Did you see the Editorial in SLJ a few months ago? ("What's Up Doc?" by Brian Kenney in SLJ January, 2009.) I completely agreed with what Brian said especially about how he was part of a "lucky few" who was part of UNT's online cohort to persue his PhD. I have since looked into all of the programs mentioned and UNT has since discontinued the online program, so that is a no go. I also have SOOO many issues with San Jose State's Gateway program that their program is a no go as well. So what am I to do?
I contacted Drexel and asked if they had any plans for an online program. Guess what? NO!
I went to Pitt and know that they can do the online thing, and do it well. So how long must I wait for these schools to get their acts together and create online programs?! Do I really need to give up my day job to persue my dream? Is it worth it? How do I decide!
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Screencasting Follow Up
My principal came in today for my annual observation, and we were working on our second of three weeks in a larger book report project. My third graders are going to use Microsoft PhotoStory to create a book review movie. Very simple:
Step 1: Find the book cover online, using our Destiny subscription to titlepeek OR bn.com and saving to their folder
Step 2: Add the picture to PhotoStory and the words "Title of your book, Book Review, Your Name" and save to their folder
Step 3: Add their voice reading a pre-written book report.
However these 'simple' steps are not so simple for third graders and although I do give them written directions I also made a screencast of directions using Adobe Captivate. It looked great, and was easy for me to do! The kids watched it once as a group and then I sent them to individual computers. Now the kids who caught on got to work. The kids who needed to, watched the movie again. They could also go back and watch it in the middle of the project as needed and this REALLY cuts down on the repetive and silly questions for me! The principal was so impressed! I am so glad I did this. Now if I can only get our tech guy to update Destiny, then I can add the digital movies to that and really impress the parents too! Please steel this idea, and let me know if you would like any of my materials to this lesson, please let me know.
Step 1: Find the book cover online, using our Destiny subscription to titlepeek OR bn.com and saving to their folder
Step 2: Add the picture to PhotoStory and the words "Title of your book, Book Review, Your Name" and save to their folder
Step 3: Add their voice reading a pre-written book report.
However these 'simple' steps are not so simple for third graders and although I do give them written directions I also made a screencast of directions using Adobe Captivate. It looked great, and was easy for me to do! The kids watched it once as a group and then I sent them to individual computers. Now the kids who caught on got to work. The kids who needed to, watched the movie again. They could also go back and watch it in the middle of the project as needed and this REALLY cuts down on the repetive and silly questions for me! The principal was so impressed! I am so glad I did this. Now if I can only get our tech guy to update Destiny, then I can add the digital movies to that and really impress the parents too! Please steel this idea, and let me know if you would like any of my materials to this lesson, please let me know.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Screencasting
Ok I read the newest SJL article about screencasting and with upcoming projects for second and third graders that involve very simple tasks that are complex for them and with a lot of click this, type that involved I decided to give it a try. In my library I have an old dell machine, the techs have tried to keep it up but it is still very very basic. I think that is my only problem, these programs require more RAM to run and more energy than my old computer has.
Nevertheless, I tried wink and loved it. It is not fancy but I made a screencast about how to find a book in the OPAC, and that worked so well I did one about Photo Story. I used my cheap microphone to add my voice and figured out how to add a caption or two and a play and replay button. Nothing fancy but it works. The only problem is the only output I could find is flash with three files to make it work so uploading in to any website is trouble (I am sure it is possible but I had a hard time with it). I was doing ok until I tried a longer screencast and the machine kept freezing! Time to try something new....
So I tried a free trial of Camstasia (or something like that) and it was ok but it was still clunky, freezing and the software interface looked very fancy and not all that intuitive and I was having a hard time figuring it out (and I am normally good with computers). So I gave up after a day or so and decided to download a trial of Adobe Captivate. That is it! This one is wonderful! I shot off an e-mail to our tech guy, do we have any money to buy just one license!? It is so easy it practically does everything for you. In wink I was cutting out slides where I had just waited and waited for things to load. Captivate does that for you! In wink I was adding captions. Captivate does that for you. And it looks so nice. My only complaint is that my voice sounds tinny in their software and it did not in wink. I think you can also use computerized voices but that may not be possible in the free trial, it is giving me trouble, but it looks easy enough. I am going back to publish it today but it looks like I have many options. If you want to try screencasting, go strait to Captivate, it will Captivate you!
Nevertheless, I tried wink and loved it. It is not fancy but I made a screencast about how to find a book in the OPAC, and that worked so well I did one about Photo Story. I used my cheap microphone to add my voice and figured out how to add a caption or two and a play and replay button. Nothing fancy but it works. The only problem is the only output I could find is flash with three files to make it work so uploading in to any website is trouble (I am sure it is possible but I had a hard time with it). I was doing ok until I tried a longer screencast and the machine kept freezing! Time to try something new....
