SLMC Reflection

At first, I was apprehensive of going out and starting a new library media center website for my school. I have my own classroom webpage that I had made during a class given by our technology integration specialist of our district. It was a lot of work and took weeks to get the layout the way I wanted it. I basically had to start each page from scratch. I always had issues updating it because the domain is part of my district and there are channels to go through. Because of this, I only updated it a few times a year. Instead, I used my blog more as a communication center for my students and their families. It has been over three years since I took this webpage class and a lot has changed.

I couldn’t believe how many options we had to create a new website and how user friendly these sites could be. I started out by researching the different webpage creator sites and picked one that I thought would be the easiest to manipulate, update, and also represent the SLMC website for our school professionally. The one I picked was www.weebly.com. I created a website: www.mckinleylibrarymediacenter.com. I looked around at the templates and started manipulating some of the features to get a feel for how the site worked. I was so excited that I didn’t have to create each page from scratch!

I read the article that Sally gave us, “What Should Be on a School Library Website” and started adding ideas into the bubbles on Inspiration. I then started moving the bubbles around and connecting them together to map out how each page would be organized and with what categories.

Weebly was super easy to work with! I quickly created a page for each category. I like how easy it was to pull down a title into the page, divide the page into columns, add images, create links with images or text, and embed html codes. I found many useful pages and sites to link to by searching other library websites in my district, my district’s teacher resource website, and my district’s technology integration website. There was so much I wanted to include, but there wasn’t enough time. I figured that this is an ongoing process and the website can be added to as I find new and interesting information and sites to add.

I started with seven pages and would like to add more once the school year gets rolling. I thought I would poll the classroom & specialist teachers at my school and get their favorite learning sites to post for each grade level. I wanted to add some widgets to the last page, “Miscellaneous and Fun.” I found a quote of the day widget that I got working just fine. Unfortunately, I am still trying to troubleshoot why I can’t get a weather, word of the day, or problem of the day widget working. I continue to work on this problem as I write this reflection and hope to have it resolved shortly.

I talked with my teacher-librarian a few weeks ago about this project. She thought maybe I could just update what she has already done. However, she took that webpage class with me 3+ years ago and her library site is one page. I looked at the page to see what I had to work with and unfortunately, many of the links don’t work and it hasn’t been updated since March, and only with Author of the month links. I know she has some of the same problems with it as I do and I think she would be as excited as I was to learn about some of the new and easier tools that are out there to create websites. I hope that she is willing to link the site that I created to our school website and use this for the library media center website instead of her page. I would be willing to give her access to the account and show her how to use weebly so she continues to have control over the SLMC website. I would hate to see my hard work go to waste. I know I could use what I created at the school that I move to when I become a librarian, but I did make it for McKinley Elementary.

School Library Media Center

McKinley Elementary School Library Media Center
http://mckinleylibrarymediacenter.weebly.com/

Reflection for Making a Video

I had a lot of fun making this video. I had briefly done a few quick Animoto videos during last school year of my class, but I never told a story with it. I didn't even know that text slides could be added to the slide show. I came up with the idea for my library as I was browsing through a school supplies magazine. I saw the words "Book a Trip" for a bulletin board. I thought that would be a great theme, but I needed a little more. I went to Google and searched reading quotes and found one by Mason Cooley: “Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.” My family had a day planned for "A Day Out With Thomas" in Billings. My little guy loves reading Thomas the Train books and I thought that I could get some pictures of him "booking a trip" with Thomas. I took some pictures of him with Thomas, getting on board and with the conductor. I knew I didn't have access to my school library so I searched at Google some pictures of the library.
Three pictures were taken from the Internet to complete this video:

1. Kid's Storytime: www.mapleleaf-school.com
2. Children Reading Books: www.vineland.lib.nj.us
3. Billings Public Library Children's Area: www.billings.lib.mt.us
   

I uploaded the pictures to Animoto and put them in the order that I wanted. I added some text slides to illustrate my story "Book a Trip." I added "Come book a trip to your McKinley Library." The music was tricky to find because I didn't want anything that took away from my story and I didn't want music that was too soft. I found a song with just the right edge with no lyrics so it didn't distract from the story I was telling. I had to remix and move the picture slides around three times until it flowed well. It was simple to embed the video in the blog by just copying and pasting the code that Animoto gave. I am planning on giving my video to the librarian to post on the school page and also pasting it to my classroom blog for next year. I saw many of my students at A Day Out With Thomas and I know they will be excited to see the video.

Book a Trip to McKinley School Library

Reflection for Making a Podcast

I made my podcast for The Nose Book by Al Perkins, Illustrated by Joe Mathiew. The background music is Spring Song, by Mendelssohn. I chose this book, because it is one of my little boy's favorite books. I enjoy the rhyming and the humor.

Making this podcast was quite the adventure for me. I learned a lot about this process. I first tried to use Garage Band, but I couldn't get the background music in. I finally downloaded Audacity, I recorded the book 1st and then tried to import the audio. I spent an afternoon reading the Audacity help page and realized that I had to 1st import the audio, but it had to be converted to an .aiff file. I finally got the microphone set at the correct level so that the audio and voice worked well together. It was time to export the file. Now this is when I realized that I downloaded an older version of Audacity that wasn't compatible for my operating system to export the file as a .mp3. After time on the audacity website trying to figure out what was going wrong, I finally got it. I had to download a LameLib program to make the exporting possible with Audacity.

