Last night I went to my last class of the spring semester.  For the past three weeks I have had a magnificent stress-induced eye twitch and a good case of the "I can't brain, I has the dumbs."  I think that I have just enough brain power left to write and reflect on my last project for my #LIS724 Integrating Technology into Programming, Services, and Instruction course. 

I really enjoyed having the opportunity to try different platforms and sharing what I loved, learned, and (sometimes) loathed about them (I'm looking at you, Prezi).  I hope that I can continue to set aside some time to learn and experiment with new technological platforms and integrate them into my programming and reference services at my library.

Our final project tasked my group members and me with developing an inquiry based lesson to teach to our classmates.  After four years of not wearing my "teacher hat", I had to dust it off and put it back on.

Choosing a Topic

At first, I thought that it would be great fun for us to use some of the robotics that my library owns.  I looked at our Ozobots and Makey Makey, but due to special programming my group would not have been able to get enough materials for our classmates to use the robotic equipment effectively.

One of my group members suggested using GeoGuessr.  GeoGuessr is an online platform that utilizes Google Maps Street View.  Users select a region of the world and GeoGuessr places them in an unknown location within that region.   Users must use physical clues (mountains, trees, water, etc.) and human clues (signs, cars, people, clothes, etc.) to figure out where they are.  The user will make a guess about where they are and GeoGuessr will tell them how close or far away they are from their guess.

Designing a Lesson

I had to reach into The Archives (a.k.a my 2009 Toshiba Satellite Laptop that is still alive) to dig out my lesson plan outline.  It has been a while since I have had to wear my "Teacher Hat" but I feel like it is a bit like riding a bicycle - you remember what to do once you start going. 

I wanted to think of an activity that would get everyone interested in what we were about to do so I created the"Where in the United States" activity.  I downloaded pictures from Pixabay of four landmarks in the United States.  I wanted my classmates to guess the function of the landmark and where it is located.  

After the "Where in the United States Activity", my group decided that it would be a good idea to show our classmates how to use GeoGuessr and to try guessing a location together.  We also thought it would be helpful to provide Chicago Guidebooks to our classmates so that they could utilize a paper map and the index to help them pin-point their location.

My group and I met before class to talk through our lesson plan.  We also wanted to figure out how much time we wanted to spend on each component of our lesson. We were allotted twenty minutes to present our inquiry based lesson and we wanted to stick to the time frame.

Presenting our GeoGuessr Adventure

Our lesson was developed for seventh grade students.  I had some classmates that decided to act like they were in seventh grade.  I must admit, that while it was done in jest, I found it to be slightly distracting. 

Do distractions happen in the classroom?  Absolutely.  Distractions happen in library programming too, but when I am presenting a program or lesson to children I am mentally prepared for the possibility of a distraction to occur.  Was I mentally prepared for it in that very moment?  Nope.  

I thought that this was an engaging activity for everyone. It was interesting to see how each group used different strategies to figure out where they were on GeoGuessr.  Some people scrolled until they found a street sign or address, other people used familiar buildings or landmarks, and some used the guidebooks and maps. 

Some of the landmarks for the "Where in the US" activity were a bit difficult.  I would have liked to tie the physical and human factors to the introductory activity, but I was worried about the time and did not include that part.

Overall, I enjoyed putting together this lesson with my group.  I felt that the tools we used for this lesson were effective at making inquiry based learning hands-on and engaging.

Lesson Plan * Presentation Slides *  Where in the US Handout * GeoGuessr Handout

And Now...I Celebrate

Now that I am officially finished with my spring semester, I can celebrate that I have reached the half-way point of attaining my MLIS.  One year from now, I will be an official librarian!

And Now...I Remember Summer Classes Start Monday

I curated my Potty Training Resources on Kapsul.  Visually, Kapsul is very clean and uncluttered. Images are presented at the top of the page and links to websites are at the bottom right corner of the page.  This particular pathfinder focuses on library materials, and I liked that I could place the parent guides, picture books, and DVDs in our collection front and center.  I was able to provide bibliographic information for each item in my Kapsul as well as a direct link to its entry in our online catalog. This is a particularly useful tool because patrons can access the Pathfinder and put the books that interest them on hold from the comfort of their home.  I also included two electronic parent guides that can be downloaded at anytime on any electronic device.

I look forward to sharing this curated list with our patrons because they can access this information 24/7 and there are a variety of materials that introduce different approaches to potty training.

What a perfect opportunity to create a tutorial on accessing, searching, and borrowing a book on Overdrive!  Overdrive is one of several digital library catalogs that our library offers to our patrons. Patrons can borrow e-books and e-audiobooks using their computer or tablet.  

