Videos and QR Codes in the Library

This week we are exploring more types of videos and a different way to get your viewers to your products. To begin with let's take a look at some videos several school libraries have produced for their students.

Norman High Library -

Tiger Visits the Norman High Library

Getting Started with the NHS Library Website

The Unquiet Library (High School Library)-

The Importance of Choice for Igniting StudentPassion and Learning Through Research Projects

FindingCC Licensed Images in Advanced Flickr Search

Pikesville High School - 

Pikesville High School FAFSA

Back to School Night

Bonnie Branch Middle School - 

Kids in the Hall - asking What is Your Favorite Food?

Hotline Overdue Drake Library Parody

I also would like to show you a school near me, Gulf Shores Elementary, that is using videos that their students have produced and posted on SchoolTube - 

The Wee Pig, Medium Size Sheep, Huge Cow and Princess Goldilocks 

Of these videos, the one that I would recommend as most helpful to students depends on the age of the students you serve and whether you are asking if the finished product is the useful part or whether the production of the video is the useful part. If I were a high school librarian wanting to know which video gave my kids information they need I would choose the Pikesville High School FAFSA video, it does a great job of alerting the kids of the need of getting their FAFSA completed and it is fun to watch. If I wanted a project for my kids to produce I would definitely go with one similar to Bonnie Branch Middle School's "Kids in the Hall" video. They would have many opportunities for planning, interviewing, editing, and using data from a survey all in one project - it is awesome! I also love the story retelling opportunities available with a project similar to the Gulf Shores Elementary video. The video I believe the students will like the most would be any in which they see or hear themselves. Kids LOVE to see themselves on the screen! Any chance they have of being seen is of great interest to them - at least it is in elementary school. If it is different at other levels, let me know!! :)

Another type of video that is useful in your library would be the booktrailer. Booktrailers come in many forms, but the most common is that of the preview with a cliffhanger. When done properly this is a great technique for getting kids in the library to check out some books they may not have noticed without the trailer. There are some awesome productions on Youtube created by teachers and students, such as this collection where elementary students give advice to would be booktrailer creators - Student Book Trailers Examples by students and teachers at Diplomat Elementary School. If you use your Smartphone to scan the QR code below my book information you can view the trailer I attempted this week using the free version of Animoto, which is an incredibly easy-to-use website for making videos!

Willy Wonka's famous chocolate factory is opening at last! But only five lucky children will be allowed inside. And the winners are: Augustus Gloop, an enormously fat boy whose hobby is eating; Veruca Salt, a spoiled-rotten brat whose parents are wrapped around her little finger; Violet Beauregarde, a dim-witted gum-chewer with the fastest jaws around; Mike Teavee, a toy pistol-toting gangster-in-training who is obsessed with television; and Charlie Bucket, Our Hero, a boy who is honest and kind, brave and true, and good and ready for the wildest time of his life!

QR Codes are simply a digitized picture of a URL. There are several free QR code creators on the internet, like the one I used, QR Stuff, it is so easy you might think you did it wrong, but believe me - it is just that easy. You copy the URL you want to link, and you paste it into the box on the website and click on download. There are lots of options you can take advantage of as well, but it can be just that easy! I found several libraries that are using QR Codes for activities. One fun scavenger hunt I found has the kids looking for books in a Pokemon Go! fashion. This one is from one of our favorites, The Daring Librarian - Gwyneth Jones, she includes all directions for her project at this blog post - Pokemon Go QR Code Library Scavenger Hunt.

Resources

Animoto: Make great videos. Easily. Join the millions of businesses, photographers, and families who use the power of video to share what matters most to them. (n.d.). Retrieved October 30, 2016, from https://animoto.com/

Dahl, R., & Blake, Q. (2004). Charlie and the chocolate factory. New York: Knopf. 
QR Stuff. (n.d.). Retrieved October 30, 2016, from http://www.qrstuff.com/

SchoolTube. (n.d.). Retrieved October 30, 2016, from http://www.schooltube.com/

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A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words - so what about a video?!?

