The New Symbaloo

I received an email this morning letting me know that Symbaloo was new and improved. I headed over to Symbaloo to check it out and this is what I found out:


 1. You can add a background to your mixes now (If you were able to do this before, I had no idea!)






  2. You have a menu on the side to edit - I found myself switching back and forth from the old version to the new version because I wasn't really sure how to use the new version. I caught on after a while and will probably stick to the new version the next go around.

 3. Better customization of tiles and a better way to search - this definitely seemed easier in the new version than the old version.

4.  When I embedded this updated version, I noticed the background didn't appear - but embedding is simple so that is okay.  Notice I put some of the social networks I use.  Unfortunately Vine doesn't have a web version available just yet.  I like that I can check my Twitter, Pinterest, and Instragram accounts online, don't you?!!


Overall, I like the new Symbaloo - I suspect you will too!

Book Trailers... Who is Doing the Learning?

Thursday was one of those days that, despite the busy-ness, I was invigorated at the end, rather than exhausted.  The teachers and students I work with inspire me!

Once again, Mr. R, a Grade 6 English teacher, and I teamed up for a collaborative project: student-made Book Trailers.  Up to now, I had learned how to make trailers, promoted books via trailers, and offered to teach trailers, but the opportunity to actually TEACH how to make book trailers to real students had eluded me.  Making trailers takes TIME, of which no one seems to have enough.  But Mr. R decided his students needed this opportunity to use their 21st Century skills to share their recreational reading, and he took me up on my offer.

Using resources I have gathered from Teresa Schauer's workshop at TxLA as well as Mrs. H's website, I consulted with our Tech Coordinator to better understand with which software applications most grade 6 students are familiar.  Mr. R and I discussed how designated classtime would be used, and when I asked about evaluation criteria - to make sure I addressed what was necessary - he told me he had not planned to evaluate this assignment, since it is part of the students' recreational reading.  Can you believe that!?!

Our Plan

Monday

Before he brought his students to the library, Mr. R instructed his students to begin thinking about which book they would like to use, to select a partner if they so wished, and to watch a few trailers to identify what they liked and didn't like.

Wednesday

Students were given a story board outline to help them think about the sorts of images they would like to use.

Friday

Class was held in the library, where we reviewed the definition of copyright and plagiarism.  Students were shown two sources for copyright clear images and how to properly cite them.  They created folders in their EDU2.0 accounts to hold the images as well as the Word document with the citations.

Tuesday

Serendipity brought the same students to the library with another teacher to research images.  Students are in the process of desgining and creating robotic bugs, and used their library time to find inspiration for the color scheme and overall design of their insects.  Although royalty-free images and proper citations were not necessarily REQUIRED for the specific project they doing in Design Technology, their wonderful teacher seized the opportunity to have students practice their searching and citing skills.  I introduced Google advanced search, and how to select "free to use or share" under usage rights, as a third source of images.

Thursday

Students returned for a double period.  The Tech Coordinator joined us to help with trouble-shooting issues, so there were three teachers on hand to assist.  It was suggested to students to use Keynote, since they are all familiar with this program, but they were allowed to use any software application of their choice, such as Animoto or iMovie. What could have been disastrous was a wonderful informal assessment opportunity for me.

Four students were able to complete their projects by the end of class, with many others very, very close.

This was one of those "Hollywood" lessons, where the students were completely absorbed in their work, they were teaching each other, and the teachers spent a lot of time observing... and learning from the students.  Students would ask questions of us, all the while looking around at their classmates, and ending their questions with, "X knows how to do that... I'll ask him!"

What I Learned Today

• Where to locate royalty-free music (see below)
• How to access and save on our school's groups drive
• I knew this was possible, but had never actually done it.
• How to embed music on a Keynote presentation as a soundtrack
• I have been a PowerPoint girl for years.  But I am at an all-Mac campus, so I have committed myself to learning Keynote this year.
• What my students need from me.  Students here are well-equipped with tech skills, so I found that what they needed instruction with was:
• The books they choose.  We suggested they choose a book they could picture in their minds as a movie.  Many chose books that had already been made into movies, and therefore wanted to use movie images and video clips... which, as a plus, did create teaching moments about copyright issues.  In the future, I would make it a requirement that books that are already movies not be used for their first projects.  
•  The types of photos they choose.  Often, a LOT of time was spent finding the "perfect" photo of someone/something that precisely matched the book's description, rather than accepting a representation.  Helping students focus on one or two details (the feathers on the wings) rather than the whole scene (a girl with a 14-foot wingspan soaring over a cityscape) was a frequent conversation. 
• Proper MLA format.  There is a great variety of citation formats in this first batch of trailers.  While credit is given to sources, we still have some work to do to get it right.
• Application of visual bookmarking program:

This was also the class for which I built my first Symbaloo.  While not outstanding, I am comfortable sharing:

Next Steps

Students are expected to polish and upload their trailers to the groups drive in the upcoming week.  I will be reviewing trailers, uploading them to our YouTube channel, and then embedding them in our Digital Hub.  The Tech Coordinator is going to take students through the process of creating QR codes, and my assistants will attach the codes to the books.  A blurb will go out in our weekly newsletter to our greater school community.  And then it will be time to begin the process again...

