bibliographic information from select books.

5. Miss Turner worked with the students to turn the facts into a narration to be read.

6. Miss Turner chose images of the 4 women and created talking faces in FaceTalker.

7. The students recorded their narratives using FaceTalker.

8. I used the Google Doc EasyBib add-on to create a bibliography.

8. Danielle and I worked together using Book Creator to make the book. Enjoy!

Lesson Plan Implementation

As the school librarian at #9, I chose to work with Miss Coakley's 3rd grade class for this short research project. Here are the steps we took:

1. The students chose an animal to research.

2. The students logged onto World Book Online to read and/or listen to articles about their animals.

3. The students recorded three facts about their animals on a graphic organizer.

4. The classroom teacher provided time and supervision for the students to turn the facts into a narrative written in the first person.

 5. On my iPad,  I located and downloaded creative commons licensed images of the animals that the students chose.

6. I downloaded FaceTalker from the app store on my iPad. I then used FaceTalker to make the images of the animals "talk."

6. In Google Docs I created a bibliography of the citations for the World Book Online articles as well as the images used for the project.

7. The students practiced reading their narratives to each other. The students used my iPad one at a time to record their animal "talking." They filled out the self-assessment below after recording.

8. I saved each FaceTalk as a movie to my photos then used Book Creator on my iPad to combine the FaceTalk movies into a book, concluding with the bibliography which I copied and pasted from my Google document.

9. I exported the finished book as a movie to my Google Drive. Below is the finished product.

View book via Google Drive

Self-Reflection

• Both FaceTalker and Book Creator are easy to use. I would use them again.
• If I had more time for implementation, I would like the students to be able to select the picture and create the talking face. 
• This project took a lot of time. 
• Experimenting with new technology is good because it makes you more facile in general. I had to do a lot of playing around to save, combine, and upload the movies into the final product.
• The students benefited from the project in that they rehearsed the facts that they learned multiple times by both writing them and reciting them orally.
• The project also afforded the students the opportunity to learn how to speak slowly and carefully.
• Also, as we viewed the finished product as a class, the students learned about how to be respectful listeners to the other students' presentations.

Expanding My Personal Learning Network

1. What have you started using?

I have started to use Google+ and Pinterest.

2. How are you using it in your professional teaching life?

While using Google+,  I scan the stream from my communities for ideas that could help me. Pinterest I search by topic.

3. Have your habits changed any? 

I think that I work better devoting a larger chunk of time weekly rather than spreading it out over several days in the week.

4. Are you finding any good things that will help you in your classroom?

I'm currently working on the RocReads Summer Reading Committee. We are compiling the suggested reading lists, and I'm responsible for the 5th-6th graders. I searched Pinterest for suggested reading lists and found some good titles.

5. Are you sharing anything you are finding? If yes, how?

I have not shared anything yet.

Personal Learning Network

Slava Murava Kiss

1. What online resources do you already use? 

I have dabbled in  Google+, Pinterest, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Currently I seldom use these resources for work or in my personal life. The exception is YouTube which I will search on an "as needed" basis if I want a resource to use with students or a tutorial on something I am trying to use.

The PLN that I actually use the most is the group of RCSD school librarians. We are very active in supporting each other via email. We share information about great resources, post questions, etc.

2. What is the best time to commit to your PLN development?

I know these resources are a wealth of information, but I feel overwhelmed trying to accomplish what is already required of me in my work day. However, during this professional development course I will set aside 15 minutes after dinner most evenings to learn from my selected PLNs. Maybe I'll get hooked!

3. What new ideas or online resources might you want to start using after digging deeper with the research? 

One thing that discourages me from using PLNs is how to organize and store the great ideas that I read about and want to come back to when I have more time. I liked the tips from one of the videos that suggested using Feedly and/or Evernote. Thing 22 for Cool Tools for School covers Feedly and Evernote along with other productivity tools. I will look into those platforms.

4. What is the social media forum that you have chosen? Why did you select this? Do you have any previous experience using it? What do you think you will start looking for first?  

I know it would be helpful to spend time regularly on two  Google+ communities focused on school librairans: Global TL and TL Chat. 

I feel that these are very focused. I may also dabble in Pinterest to research felt needs like bulletin board ideas, lesson plans, etc.

Blog Post 1: Who Am I?

Carol Satta
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., School #9
Library Media Specialist
Pre-K-6


Experience using technology in the classroom:

At my former school and as part of an action research project, I taught my students (and select teachers) how to use Noodletools to organize research writing projects and store all of their work online. No more lost papers or thumb drives!  NoodleTools allows students to collaborate on writing projects, record their thesis statement, create virtual notecards, outlines, and citations/bibliographies and compose in Google Docs. Teachers and librarians can collaborate, attach links, rubrics, etc., see and comment on all parts of the research process and provide awesome formative feedback.

I also created a book review blog at my former school with hopes of getting the students blogging.

The blog ended up being more of a platform to post student projects (such as a digital storytelling project created with Storybird - see sample below) and an archive of my own books reviews.




This fall at School #9, the library students in grades 3-6 have been creating eBooks with Google Slides. I plan to post some of the projects when they are completed on my SchoolWires web site  and also create a bulletin board display with hard copies of the covers of the students' books along with a QR code so that the books can be read with iPhones or iPads. My sample book is posted on my SchoolWires page.

What I hope to gain during this Collegial Learning Circle:

I have been wanting to create a book review blog at my new school so I might take this opportunity to develop that. Also, I'm always looking for more ideas for digital storytelling or collaborative projects to do with classroom teachers.

Fears/passions in using technology:

I love using technology when it increases student engagement or improves a process--and helping other educators use those tools, too. I fear dabbling in too many technologies--being a "jack of all trades and master of none."

My  children
 Mark, John, Stephanie & Laura