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.
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