One of the requirements of this week’s assignment was a 4-minute time limit, ensuring that our tutorials would be quick but easy to follow.  I have a tendency to get overly excited and provide too much information, so I wrote a script to help me present an effective, basic overview of Overdrive.  I wanted my instructions to be very clear and concise for my target audience (anyone over the age of 9).

Next, I looked at screencasting software.  I decided to use Screencast O'Matic because it was free and had a simple layout.  I was really happy with my choice. Screencast O'Matic’s intuitive user interface made it very easy to use.  A screen popped up that showed an outline of the parts of my computer screen that would be captured and recorded.  There was a simple toolbox that allowed me to adjust my microphone settings and record my tutorial. The developers made Screencast O’Matic accessible through downloadable software or an application you could run on your web browser via their website.  My favorite function was the ability to upload my video directly to YouTube.  For a free platform, I felt that it was accessible, well thought out, and functional.

I hope to use Screencast O’Matic to create more tutorials for our other e-resources and databases. I think that this would be a very helpful tool for our library patrons!  It’s practically like having your own #PocketLibrarian.

This week’s assignment in my Technology class focused on Digital Storytelling, which is a video created by a library or librarian for marketing or advocacy purposes.  We were placed into groups and tasked with creating a 3-4 minute long video that incorporated images, narration, and music.

My Technology class is a hybrid course, which means we meet in person once a month.  During last night’s April meet-up, we were given time to create our videos. My group members and I traded a few emails over the past week because we wanted to be able to hit the ground running when we met face-to-face.  We also did some brainstorming via Google Docs, specifically about what age groups we work with, programs we have done, and ideas we had for our video. We ultimately decided on a video that promoted diverse books for young children, elementary students, and teens.  Each of us selected two books and wrote a book talk for each book.

When it was time for us to get into our groups, my group retreated to a little techno nook that is the Secret Garden of the School of Information Science (SOIS) program at Dominican University.  I had no idea that this room of technological goodness existed until one of my group members suggested that we go in there to work on our project. One of my group members hooked up her Macbook to the two large monitors in the SOIS computer lab to screencast her computer, which enabled us all to see our project and offer suggestions.  This assignment also provided me with an introduction to iMovie. I liked how iMovie allowed us to record our narration and adjusted the volume of our narrator when we added background music. It was like techno magic!

I really enjoyed putting together this project and felt that my group collaborated well.  We each contributed to the final product: one of my group members is a total whiz at iMovie and made our video look slick, the other group member had great suggestions for edits to the video, and I was able to come up with an introduction and conclusion for our video using some pieces from my Social Justice In the Stacks webpage.  I am pretty proud of what we created.

I think that Digital Storytelling can be a really fantastic marketing tool for libraries.  I am on the planning committees for two of my library’s biggest annual celebrations - Harry Potter Day and Star Wars Day.  I think that highlighting some of the incredible photos taken at last year’s events would be a really great marketing tool for promoting both celebrations this year.  I also think that this could be used to create videos on our library webpage to promote new books, our kid favorites section, and even share some early literacy tips! As a digital consumer, I know that I gravitate toward videos and images and I am certain that the customers my library serves function similarly.  Short videos are a great way to promote library programming and materials.

I learned a dangerous new skill this week: how to make a book trailer!  If you are not familiar with book trailers, think of them as movie trailers for books.  I am now already planning to make some trailers for Book and Cookie Club. I think this would be an amazing way to announce the next book!  

The process of creating my book trailers required some time, beginning with deciding which book to feature.  I was originally going to make one for I Text Dead People by Rose Cooper, which is the Book and Cookie Club book for October.  As I was putting together my trailer, though, I realized that I could not remember some of the plot points because I had read it over six months ago!  I decided to instead go with a book that was still fresh in my mind from the March meeting of Book and Cookie Club: What We Found in the Sofa and How it Saved the World by Henry Clark.

I wrote down what I thought were the most exciting and engaging parts of What We Found: a rare zucchini colored crayon, a mysterious sofa, three friends, flash mobs, a devious plot, and saving the world.  Those plot points helped me decide what images I needed to find for my book trailer.

It is important to note that you should always follow copyright laws when you use images and video to create your high-quality book trailer.   I found the bulk of my images on Pixabay, many of which are under the Creative Commons license and are free to download -- as long as you are human.  Computers and robots do not get to download anything. The Captcha will stop them! I had a bit of trouble finding the right image for a trio of friends similar in age to the three main characters of What We Found: Freak, Fiona, and River.  I ultimately purchased a few credits on iStockphoto because I found two pictures that were perfect for my video.  I wish iStock had a student plan because $33 for three images is a bit expensive.