Okay--I had the podcast complete. Now I needed to get it posted to my blog. After messing with Audacity for an afternoon, I figured I'd just go to the Blogger help page right away. Here I found that I needed to find a free hosting site to store my podcast. I found http://box.net and signed up for an account and uploaded my podcast. I came back to my blog and followed the Blogger instructions to make the link be accessible on the posting page. I copied the url for my podcast stored at http://box.net in the enclosure link box of my compose posting page. Because I did not have a premium account at box.net, I could not use this feature of Blogger to direct link to the audio file. I finally came up with the idea to post the share link in the post box. Yes! It works!

I guess I learned that it is best to find out the correct way to do something by going to the help page first. I spent a lot of time doing and redoing and trying to figure out what was going wrong on my own. After I researched the correct way to do the podcast, it was extremely simple. I'm glad this opportunity was given to us to make a podcast and get in posted. I will remember how to do this because I had learned by doing.

I would love to use podcasting in my first grade classroom this coming year. I would start off by recording some of the favorite read-alouds and post them to my classroom blog. I would have students go and listen to the podcasts during center time. As the year moves on, I would like for my kids to record their favorite story as a podcast and post it to a class wiki. I can see many ways to use podcasting when I move into a teacher-librarian position. I would love to see students write their own radio shows and record book reviews. The ideas are endless.

One of the podcasts that I downloaded to listen to was from the Classics For Kids website at www.classicsforkids.com. Each week, they choose a composer of classical music and play the music in the background while the children are taken on a journey through the music. The piece is broken down and explained why each section was composed. The podcast I listened to was Children's Corner by Claude Debussy. There were sections about rocking an elephant to sleep, dancing snowflakes, and a shepherd in the mountains. It was fun to be taken through the music and to hear and understand what the different sections were about. The website has a section for teachers that has lesson plans for using classical music as part of your daily classroom activities that use the Theory of Multiple Intelligences. The website allowed for RSS feeds and had a schedule for when new podcasts would be added. The Classics For Kids is part of the Cincinnati Public Radio, Inc and is on the radio at a scheduled time every week. I felt Classics For Kids did adhere to the copyright guidelines of the music. The length was very appropriate and perfect of younger students (about 6 minutes). I really can't wait to use this in my classroom this next year. I believe that it will be perfect for listening to during times when my little ones need some calming and refocusing.

The Nose Book Podcast

http://www.box.net/shared/rud2fsxlgo

Blogs I'm Following

Looking for blogs to follow was a great experience. I found two that I really like. I chose to follow four, but I'm not quite sure that two of the blogs are ones that I will continue reading. I want to spend some time reading the posts and getting a feel for the author before I get rid of them. I really like School Library Journal: Never Ending Search. The author has great resources for Web 2.0 tools and her post are easy reading. The Librarian is also another blog that I found interesting. When I was looking for blogs, one problem I found was that I spent way too much time reading the posts. I decided that if I enjoy a few of the posts to just set it up on my Google Reader page. If I continue to enjoy it, I'll keep it. If not, it's history. I've set up my Google Reader page for RSS and I enjoy getting on my page in the morning and read the new posts. It is so nice not to have to go to each blog and find out if there was a new post.

Using Blogs as a Resource

I used a blog for a communication with parents of my first grade students last year. I posted information about upcoming and current events, current areas of study, vocabulary words, and videos of students doing author's chair. I had about 30% of parents check the blog on a regular basis and only 3 parents would make comments. I felt like this was a good way to use a blog in a 1st grade classroom because the students would not be able to read it and make comments on the posts on their own. I would take time every other Friday to view the blog on the projector and read it together with the class. The students and parents really enjoyed it, but it was more of an online newsletter.
When I move into a library, I would like to use a blog for book clubs where I have the students make comments on posts about books that they are reading. I would also like to show students how to search for blogs that interest them, how to follow a blog, and how to set up a Google Reader page so they can bring all their blogs to one place. I believe that students can gain a lot from blogs that are interactive.

Reflection of Creating/Using Blog

Creating this blog for reflection in this class is a great way to learn how to use this Web2.0 tool. I enjoy playing with all the gadgets and moving things around to get a good flow. I have a classroom blog that I used last year. I set up the blog and posted to it, but I didn't spend any time putting in gadgets. This time, I am learning how I can set up a blog to be more interactive and how to utilize more of the tools for it. I look forward to spending more time reflecting on this process and figuring out how to make it most effective for use by my classroom students and their families.

It's Done!

Well, it's finally set up. My little girl is napping and my little boy is reminding me that I haven't eaten breakfast or lunch. It's probably time to stop adding and take a little break. I am finding so much information already. I just need to figure out how to get it all linked here. I am not new to this blog thing. I had a class blog this past year. The students really enjoyed it. I never did do enough with it. I am hoping to learn how to make a blog more interactive with more links in this class.