<![CDATA[     { creating  designing  composing  performing  learning  teaching |  for life - The Singing Librarian]]>Sat, 19 May 2012 08:12:02 -0800Weebly<![CDATA[Technology Skills for Preservice (and Inservice!) Teachers]]>Fri, 30 Mar 2012 09:51:13 -0800http://www.bradandlucygreen.com/1/post/2012/03/technology-skills-for-preservice-teachers.htmlLately I have been involved in two projects. First, here at Georgia Southern, I am working with other faculty members to provide technology integration workshops to our preservice teachers. These workshops cover the gamut of technology skills that teachers need to have - and these are tied to content methods! A win-win, as far as I'm concerned. For more information on this project, visit the Digital Wave website.

Second, my husband, the brilliant Dr. Brad Green, and I presented at the National Association for Music Education this week. We talked about the importance of technology skills being embedded in content coursework. This all comes from the idea that technology training for teachers should be provided by folks that have a deep understanding of the content these teachers are expected to teach (school librarians, anyone?!?). We built a whole page around this with lots of goodies so visit the NAfME 2012 presentation page for more information! ]]><![CDATA[Evaluating Mobile Apps]]>Fri, 03 Feb 2012 22:16:39 -0800http://www.bradandlucygreen.com/1/post/2012/02/evaluating-mobile-apps.htmlI'm at the home stretch of finalizing a book chapter and took a quick, productive Twitter break. SCORE! Look what I found thanks to Neil Stephenson?

http://eraccommons.ca/mobileapps/Over 200 apps analyzed and categorized by grade level - rated by teachers like you! Since the site asks for app recommendations I'm sure this list will only grow. 

Bookmark it and/ or add it to your PLN today! 

For more information on evaluating apps, visit the Middle Grades Science page on my website for Kathy Schrock resources and more.

]]><![CDATA[Authoring Your Own E-Book]]>Fri, 20 Jan 2012 20:18:51 -0800http://www.bradandlucygreen.com/1/post/2012/01/authoring-your-own-e-book.htmlApple's latest announcement of its new application: iBooks Author, will, once again, revolutionize an industry. I am interested to see what this tool means for publishing, for textbooks, for education, for the idea of students as creators...I am (let's admit it) a bit excited and nervous! If you don't have a Mac and cannot download iBooks Author for free, try some of the tools listed below (easy to use and free are the criteria here). If you have more, please share!

1. FlipSnack - Create a flip book by combining PDF documents

2. StoryJumper - If the online version isn't enough, you can even order a hard copy

3. Storybird - Beautiful graphics and the ability to embed

4. Youblisher - The same concept as FlipSnack

5. Page Flip Flap - Upload a range of file types to create your e-book

6. ZooBurst - Create e-books with 3D pop-ups! ]]><![CDATA[iPad Apps for Middle Grades Science]]>Mon, 10 Oct 2011 15:56:48 -0800http://www.bradandlucygreen.com/1/post/2011/10/ipad-apps-for-middle-grades-science.htmlThis week I'll get to teach a Middle Grades Science lesson on using iPads in the classroom. Since I only have about an hour and fifteen minutes and a LOOOONG list of free apps to share, I'll be taking the show-n-tell approach. Last year, the College of Ed at Georgia Southern purchased a class set of iPads for use with our students. At any rate, considering how long it took me to comb through websites, reviews and (not  counting all the time it took to download and play with these apps), I thought I would share the list here. There's no annotation or explanation. But they all work, they download quickly, and best of all...they are FREE! If you can't see the Voice Thread I have embedded below on your iPad, download Puffin - a browser  that allows you to view flash-based websites and videos. It costs .99 cents and is well worth the buck:
]]><![CDATA[Delicious to Diigo and other cool stuff]]>Tue, 20 Sep 2011 21:41:07 -0800http://www.bradandlucygreen.com/1/post/2011/09/delicious-to-diigo-and-other-cool-stuff.htmlThis week, while working on putting together a lesson for a classroom of future middle school science teachers, I ran across a few great sites. As we all know, locating and collecting resources can take up a HUGE amount of time. That's why I love my Diigo and bookmark like crazy. Every once in a while, somebody uses a cool tool at a presentation or conference or (and this is REALLY weird), the supermarket and that is when I pull out my handy-dandy smartphone with bookmarking app installed to make sure the tool is saved for future reference. There are bookmarking apps for everything and I encourage you to pick one and install it everywhere. Aside from Diigo, another one I can recommend is Evernote (though not as novice user-friendly as Diigo). Advantage to bookmarking: Easy way to start your personal learning network!

