Did You Know About HWDSB's Virtual Library?

Did you know that one of the resources available to teachers within the Hamilton Wentworth District School Board is a Virtual Library?  You may have answered yes to the question, but do you really know what the Virtual Library is all about?  As I began to explore the HWDSB Virtual Library I quickly reflected back on a few planning sessions I had with my teaching partner, Chantelle Davies.  At the end of these sessions we would discuss the resources we would be using.  This would usually result in our decision to try and find sites on the internet and books within our school library on a particular topic.  The challenge or question of how to find leveled resources for our students always came up.  Did you know that the Virtual Library offers leveled resources for students?  This year, as we plan, our goal is to integrate these resources into our work.  

The virtual library offers links to elementary, secondary, and professional libraries.  The Virtual Library is divided into sub categories:  Databases, ebooks and Audio Books, Virtual Tools, School Library Catalogs, Readers Advisory and Trial Resources.  For the purpose of this post I will "let you know"  what is available in each of the categories in the elementary library and some of the resources that Chantelle and I are considering using this upcoming year with our students.  

Databases:  Bookflix, Image Quest, Learn360 and PebbleGo

Image captured from HWDSB Virtual Library

BookFlix  pairs classic fictional video storybooks with non-fiction eBooks to reinforce reading skills and develop essential real-world knowledge and understanding.  When I opened this resource, I found popular fiction books linked to non-fiction books on various topics.  One feature of BookFlix is the ability to have the book read to students.  While the book is being read, the words are highlighted.  This is a great feature for students who struggle with reading.  In the non-fiction book, key words are highlighted.  When these words are clicked, a definition is given to the student.  After reading the books, students may choose to do a follow up activity, meet the author or explore the web.  There are activities based on the fiction and non-fiction text.  In the page I explored, I was to retell beginning, middle and end events by dragging photos to the appropriate place.  In the non-fiction text I was to match key terms to definitions.  In meet the author, a bio is given about the author of the fiction text.  Finally, in explore the web, students are linked to related sites about the topic.  The one downfall is that no audio is available to the students when they explore the web.  Overall, a great tool to peek the student's interest through the use of the fiction book and a way for struggling readers to successful researchers.

Image captured from HWDSB Virtual Library

Image Quest  is an image database containing over 3 million images.  All images are rights-cleared for non-commercial education use.  I played with this by searching various topics the students might explore and found many relevant photos.  Some other features that this tool allows for is to create a catalog of photos related to a topic and to create a picture dictionary.  How much more engaging and meaningful would vocabulary or key terms be if the students were able to create their own dictionaries?

ebooks and Audio Book:  eduCan Ebooks, eMax, ICDL, Open Library, Free Animated Books

Image captured from HWDSB Virtual Library

eMax  allows students and teachers to access ebooks and audio books from the HWDSB Digital Library.  The student must have his or her own library card number and not have any conditions of their borrowing account (fines, lost books, etc.).  While exploring, I was able to find a variety of books popular with young readers.  To encourage the use of this tool, HWDSB offers a summer reading contest.  As students download books they are entered in a draw to win a prize.

Virtual Tools:  ArcGIS, E-Stat, Knight Cite, World Atlas, Atlas of Canada, Comic Life, Merriam-Webster, Word Central, Bitstrips, Gismos, Premier Literacy, Easy Bib, Homework  Help (Grade 7-10), OERB

Image captured from HWDSB Virtual Library

Easy Bib  allows students to cite work and to create bibliographies by filling in basic information.  After filling in the information a citation is created along with a bibliography.  As new citations are created, the tool also updates the bibliography list.  There are a variety of sources that can be cited including books, websites and newspapers.  Some other sources that can be cited using this tool includes artwork/paintings, television/radio and advertisements.  This version only supports MLA style.  You must upgrade in order to have APA and Chicago styles supported.  Overall, this is an easy tool to use as long as the students are able to keep track of basic information.  The tool can search for items.  For example, if a student puts in the title of a book or the ISBN number, the tool will do a search and fill in some of the information automatically.  A tool to ensure students are giving credit to others.

These are only a few of the resources available to HWDSB teachers.  As Chantelle and I move forward, we will begin to make better use of these resources.  The resources and tools allow for differentiated material.  It also makes searching for relevant material easier for students.

As teachers, how do you find and explore new resources for your students?

Delicious - Bundles and Tagging

This is a guest post by my teaching partner Chantelle Davies.  Together we are exploring the use of 21st Century Technology in the classroom.  Thanks Chantelle, for exploring the use of Delicous within our school setting.

Click for photo source.

For about a year now I have been using Evernote as a bookmarking and catalog tool.  Recently Ray and I start using Delicious as another bookmarking tool.  I thought maybe this would have a separate use in addition to using Evernote.