So I tried a free trial of Camstasia (or something like that) and it was ok but it was still clunky, freezing and the software interface looked very fancy and not all that intuitive and I was having a hard time figuring it out (and I am normally good with computers). So I gave up after a day or so and decided to download a trial of Adobe Captivate. That is it! This one is wonderful! I shot off an e-mail to our tech guy, do we have any money to buy just one license!? It is so easy it practically does everything for you. In wink I was cutting out slides where I had just waited and waited for things to load. Captivate does that for you! In wink I was adding captions. Captivate does that for you. And it looks so nice. My only complaint is that my voice sounds tinny in their software and it did not in wink. I think you can also use computerized voices but that may not be possible in the free trial, it is giving me trouble, but it looks easy enough. I am going back to publish it today but it looks like I have many options. If you want to try screencasting, go strait to Captivate, it will Captivate you!
Saturday, January 24, 2009
PSLA
PSLA is coming up. They will be sending out the booklets and everything soon. Are you ready? If you know any new librarians please encourage them to come to our sessions: Conference 101 and Who? Me? The New Librarian? We are really changing the format of Conference 101 and we hope to make what was good even better for our new librarians!
ALA Chicago is also coming up! Is anyone else going? The exhibits look to be interesting and a summer weekend in Chicago should be fun.
Hopefully we will learn about more new and interesting pieces of technology at both of these events. For me, I am just waiting for my tech guy to update Follett and I would be happy!
ALA Chicago is also coming up! Is anyone else going? The exhibits look to be interesting and a summer weekend in Chicago should be fun.
Hopefully we will learn about more new and interesting pieces of technology at both of these events. For me, I am just waiting for my tech guy to update Follett and I would be happy!
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Bookr
Ok I found Bookr through a librarian weekend training and thought that it was a dream come true at first because I already had some of my students working on writing books for younger partners and I thought that this would be a creative way to get them more involved in making the book as they could actually "see" each page and the fact that they could add pictures is pretty cool too. However it turned into a nightmare and I do NOT recommend it for schools!
First I had to have the tech guy unblock the site and Flickr, even though he was affraid of bad pictures (and I have to say that out of over a hundred kids and MULTIPLE searches this only happened once with the word "puppies"). Then it did not work on every computer (maybe because they did not have a plug-in but dispite my searching and trial and error I could not determine WHICH plug-in). So not all students could get on to the site to begin with. Big deal, we can live with that. Some of the kids came up with great books check out Taylor's here:
BUT then we had Bookr troubles! It was finicky about letting kids manipulate the pictures and the choice of pictures was admittedly poor especially for a great variety of school subjects (we had trouble with planets especially). Then many kids forgot to write down their code OR mistyped the address to get back to their book so that was a lot of work for me to go back and help them find their books to recycle and keep working. Most importantly though my biggest complaint with Bookr is that it sometimes just DELETED the pages kids were working on! I am not kidding, I watched it happen and it was not the kid's fault. Pages just went missing, saved work disappeared and it was unrealiable in the end. It was not worth it.
First I had to have the tech guy unblock the site and Flickr, even though he was affraid of bad pictures (and I have to say that out of over a hundred kids and MULTIPLE searches this only happened once with the word "puppies"). Then it did not work on every computer (maybe because they did not have a plug-in but dispite my searching and trial and error I could not determine WHICH plug-in). So not all students could get on to the site to begin with. Big deal, we can live with that. Some of the kids came up with great books check out Taylor's here:
BUT then we had Bookr troubles! It was finicky about letting kids manipulate the pictures and the choice of pictures was admittedly poor especially for a great variety of school subjects (we had trouble with planets especially). Then many kids forgot to write down their code OR mistyped the address to get back to their book so that was a lot of work for me to go back and help them find their books to recycle and keep working. Most importantly though my biggest complaint with Bookr is that it sometimes just DELETED the pages kids were working on! I am not kidding, I watched it happen and it was not the kid's fault. Pages just went missing, saved work disappeared and it was unrealiable in the end. It was not worth it.
Saturday, December 6, 2008
Book Publishing
Ok I have some free time now that 23 Things is over and I am working on trying to publish my books. I currently have at least three and although I sent my best to a friend at Simon and Shulster, I have not heard anything in over two months so I am moving on. The two main books I am trying to create are 11 x 8.5" (a standard landscape). One of the biggest things that BUGS me about all of these is the 20 page minimum! I only need 14 pages!!!
I first looked at Lulu because my Dad recommended it. I like the services that they offer and the reason ability of their prices, but their software needs some tweaking. Everytime I load a word file it warps my text and it cannot seem to upload my PDF files from iPhoto (because of size differences). I did try Lulu studio as that is their book creation software but not only do they have VERY few themes (and no travel theme!) but they also have very limited layouts and very few with text. So although I keep coming back here because I hope to upload from another program, it is not my first choice right now. I did manage to convert my iPhoto book to lulu using a trial copy of Adobe inDesign, but it took a couple of hours and some compromises in the layout and size of the pages. But now I can get pretty much the same book MUCH cheaper and in paperback or e-book format. As for their selling service they have the unique option of allowing people to buy your book OR DOWNLOAD an e-book, which is nice. I can also get the books for a very REASONABLE price (almost exact book at lulu $6.30/ea for 25 copies, or about $18.00/ea at blurb).