Grab the Popcorn

Here's a sneak preview...

Personal Learning Progress - Part 2...Chopping Onions

My mom once bought a food processor.  And while it chopped an onion into uniform pieces in nothing flat, it was a pain in the backside to clean.  It had to be taken apart and washed and all those little trapped bits of onion fished out.  I decided right then I would NEVER own one of those.  Chopping onions with a knife and cutting board works just fine.  There is something satisfying about persisting at the task until the pieces are exactly the right size.  And clean up is a snap.

I tend to look at most objects, including webtools, with a critical eye to see if they are really a tool that will help me, or a toy that, while it may be a lot of fun to use, really doesn't move me from point A to point B.

My to-do list for the past couple of weeks was laden with new apps to take a closer look at.

So I started with a closer look at Symbaloo, leftover from my previous blogpost...

I even created an account.  And added two links.  I am supposed to be able to access my bookmarks anywhere, but that means I need to find them all first.  I realized I didn't have enough time to build a webmix of all the bits and pieces I use, although I can see its usefulness and efficiency once it is built.  I will add to it over time.  I will use it to create webmixes for teachers who ask for resources.


And then I moved on...


In the past two weeks, I have signed up at over a dozen sites.  Most of them have been free.  And most of them I just entertain the idea of using "later".


Like Symbaloo, Pearltrees is a site to organize your online stuff.  This feels like Scoop.It meets Del.icio.us.

I love the eye-catching graphics available here.  This looks like another way for this perfectionist to spend kill a lot of time.  Again, I think I need to add to it over time instead of cram everything onto it at once.  But Symbaloo or Pearltrees?  Anybody have a preference?  How have you used these with teachers.


Speaking of trees, check out InstaGrok, which looks useful for teaching research.  But I wasn't doing research or teaching, so I'll save that tool for another assignment, and let teachers know about it.

But will we use it?  Do we need it?  You can get nearly the same results using our Destiny Quest catalog... with print, website, and database results.  These can be filtered by grade level, subtopics, domain, etc.  The format just isn't a colorful graphic organizer.



While I was trying to organize my online stuff, I found Hojoki, a site to bring all of your cloud apps together.

I signed up, but then I didn't like the idea of sharing all my passwords for my Google Docs, Dropbox, Cloud app, Twitter, Delicious... The concept is great, but I just felt like I was sharing too much information with them.  I would love to hear from others that use this app.



Speaking of organizers, I found ThreeRing.  This app is still in beta format, but I am trying it out.  It is a place for teachers' to create digital portfolios of student work.

It is easy to set up and easy to use - especially with my iPad - and it is free for teachers.  I could see this being a great mom tool - a way to uploaded those early works of art, organize it, and eliminate the paper clutter.



Finally I decided I should stop and share all of this information with you before there was too much to report.  Trying to keep up with current technology, I thought I ought to put it in an eye-catching, graphic format...
So I signed up with Piktochart, Visual.ly, and got the Visualize app.  But I didn't really have statistical data to share and learning to use these tools was taking too long.  (My Infographic journey will be the subject of another post soon.)

Instead.... you get a plain, wordy blog post.  Because my goal was to chop onions, or in this case, share what I have learned, not wash more dishes.

If you Give a Librarian a Blog Post....

Have you heard of this one?  http://edu.symbaloo.com/

Following the link on a blog post by Library Girl I landed here:

...but I didn't know what to do next... Instead of sorting out Symbaloo, I clicked on Scoop.it! (top left), because I had heard of it but not yet tried it.

Looking at the Scoop.it! homepage, I was full of questions. Last weekend, I found ISSUU, another online magazine, and I haven't created anything there yet.  (Instead, I shared ISSUU with Ann, and she has already drafted the majority of our annual report!)  So I wondered, what is the difference between these two online magazines. Their purpose? Target audiences? Use in the library/classroom?

So I Googled: "Scoop.it! and ISSUU", and I found this online module:
http://integrationtechnology.wikispaces.com/Scoop.it+and+Issuu
I watched both introductory youtube videos, and thought about what I could publish.

Which reminded me that I need to work on the online modules I wanted to make for the teachers and students in my district.....

In looking at my list of module ideas, I realized I was overdue in updating and sharing our database passwords...

Which made me wonder how other schools handle the million passwords we have to manage and promote?????????  And if Symbaloo could somehow help...

I'm starting to feel like a mouse who was just given a cookie.

I would love to hear your thoughts and uses of all these tools.

And watch for updates on my public learning trail...