Because Delicious catalogs the sites you save as a list, we thought this might make for a great thing to share on our classroom blogs.  I created an account that Ray and I could share that would be related to our curriculum.  This way we could keep a list of resources that students could use to enhance their learning.  I like that Delicious automatically suggest a variety of tags  that you could use from scanning the site you are saving; something that Evernote does not do.  It is also nice that you can bundle tags to pull up a group of items.  However, what wasn't ideal was that there was  no way of filtering the tags I didn't want to show.  For example, I was hoping that we could share with our students the bundle I created with tags; science, grade 5, structures, forces, student resource.  Unfortunately, a number of my sites tagged as "teacher resource"  also came up in the bundle because they also had tags such as science, forces, structures, grade 5, etc.  This could pose a challenge if you had bookmarked sites you wanted to save for your own reference only, such as lesson and test ideas.

I prefer Evernote for my personal cataloging because it will scan images for text as well as documents and webpages, and having to come up with my own tags is only a minor inconvenience.  I think I will continue to use Evernote for myself and I will continue to explore Delicious for student use.  Perhaps I'll have to limit it to only things I want students to have access to (too bad for the purposes of sharing resources with Ray).

Finally, the other challenge I had was finding a way to put a delicious widget onto my blog.  According to some forums I read, Wordpress once had a dedicated widget, but it appears they no longer do.  I can't find a way to get the HTML code for a widget from Delicious to add a text based widget.  Any suggestion are welcome.  For now, here is the link to our bundle of resources.

https://delicious.com/daviesswinarc/tag_bundle/Grade%205%20Forces%20Acting%20on%20Structures

Recorder of Learning - Using Photo Editing Apps

This is a guest post from my teaching partner Chantelle Davies. We are working collaboratively to explore tools and resources  and how we can make better use of them in the upcoming term.  The post is focuses on photo editing apps how to use them in the classroom.  With her expertise and knowledge I hope how to learn to use these apps in our "Recorders of Learning" task.  Thank you Chantelle for you expertise and leadership.

The past year I started to explore the world of classroom blogging for the first time.  Because I was still learning how to make the most of this great idea, while at the same time learning a new grade, and exploring other 21st Century tools for the first time; the blogging did not evolve into all that I had hoped it would be.  As you may know, my teaching partner, Ray Swinarchin and I are working through a collaboration of teacher inquiry process this year, revolving around how to better integrate 21st Century learning tool into our lessons.  I refuse to give up on blogging as I have come to believe it is such a valuable tool for learning and teaching. I am going to tackle it again and Ray has decided to join me for the ride.

Last year my blog became a great place for homework to be posted, for students to share summaries of what they were reading, and the occasional post (through shared writing lessons)  on a topic we were learning.  This year I WILL do more with it.  Since Ray and I want our blogs to encourage more interaction and collaboration among students, we are brainstorming ways to do that without creating a tremendous amount of extra work (meaning time) required by us.  Ray and I have come up with a few ideas, but for the purposes of today's post I'm gong to tell you about our plan for The Weekly Recorders of Learning.  

We will have two students be responsible for this role each week.  Together they will be given a few minutes each day to record a few notes to remind them of the key ideas that they learned that day.  We will also allow them to take photos to document lessons and their learning that they can then use at the end of the week to aid them in writing a blog post about what the class learned over the week. In order to make the most of these photos, we are going to teach them to use a few of the photo apps we have available to us on our class Ipads.

The first of these apps that I came to love last year, was Skitch.  Skitch is an app that allows you to take any photo, screenshot, webpage, or map and draw on it or write on it.  As a teacher the feature I came to love most about Skitch was the ability to blur out sections of a photo.  Although most of my student's parents were okay with them blogging, a few families did not want their child's photo published on the blog.  Skitch allowed me to continue publishing shots of students in my class, while not scrapping the whole photo because one of the students photos could not be posted online.  This year we will teach our student the ins and outs of using Skitch so that when they are composing their blog posts for Recorders of Learning, the student can use the features such as arrows, boxes, writing text, etc. to annotate their photos and highlight the key feature that show the learning the are reflecting on.  

In addition to Skitch, we are going to introduce Pic Collage app.  Simply put, this is an app that will alow the students to take multiple photos and group them into a collage.  Pic Collage allows you to add text over the images and has some fun stickers the students can play around with.  It does not offer not offer the blurring or arrows that Skitch does, so we often use them in tandem. 

The third photo app that we are exploring is Snapseed.  Snapseed is new to both of us and we'll have to see if it's worth the time teaching this tool in addition to Skitch and Pic Collage.  My concern is that students might spend too much time playing with their photos and not enough time completing the task.  Snapseed allows you to play with effects on a photo, adjusting things like brightness, contrast, blur strength, etc.  You can also change the look of your photo through special effects tools like red-eye reduction, cropping, and straightening.  I like all of the options for this app, but even I got caught up in playing around with the different looks I could achieve. It may be distracting for some of our students.   

Either way, each of these photo editing apps is sure to engage our students this year.  It's also a great learning experience to add to our blog lessons because blogs without images are boring!

Chantelle and I wondering if you have any other Ipad apps that are easy to use (kid friendly) and useful for classroom blogging?