I downloaded Booksmart Blurb and I really like that one and made and advertised a complete book BUT they have so few themes and very few theme background options that unless I keep using the same theme over and over I am stuck. I also cannot import files from anywhere else, they MUST be made in their software which is a drawback. I would choose this as my first choice IF they got more themes OR allowed you to upload from other sources.
I looked at Snapfish Photobooks and theirs look great if you only want a photo book but they have a lot of themes but only one travel theme, then you can't even put text on the cover of the book! The layouts are lowsy once you get into it and it is hard to navgate their page to begin with. Snapfish is out.
I also tried out MyPublisher and this is attractive because they offer me a discount because I am a costco member. I really like how there are many options for the travel theme alone. (I guess by now you can tell themes are important to me.) However they offer you no ability to print or save in any format except a MyPublisher file. MyPublisher is out.
I tried Kodak and they are actually one of the worst surprisingly enough. Very very few layout and theme options. Very expensive not the program for me.
Shutterfly is one that my mom has used and liked but only for basic photobooks. They have some of the best themes and layouts of all the programs but they are still very expensive and I cannot export the file in any manner to re-upload to Lulu for cheaper printing. So this option probably will not work for me unless I want to make the book and then screen capture the pages into inDesign. It is an option but I am going to keep looking.
Picaboo looks REALLY good but I have a MAC and until I can find some free time on a Windows Machine with all my files I will have to put this one to the side.
I first looked at Lulu because my Dad recommended it. I like the services that they offer and the reason ability of their prices, but their software needs some tweaking. Everytime I load a word file it warps my text and it cannot seem to upload my PDF files from iPhoto (because of size differences). I did try Lulu studio as that is their book creation software but not only do they have VERY few themes (and no travel theme!) but they also have very limited layouts and very few with text. So although I keep coming back here because I hope to upload from another program, it is not my first choice right now. I did manage to convert my iPhoto book to lulu using a trial copy of Adobe inDesign, but it took a couple of hours and some compromises in the layout and size of the pages. But now I can get pretty much the same book MUCH cheaper and in paperback or e-book format. As for their selling service they have the unique option of allowing people to buy your book OR DOWNLOAD an e-book, which is nice. I can also get the books for a very REASONABLE price (almost exact book at lulu $6.30/ea for 25 copies, or about $18.00/ea at blurb).
I downloaded Booksmart Blurb and I really like that one and made and advertised a complete book BUT they have so few themes and very few theme background options that unless I keep using the same theme over and over I am stuck. I also cannot import files from anywhere else, they MUST be made in their software which is a drawback. I would choose this as my first choice IF they got more themes OR allowed you to upload from other sources.
I looked at Snapfish Photobooks and theirs look great if you only want a photo book but they have a lot of themes but only one travel theme, then you can't even put text on the cover of the book! The layouts are lowsy once you get into it and it is hard to navgate their page to begin with. Snapfish is out.
I also tried out MyPublisher and this is attractive because they offer me a discount because I am a costco member. I really like how there are many options for the travel theme alone. (I guess by now you can tell themes are important to me.) However they offer you no ability to print or save in any format except a MyPublisher file. MyPublisher is out.
I tried Kodak and they are actually one of the worst surprisingly enough. Very very few layout and theme options. Very expensive not the program for me.
Shutterfly is one that my mom has used and liked but only for basic photobooks. They have some of the best themes and layouts of all the programs but they are still very expensive and I cannot export the file in any manner to re-upload to Lulu for cheaper printing. So this option probably will not work for me unless I want to make the book and then screen capture the pages into inDesign. It is an option but I am going to keep looking.
Picaboo looks REALLY good but I have a MAC and until I can find some free time on a Windows Machine with all my files I will have to put this one to the side.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Last 23 things post
This is the last of my 23 things posts. I have gone through them all. I enjoyed them and learned a little, however my feedback would be that perhaps this program is getting a little dated. I had already learned about most of these 'things' and thankfully I had Bridget's session just at the right time to enhance this project for me and make it more dynamic. However without that I would have been disappointed in this program, and since Bridget really is not part of 23 things I worry that other people would be disappointed. I did like the format where I got to do it all at my own pace and how I wanted. The discovery exercises were reasonable and helped me learn. My only wish now is that there was a second round to move on to and keep learning. Where are the next 23 things? I also was talking to some of my teachers and they are very envious of my 10 Act 48 hours for something so cool. Is there a way to promote and offer the program to teachers in its current format or with just a few changes? Could we even profit off of this collaboration? (Either monetarily or just through exposure for libraries.)
I was also shocked to learn that I like to Blog after all. I may be using this or a different blog in the near future just to communicate with parents and students, but then I worry about what administrative permissions I need. Currently I am supposed to pass everything that I disseminate to parents and students past my principal, but this is not something that I could constantly pass by her, nor would I want to. How do other school librarians address this issue?
Thank you.
I was also shocked to learn that I like to Blog after all. I may be using this or a different blog in the near future just to communicate with parents and students, but then I worry about what administrative permissions I need. Currently I am supposed to pass everything that I disseminate to parents and students past my principal, but this is not something that I could constantly pass by her, nor would I want to. How do other school librarians address this issue?
Thank you.
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