Thing 5: Digital Storytelling

“…an effective presentation is really all about good storytelling.” I love this line from Polly’s introduction to Thing 5!

For digital storytelling I’ve used PhotoStory 3 for quite a few years at the elementary level. It’s relatively simple for younger students to use. Even my 2nd graders could use it semi-independently by the time we finished our first project. I’ve used some of the tools recommended like Voicethread, Animoto, Toondoo and Voki, but was excited to try some new ones.

I decided to try Glogster because I have a specific persuasive writing project  I worked on with a class this year that would really lend itself really well to this tool. I decided to use my sample topic and create a glog. I’m not in love with what I created  although I do think this could be a great tool to use with students.

This is the link to it.  http://tacornwell.edu.glogster.com/inhumane-declawing

 

 

Thing 4: RSS, Personal Home Pages and Feed Readers

The magic of RSS feeds? How much MORE clutter can my life endure? That’s how I’ve always felt about RSS readers. How I deal with all those posts in one place? What if I don’t read them for a day, let alone a week?I tried it a few years ago and it was overwhelming for me. Because of thing 4 I decided to give it another try. I went to Google Reader to see what had accumulated since I’d last visited. Well, apparently nothing because Google Reader was discontinued last year I discovered. So, I had to start over. I had absolutely ZERO interest in having feeds delivered to my email inbox. I get far too much email as it is.  First I went to Netvibes. Wow! This seems like a powerful tool but it was just a little bit too much for highly distractable brain to start with. I’ll come back to Netvibes. So, I went to Feedly. I was much more basic and simpler for me to grasp. I have to admit it IS nice not to have to visit site after site to see what’s new and exciting. I can definitely see how this will save me time both professionally and personally! Feedly is really simple – exactly what I needed. But now I’m kind of excited to try Netvibes and see what else I gather all in one place.   

Thing 3: Photo Sharing

A constant struggle for me as a library media specialist is to make students and staff understand that intellectual property and copyright really do matter. From my perspective improper Image use is the most widespread issue.

I have to say I really like photopin! I’ve never come across  it before. This is an excellent place for students to begin looking for CC images. I especially appreciate the mostly benign results I get when entering keywords middle school students enjoy using  when “testing the limits” so to say. The only drawback I’ve found as I explored it is that some of the images link to stockphoto.com, a fee based site.