I’m trying this year to maintain my tech focus. It may be more difficult this year since the person who maintained the computer lab last year was moved into the classroom and the computer position has been closed due to budget cuts.

I have kept my position, though and for that I am thankful. I have started the year by updated my Wiki. I cleaned up some of the old student work I had posted and just kept some of the best examples. I have been presenting the old student work to some of my classes to give them ideas of what kind of projects I’d like to do with the this year. So far they are excited and so am I.

I still have to complete a student Wiki project and I have been discussing ideas with the 6th grade teachers. I am hoping to make the project very collaborative and work in sync with the teachers, since that is partly why my attempt last year turned out so disastrous.

I also hope to maintain my blog. I like that it gives me a chance to reflect on what I am doing (even if nobody else actually reads it anymore). Also, writing down what I am planning makes it feel more concrete and gives me more incentive to follow through. Hopefully this year will be even better than last.

1. New teachers have more experience with technology and therefore don’t need help with technology.
2. Current teachers have no desire to learn technology or are afraid of technology.
3. You need to pay for technology in order to integrate it into the classroom.

I think as librarians and technology leaders in the school it is important to understand and overcome these misconceptions. The more we are aware of our own preconceived notions, the faster we can move past them.

Many of the technologies covered in the eBook are the ones we have been experimenting with in ProjectELITE. There are good descriptions of them, however, including links to tutorials that would be helpful if you are conducting a PD.

However, I did not want to end the year without giving Animoto a good try with some students. I’ve played around a little with it on my own and I really love the program, so I wanted to make sure I introduced it to some students.

This morning I brought 8 students into the library. I have 2 desktop computers and I borrowed 6 laptops from the computer lab to help me with this project. While I got the LCD projector hooked up, I had the students write about their favorite book. I then showed them the two book trailers that I had made and told them that they would be making their own.

Their first task was to find their photos. I taught the students how to search for only photos that were labeled for reuse and I also showed them how to copy the web addresses of the pictures. They were instructed to find about 8 photos they wanted to use. This was the part that took the longest. Some difficulty was added because the laptops were all Macs and the computer I was projecting with was a PC. I had to explain everything twice and on a few occasions I had to borrow a Mac to figure out the right commands.

After that, the rest was fairly easy. We uploaded the photos into Animoto using the generic accounts I set up. Then the students were able to rearrange the photos and add text. I found the students’ grammar skills very frustrating. They  didn’t have to write in complete sentences, but there were lots of problems with capitalization. I tried to fix what I could, but I still saw several errors after the students finished their videos. I’d like to go back and edit them, but I don’t want to mess too much with their work. Next time I just might have to be more rigorous about checking them before the videos are finalized.

The results were very nice. Even with the errors, Animoto does such a  good job putting the videos together that they are fantastic. The students were very impressed with their work. I’ve already uploaded them to the library Wiki under Book Recommendations. I might try to do a few more, but I also have to work on my presentation for the ELITE culminating event. We’ll see how much time I have.

The presentation I made just lists some of the ways I can help teachers with their teaching as well as some of the materials available. I embeded it into the “Teacher” page of my Wiki. On that note, I have really been enjoying the Wiki. I keep doing things and showing them to teachers and saying. “You can find it on the Wiki if you want to look at it later.” I hope this is a subtle way to drive teachers to use this new resource.

The next day, I gave the students each a fact sheet about the life cycle of an animal. I had 6 different choices for the students. Each student was also given a cycle graphic organizer. Based on their information, the students had to identify each stage and write a sentence about it. I also created a pathfinder for each animal that had pictures of all the stages. Students then used the pathfinder to choose which pictures they would like to use in their VoiceThread.

This week, I have been bringing students into the library individually (whenever I can grab a few minutes) to do the voice overs. I have ten done and posted on my Library Wiki! As a stroke of luck, the 1st graders will be studying butterflies next week. I offered to show the class the 2nd graders VoiceThreads (for those that did the butterfly). This will spread my VoiceThread impact even further.

I’m very excited to see the end in sight for at least one of my projects. The Glogs have been coming along, too. Many of them are almost done and I am confident that this will be accomplished, too. I have found another teacher to try Wikis with, since the last ones didn’t go over too well. I’m just worried about the time needed to make Wikis successful. I haven’t started on my final project, the Animoto book trailers, yet. I’m not too worried about those, though. I’m planning to take a few students from several classes to do that. In doing so, I will impact more grade levels and next year I can have many experts to help me do book trailers with whole classes.

May is almost over and I know June will fly by!

Just last week, we began learning about online collaborative documents, which are based on EtherPad. Today I read a post on Free Technology for Teachers (fast becoming my favorite blog to follow) that EtherPad will be shutting down for good later this week. Fortunately, their code has been made open source so there are several clones we can turn to instead.

This just strikes me on how important it is to stay current in technology. You need o have plenty of options always available and you need to be prepared for when those options disappear.

On the bright side, I’m starting on my VoiceThreads next week. My second graders will be working on Life Cycles which I think will lend themselves perfectly to this technology. I better get them done fast before this tool vanishes too!

On the other hand, I think my 6th grade Wikis are dead. A few students have tinkered with them, but since the classroom has moved on, so have the students. Its a bit disappointing, but a learning experience. Depending on how the rest of my projects go, I may try to do another Wiki project. However, timing and classroom support will play a big factor in this.

I have one more week and then I will be having a book fair from May 17th to the 21st. I am able to have my book fair in the library and I typically don’t have to see classes that week. I’m hoping that I can utilize my parent volunteers and my student teacher to continue working on some of these projects as well as the new Animotos during the fair. It will be busy, but it must get done.

Check here if you want to read it.