The assignment for this week stipulated that we had to create two book trailers using two different web-based applications.  One application, Animoto, was assigned to us and the other application could be one of our choosing.

This is the first time that I have used Animoto.  I signed up under the trial membership to create an Animoto Memories video.  The video styles are organized by classroom, event, and holiday. Each video style has a unique layout and format which, unfortunately, are not customizable.  You are committed to using the font and background that comes with your chosen layout. I liked that Animoto has a stock music library of songs that are three minutes or shorter to help support the tone of your video.  The tracks range from lilting instrumental to creepy organ music. Videos made using the free trial of Animoto are limited to 30 seconds in length. One particular annoyance I encountered was that the preview playback on Animoto’s site was not working.  I had to produce (publish) my video to check my work in order to know what edits I needed to make. Overall, Animoto has some pretty slick features, but not enough for me to justify paying $96 per year to use it.

I used Adobe Spark for my flyer last week and was curious to see how the video application would fare.  I must admit that I was pretty impressed! There is a tutorial that pops up when you click on “video” that walks you through how to make a video.  The user does not have much freedom to customize the text or color scheme because they are predetermined in each of the eight available themes. For each “slide” in the video, the user can select from one of four layout options: fullscreen, split screen, caption, and title with text.  The stock music library is not as extensive as Animoto’s, but users are able to upload their own audio. Viewing the video was very simple: there is a video reel located on the bottom of the screen that allows the user to play each “slide” and preview the video in its entirety. For a free service, I felt that Adobe Spark offers some great options for the first-time video creator.  I will definitely continue using Adobe Spark to create book trailers.

I am officially on Twitter.  I was avoiding Twitter like some people avoid clowns, dark basements, or lima beans (I avoid all three).  I decided to face my fears and try it out. Just kidding: I signed up because I had to as part of an assignment for school.  To my surprise and begrudging delight, Twitter is turning out to be a great networking tool that I think can use as a resource for finding new ideas in Libraryland.

Our assignment this week was to design two different promotional flyers: one digital and one printable.  I decided to make my promotional flyer for an upcoming special program that I am co-leading in May called “Artsy Babies”.

I used Canva to make the digital version of my promotional flyer.  This was my first time using Canva, and my experience with it makes me believe I would use it again in the future.  The layout of Canva is pretty straightforward; everything that you need to create your design sits in an easily navigated tool bar on the left side of the screen.  I decided to create my flyer from scratch rather than utilize one of Canva’s pre-made layouts. I liked the variety of design elements: lines, frames, shapes, illustrations, and photos.

Two drawbacks to Canva for me are the organizational system for the illustrations and photos and the lack of a grid or ruler.  I would have liked to see all of the free illustrations and photos separate from the Canva Pro and paid art. I ultimately signed up for a free trial of Canva Pro because I really liked some of the artwork and wanted to use it.  I would also like to see Canva incorporate a grid and ruler feature so that designers can ensure that the elements of their designs are lining up. I am not gifted in the area of spatial reasoning, so I appreciate when a design program has the option of gridlines or a ruler.  

I enjoyed using Adobe Spark and Canva to design my promotional flyers this week.  It was nice to try a new web based design program. My go-to program is PicMonkey, which is where I create images for my blog and website.  While it would have been a walk in the park for me to use PicMonkey to create my flyers, I think that it’s good to try some new programs every now and then.  

My group and I are preparing for a presentation where we will talk through the items we selected to purchase for our imaginary Makerspace Inventory.  The platform we have been assigned to use in the creation of this presentation is the ever popular Prezi.

As we assembled our Prezi, I found that I was pining for Google Slides.  There is not much of a learning curve in navigating how get started because of the handy “wizard” that walks the user through the initial stages of creating the presentation.  The simple and straightforward interface of Google slides makes it easy to navigate.  I consider myself to be fairly tech savvy and found Prezi’s interface to be confusing and frustrating.  I found myself watching several YouTube videos so I could figure out how to use Prezi.

Prezi’s organizational system for the presentation feels circular to me.  I prefer presentation layouts that are linear.  I created an outline for our presentation in a Google Doc to help us get our Prezi organized because I was feeling overwhelmed and frustrated with Prezi.  Another reason why I resulted to creating our outline for our presentation on a Google Doc was because Prezi makes it impossible for those with a student account to communicate with their collaborators.  In order to use the comment function on Prezi, the user must purchase a business membership.