This week we are exploring the world of images and video. Teachers and Librarians need to be aware of the apps that are available to record and publish pictures and videos with social media because that is where are kids are and where they are having fun. To capitalize on this interest we need to go where they are!

The first products I investigated were Adobe Spark and Screencast-o-matic. Adobe Spark is a very cool website where you can create videos/slideshows with tons of examples in an inspiration gallery. I was able to create an account AND have a finished product (that I have already posted on my school’s website and Facebook accounts) in less than an hour! I LOVE the video I created! The pictures I put in my finished piece were stock photos that Adobe has available for use under Creative Commons. They automatically add the credits at the end of the video for you so there is no copyright infringement as far as those photos are concerned. The templates that are available are so easy to use and have great questions that lead you right along to an awesome presentation.

My Spark Video 

Screencast-o-matic is a product that helps you create how-to videos. This product is one that I have seen used many times by my university professors. It takes a video screenshot and records audio as the computer operator goes through the process of a task on the computer. If I had not been exposed to these videos already I’m not sure if I would have thought this was as easy as I found it to be. There are several tutorials available and those were of course made with Screencast-o-matic. The tutorial I was interested in, scripted recordings, but apparently that is only available with a paid account – I couldn’t find any of the screens that were shown on the tutorials. That aside, the program is easy enough to use without much instruction and I am quite pleased with my finished product. With these two products I think I will use both of them but for very different purposes. I’m not sure what I would use Screencast-o-matic for anything other than computer based instruction, which I’m sure is what its intended use is. Spark I can see many uses – promotion of events, slideshows, and others. The finished products from both of these companies can be posted to Facebook, Twitter, embed in a blog or on a website, or a direct link can be shared to get it to the kids, parents, and even other educators!

My Screencast 

Instagram is an app I have had on my phone for a few years now although I have never used it for anything other than seeing what other people are posting. I could use Instagram to review content, send notifications, share funnies, share books, encourage and motivate. Here is my account and one and only post:

Instagram 

Vine is an app I have been terrified of since I first heard of it. I never even attempted to download it! I AM NOT THAT CREATIVE! 6 seconds to get a point across – HELLO! – have you seen my posts?!? It takes me 6 seconds to blink twice – how would I ever manage?!? Well, once I figured out that I could edit a video outside of the program and then upload and post it, I was fine – until I couldn’t get it to post no matter what I tried! It has finally shown up as looping on my phone, but my profile still shows 0 posts! I still don’t like this, but now it is because I can’t make this app work! I give up, but here is the video I made and it is half way on Vine I guess – you can check my Vine account just in case I get it to work @madavis18

References

Adobe Spark | Videos, images and stories made in minutes. (n.d.). Retrieved October 23, 2016, from https://spark.adobe.com/

Dunn, K. (2015, August 4). 10 Ways to use Instagram in the classroom [Web log post]. Retrieved October 20, 2016, from http://dailygenius.com/instagram/

Instagram. (n.d.). Retrieved October 23, 2016, from https://www.instagram.com/

Jonas, B. (2013, May 29). 8 Ways You Can Use Vine to Teach Reading Comprehension. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from http://www.readinghorizons.com/blog/8-ways-to-use-vine-for-reading-instruction-in-classroom

Nerdy, Nerdy, Nerdy!: Using Instagram as a Classroom Tool. (2014, June 25). Retrieved October 20, 2016, from http://www.nerdynerdynerdy.com/2014/06/using-instagram-as-classroom-tool.html

Screencast-O-Matic. (n.d.). Retrieved October 20, 2016, from http://screencast-o-matic.com/

Trot, A. (2016, March 1). 4 Ways to Use Vine Videos in the Classroom - teachercast.net. Retrieved October 23, 2016, from https://www.teachercast.net/2016/03/01/vine-in-the-classroom/

Vine. (n.d.). Retrieved October 23, 2016, from https://vine.co/

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Infographics

This week we are exploring the world of infomaniacs, I mean Infographics! I felt like an infomaniac when I foolishly decided to open every link (at the same time) that I was given in order to research this topic. That was very silly of me, I became overwhelmed and under motivated! There is so much information available on the topic about how and what to create with infographics! I have included a list of all of the places I visited and read up about this topic – my suggestion to you is - don’t over do it, and maybe read the rest of this blog post – I might just narrow it down for you depending on what type of information you want to present.

