YouTube

YouTube is a great site to share videos. Below is a video made by our teachers to motivate our students before the FCAT.

   Before this project, the only thing I knew about YouTube was that it is a site with different types of videos. You can find movie trailers, music videos, commercials, and many other videos made by just about anyone. When I visited the site I decided to visit sections I had never seen before. I clicked on browse and found different categories to choose from. I clicked on education and was given the option to visit YouTube EDU. This is a section of YouTube I did not know existed.  On YouTube EDU you can find just about any university with its own channel.  USF has a channel that anyone can subscribe to.


 YouTube is an option for schools and libraries to share videos. The company that hosts our website charges about $3,000 a year to add video to our site. Instead, we can create a channel for our school where we can upload our videos, for free!

Play Around with Image Generators

The Generator Blog
http://generatorblog.blogspot.com/

This site has image generators. It has different images that can be customized. You can customize an image of a cup of coffee with your name on top or a bottle of Absolute Vodka with your name on it. This site has many images but I only found a few I can actually use in a school setting. For example, this black board that I customized with the words "Back to School" on it. Once the image is customized you can save it to your desktop and use it as you'd like. This image is one that I can add to our school website.

 

 Letter James
http://www.letterjames.com/

This site also allows you to personalize images. They offer a variety of images to choose from. You can send your creation as an ecard or download the image to your computer, for free. It is easier to use and to find images than The Generator Blog site. It works the same way in that you can save the images to your desktop and use them as you'd like. I chose to advertise different school events on the images below. This is something that can be added to a school or library website.

FDToys – Big Huge Labs Home of FD’s Flickr Toys
http://bighugelabs.com/

 When you visit their site for the first time there is a welcome message that encourages you to play and have fun. They weren’t kidding. I can play on this site for hours!

The first “toy” I played with was with their motivational poster maker.

Then I made a magazine cover.

Last but not least, a movie poster.

 This is definitely my favorite of the three sites. Unlike the The Generator Blog and Letter James, this site allows you to upload and customize your own images. You can order prints through them, email your final product, or save it to your PC! There are so many activities students can do using this site. For example, above are a few creative ways for students to recommend books to each other. They can create any of these and then share their product via email, blog, or website. There are many more options on the Big Huge Labs site. I still haven’t explored them all.

RSS Feeds and Newsreaders

   With RSS “Really Simple Syndication” and a newsreader you can get all the news you need in one place. Instead of visiting different web pages or blogs the information is sent to one place. This definitely saves time. I found this video very helpful in understanding what RSS is and how to get started:

http://www.commoncraft.com/rss_plain_english

   I chose Google reader for my RSS feeds just because I feel comfortable using Google. Activating an account is simple. I thought I had to set up a new email address in order to have access to Google reader but I didn’t. I used my AT&T email address. Once my account was ready, I clicked on add a subscription, entered the URL address of the blogs I wanted to follow and that’s it! Google reader has an app for Androids.  I can access Google reader from my phone which makes it easy to follow the two library blogs from anywhere, anytime.  

I recommend the Google reader to anyone that has blogs or web pages they like to visit daily. 

Creating a Blog

 Although, I am a person of few words and share only minimum information with others, the idea of having my own blog is quite exciting.

  I decided to use Blogger because it is user friendly. It took me a few minutes to set up my page. I went ahead and added my own clipart to personalize my page. I read through Bloggers Quick Tutorial and it was very helpful. In this tutorial I found that you can control who reads and writes on your blog. Blogs can have single authors or multiple authors. Blogs with multiple authors are used as a communication tool for families, friends, or teams. I also learned that you can read and post to your blog from your mobile device. You can upload pictures to your blog from your mobile device as well.

  As I am reading through the tutorial I can’t help but think of ways in which I can use blogs in an elementary school. I actually thought of a few. I can create a blog where the students are the authors. Using Access Controls, I can control who views and comments on the blog. This blog can be used for book reviews and recommendations. Students can also use blogs as journals. Instead of responding to writing prompts in a notebook, students can blog their response and comment on each other’s work. Many teachers assign reading logs. How about allowing the students to blog about what they’ve read? They can share their thoughts on a book with their entire class or school instead of writing it on a sheet of paper only the teacher will see. I think students will be more likely to keep a reading log if they know that other students are going to read their work. Who knows, their log may even motivate someone to read!

  Creating this blog was interesting and fairly easy to do. I am actually considering maintaining it after the semester is over so that I may use it with my students. I chose "Treasure Tales" as the title because the PAC Pirates believe the Treasure is in the Books. I figure my students and I can post reviews about the books we read throughout the year. I can think of a few teachers who will be up and ready for the challenge!