The biggest annoyance that I encountered with Prezi is that they do not have the option to make the background of an imported image transparent. At first, I put the images into PowerPoint and made the backgrounds transparent.  I saved the images as .PNG files then attempted to import them into Prezi. I found that this method was unsuccessful. I researched transparency tools and learned of one called “Clipping Magic” which is a paid subscription. In Clipping Magic, I had to upload the images and manually remove the white backgrounds from each of the pictures then download each image as a .PNG file in order for the image to maintain its transparency and integrity on Prezi.  In the end, I spent close to two hours and $10 to get over twenty imported images to be transparent on Prezi.

I thought that Prezi could be a contender but given the amount of money and time I spent on this presentation, my verdict is not to Prezi. #GoogleAllTheWay

This week, my group and I were tasked with creating a proposal and inventory for a Makerspace.  Since my library already has one in place, we decided to create one for the school library of one of our group members; a K-2 primary school in the suburbs that does not have a Makerspace.  We were tasked with finding and selecting items to go in the Makerspace.  The funds for the items are coming from an imaginary one-time $3,000 grant.

The biggest challenge as we created our inventory was figuring out how to allocate the imaginary “grant funds.”  Since this “money” is something that would not be available the following school year, we wanted to make sure that we invested in some pieces of equipment that are sturdy and would last for a couple of years.  We did add consumable items like gluesticks, yarn, crayons, popsicle sticks, etc. We requested those items in bulk so that we could have a stockpile that would last a year or two.

​I enjoyed this assignment because I was able to apply my experience with Makerspaces, robots, STEAM library programs, and purchase ordering.  My library owns BeeBots, Squishy Circuits, Snap Circuits, and Dash and Dot robots that can be used in programming.  I have had the opportunity to use these items in special programs.  I know that they are great for the K-2 age group, so I wanted to make sure that I added those items into our inventory.

I created a Google Doc for my group where we could input our proposal, information about the school, and the list of items we would like to purchase for our Makerspace.  I started inputting items into the inventory based on items my library owns and found additional Makerspace supply ideas from Tinkerlab.  

This is not the first time I have used Google Docs to collaborate on something.  I like to use Google Docs to plan all of my library programming because there are times when I have to work at another location and do not always have access to the files on my desktop.  I prefer to use Google Docs because of the sharing capabilities.  I love that the sharing options allow for users to contribute or just view the Document.  I have used Google Docs to plan special programs with my colleagues at our other locations.  I have also used it to share the storytime songs and rhymes that I have used in Lapsit with the caregivers that attend my Lapsit program.  With this project, we utilized the comment and chat feature so that we could communicate with each other about the items in the inventory, aspects of the assignment, and details about the school.  

I am pretty thrilled with the list of items that we came up with for this assignment. I look forward to sharing these items with my classmates and hearing about the items they have found for their Makerspaces.  The best part will be bringing back some ideas to my library for us to use in our own Makerspace!

Here is a list of the inventory items.

One of our course readings is the book The Non-Designer’s Design Book Fourth Edition by Robin Williams.  Williams shares her four design concepts through the use of a colorful acronym CRAP: Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, and Proximity.  I thought that the information in this book was useful and I tried to keep the principles in mind as I made my brochure for Novelist K-8.

As one of my side hustles, I still maintain a Teachers Pay Teachers Store in order to share all of the resources I created when I was teaching.  When I first started my TPT store, I joined several Teacher Sellers groups to learn the best way to package and upload my resources.  Several Teacher Authors suggested the use of PowerPoint to create the resources because of the ease with which you can manipulate items on the page.  Also, when you save the document, the thumbnail icon displays an image of the cover page.  Many of my resources were originally created in Microsoft Word or Publisher which, compared to PowerPoint, limited how I could manipulate the text and images to make the resource appealing for my TPT store.  

I tried using LucidPress for this assignment, but had limited success.  I think that LucidPress has some great offerings for layouts, but I did not find one that could accommodate the screen shots of Novelist K-8 Plus to look the way I wanted.  I had some difficulty capturing clear screen shots at first but then stumbled on the Snipping Tool in Windows 10.  With a little practice, I was able to use the Snipping Tool to grab the specific images of our library website and Novelist to use for my brochure.  

The biggest challenges with creating this brochure were working within the space constraints (a single 8.5- by 11-inch page), making sure the information presented logically, clearly, and concisely, and having screen captures that were clear and meaningful.

I am happy with the final product and look forward to sharing it with the patrons that I serve.