The first thing you really should do is decide what you want to share and who are you sharing it with, otherwise you are just afloat on a sea of possibilities with no shore in sight! While this might be fun for a while, it is a real time-waster if you are a busy teacher or librarian (or anyone else who might actually want to live a non-virtual life).

Once you have your focus, consider the following websites that will give you the ability to produce an awesome infographic you can easily share with your audience.

Infogr.am – This is a very clean, streamlined website. For me it was a bit too streamlined. I can imagine that as someone with a spreadsheet full of data needing to be shared in a friendlier format this would be the place for you. They start you on a page where you choose from three icons – Infographic/Report; Chart/Graph; or Map. Of these choices I went with Infographics and at that point was taken to a large choice of themes where the only difference I could discern was a different color scheme on each choice. They all have a large line graph at the top and a place for text at the bottom. I admit I was a bit intimidated by this and stopped there. These were not the types of examples I was expecting – no fun graphics or interesting page shapes or backgrounds.

Easel.ly – This one is a good place to go to get started and if you are interested in upgrading from your free version, it only costs $3 per month and that adds a lot of value to your account. The toolbars are easy to use and there are many free templates available, many made by other users and made public when they are saved at easel.ly. All of their examples are what most of us would think of as an infographic, lots of great graphics and layouts leading the eye here and there across the page. It isn’t difficult to change text and graphics to suit your needs. I created an entire infographic there, but by the time I was finished I had changed so much that it looked very unprofessional. I started again with another template and quickly realized that it was not a great match for the information I was trying to share.

 

Piktochart – I then found myself on Piktochart. Here I found some awesome templates that I didn’t have to pay extra for. They are a lot more pricey than Easel.ly – Piktochart charges either $15 or $29 per month versus $3, although they do offer a 65% discount on that price after you save your first file. I chose a great looking template and got started. To be fair, the process probably went much faster because I had already done a lot of revamping of what I wanted to do with my info while I was on Easel.ly, but that being said the templates on Piktochart have the added benefit of including coaching in every block you build. They give recommendations for what to leave alone and what to change on the template. They even offer suggestions about what type of information to put into each type of block and where the optimum places are to place graphics. It is a template and tutorial all in one convenient place. I created my infographic in less than an hour and was very pleased with the results. This is my top choice of the three for ease of use and finished looks.

Here is my end product. We are having a Literacy Night at my school in a few weeks and we need a graphic to help promote the event on our website. With a few more tweaks this is hopefully what we will be using.

 Click here for a presentation view of this same graphic

 

Another type of infographic I tried was a word cloud - I created this on Tagxedo with the text from the Infographic above - I thought it turned out nicely!:

 

Sources

Bailey, J. (2013). Using Infogr.am to create infographics. Retrieved October 15, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_uV7ii6V0Q

Bramschreiber, T. (2013). Using Easel.ly to create an infographic. Retrieved October 15, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7ouQczeu0o

Easel.ly. (n.d.). Retrieved October 15, 2016, from https://www.easel.ly/

Education Infographics | Search Results | Daily Infographic. (n.d.). Retrieved October 15, 2016, from http://www.dailyinfographic.com/category/education-2

Fryrear, A. (n.d.). How to Make Your Infographics Info-Tastic: 4 Key Elements to Successful Infographic Design. Retrieved October 15, 2016, from http://www.marketergizmo.com/make-infographics-info-tastic-4-key-elements-successful-infographic-design/#InfographicTool

Infogr.am. (n.d.). Retrieved October 15, 2016, from https://infogr.am/

Infographics- What? Why? How? (2010). Retrieved October 16, 2016, from http://langwitches.org/blog/2010/06/16/infographics-what-why-how/

Krum, R. (2010, April 24). 10 Tips for Designing Infographics. Retrieved October 16, 2016, from https://digitalnewsgathering.wordpress.com/2010/04/24/10-tips-for-designing-infographics/

Malamed, C. (2013, August 31). ELC 010: How To Design Real (Not Fake) Information Graphics [Audio blog post]. Retrieved October 15, 2016, from http://theelearningcoach.com/podcasts/10/

Ojalvo, H. E. (2010, August 26). Teaching With Infographics | Language Arts, Fine Arts and Entertainment [Web log post]. Retrieved October 15, 2016, from http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/26/teaching-with-infographics-language-arts-fine-arts-and-entertainment/

Ojalvo, H. E. (2010, August 25). Teaching With Infographics | Science and Health [Web log post]. Retrieved October 15, 2016, from http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/25/teaching-with-infographics-science-and-health/

Ojalvo, H. E., & Doyne, S. (2010, August 24). Teaching With Infographics | Social Studies, History, Economics [Web log post]. Retrieved October 15, 2016, from http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/24/teaching-with-infographics-social-studies-history-economics/

Perrin, A. (2016, September 01). Book Reading 2016. Retrieved October 16, 2016, from http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/09/01/book-reading-2016/

Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech. (2016). Retrieved October 15, 2016, from http://www.pewinternet.org/

Piktochart. (n.d.). Retrieved October 15, 2016, from https://magic.piktochart.com/

Schulten, K. (2010, August 27). Teaching With Infographics a Student Project Model [Web log post]. Retrieved October 15, 2016, from http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/27/teaching-with-infographics-a-student-project-model/

Schulten, K. (2010, August 23). Teaching With Infographics | Places to Start [Web log post]. Retrieved October 15, 2016, from http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/teaching-with-infographics-places-to-start/?_r=2

Smallwood, L. (2012). How to use Piktochart. Retrieved October 15, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbyUbXkc8KE

Tagxedo. (n.d.). Retrieved October 15, 2016, from http://www.tagxedo.com/
Wright, R. (2013). Easel.ly tutorial. Retrieved October 15, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XN-JDeCPca8

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Blogs, blogs, blogs....

Feedly is a blog reader that helps the reader keep up with all of the blogs and websites they love to read in one place rather than having to visit each individual website. I chose to use Feedly because it has a Firefox extension and I use Firefox as my browser. This makes it very easy to use Feedly in my browser; also it has over 63,000 users with over 3,000 5-star reviews.

Some of the great blogs that I follow with Feedly and or Tumblr are below. Check them out, you will probably want to follow them too!

https://theunquietlibrarian.wordpress.com/  This is a blog written by a librarian/writing teacher in Alabama. She has great articles about her teaching experiences and she shares resources with her readers. I chose to follow her blog because I recognized her name from Twitter where I also follow her.

http://stephenslighthouse.com/  This is a blog written by a librarian and executive director of the Federation of Ontario Public Libraries. He writes articles about how to market a library to the public by using infographics, user-created content, and many other strategies. I think these ideas may apply more strongly to public libraries but our school libraries also need to communicate to our users what is going on in our buildings and why they should come see for themselves.

http://100scopenotes.com/  This blog is a branch of the School Library Journal. It is a page that offers news and reviews about children’s literature. Their articles include lists of great new books for kids, articles about popular authors, and much more fun stuff like books on film. This is a great place to get the latest news in children’s literature.

http://www.edutopia.org  This is a blog I have been following for several years now. This blog has articles that give educators great ideas and strategies for 21^st century learning. This is a great place for teachers and librarians.

http://booksandhotchocolate.tumblr.com/ I decided to follow this blog ‘cause it is fun!! The writer of this Tumblr blog loves the same books that I love! There really isn’t an educational reason I chose to follow except that we all need a break sometimes to enjoy what we really love – words and books!!

I started my own Tumblr account, which I have never had before. It is a fun place where you can find many libraries and librarians posting many cool pictures and memes for the most part. I also saw several posting longer texts and quotes reviewing novels or explaining their activities. You can find my Tumblr here:

My New Tumblr Account

Resources

Cassidy, V. (2015, September 22). The 10 best feed reader apps for RSS, news, and more. 

          [Web log].  Retrieved from https://zapier.com/blog/best-rss-feed-reader-apps/