Here are a few sites I just added to my Diigo account:
  1. More Ideas Than You'll Ever Use for Book Reports
  2. Top 20 (should be Top 1 million!!!) Web 2.0 Must Haves for Every 21st Century Classroom

Finally, I recently posted a research article that compared what parents want from teacher websites to what teachers THINK parents want from teacher websites. Here's a quick and dirty summary of that table:

teacher_website_essentials.pdf
File Size: 111 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File
Obviously there are some issues here. Your parents and teachers, if surveyed, might give you a completely different list. There are also some questions: parents want a forum for class information and news but not a blog - maybe these parents did not truly understand what a blog was. However, these results do point out the importance of communicating with parents and students before spending time designing a website for your classroom or school library. Why put effort into something they will never use or look at while ignoring information they want?
]]><![CDATA[Web designing in k-12]]>Wed, 31 Aug 2011 08:57:28 -0800http://www.bradandlucygreen.com/1/post/2011/08/web-designing-in-k-12.htmlBrowsing and browsing the web brought two things to my attention. The first was an article by Farhad Manjoo, technology columnist for Slate Magazine.  The title of the article is "Overdone: Why are Restaurant Websites so Horrifically Bad." The title provides a clear overview of his argument. Here are a few sentences that stood out to me: 

" Over the last few weeks I've spent countless hours, now lost forever, plumbing the depths of restaurant Web hell. I also spoke to several industry experts about the reasons behind all these maliciously poorly designed pages. I heard several theories for why restaurant sites are so bad - they can't afford to pay for good designers, that they don't understand what people want from a site, and that they don't really care what's on their site. But the best answer I found was this: Restaurant sites are the product of restaurant culture. These nightmarish websites were spawned by restaurateurs who mistakenly believe they can control the online world the same way they lord over a restaurant."  

I encourage you to read this short article. Aside from having some hilarious commentary and examples, it was eye-opening to me. Are we guilty of spending more time worrying about widgets, gadgets, mouse trail icons (please let these die), cute pencil shaped buttons etc. than we are about making sure teacher and school library media websites are workable for students and parents? Don't get me wrong. I LOVE a neatly embedded widget just as much as the next person. But sometimes all of this business overwhelms teachers and keeps them from designing and maintaining websites all together.

If you have wanted to start a website for your classroom or school library and cannot begin to imagine where the time will come from, let me encourage you to focus on the information parents and students WANT. Choose a tool and layout that is friendly and easy to explore, that a parent can quickly pull up on his or her smartphone, that will load quickly on your school's network.

This brings me to the second thing I ran across while browsing this week: The Organized Classroom's post on using Shutterfly to create teacher websites. Check it out! Another tool I recently fell in love with is Snap Pages. It works similar to Weebly in that you can drag and drop tools. A smaller number of free templates, but the upside is that you have much more freedom to modify these templates (in terms of layout, color, graphics). Plus, unlike Weebly, there is no need to mess around with HTML5 or CSS to modify the templates and save them as your own.

Here are some excellent examples of teacher  and library websites that use simple tools - easy to update, easy to maintain, chock full of information. Again, today we are focusing on practicality, not beauty:

1. Mrs. McCallar's Class - A 1st grade teacher's class website using Blogger
2. BMS Library Media Center - A school library using Google Site (a bit crowded menu-wise but good for ideas)
3. AISB Elementary School Library - elementary school librarian uses Net Vibes, social media included!
4. Mrs. Bentheim's Class - A 6th grade reading teacher combined a wiki and the free web design tool, Wix, to create an informative site.

Tips:
  • Focus on the content and organization FIRST. If folks can't find the information you post, they will become frustrated and quit visiting the site.
  • Use a tool that you can access at school despite the firewall.
  • Use a tool you can easily update and share.
  • Actually update it!
  • Consider polling your parents and asking them what they would like to see on your class or library website.
  • Use original, student-created clip art and music 
]]><![CDATA[Personal learning network how-tos from around the web]]>Wed, 31 Aug 2011 07:30:23 -0800http://www.bradandlucygreen.com/1/post/2011/08/personal-learning-network-how-tos-from-around-the-web.htmlHey everybody! It has been a CRAZY week in a household made up of two profs and one student. Now, Back-to-School madness has settled just a tad and I have several posts to put up today so...if you like blog posts you are in luck!  Continuing on my personal learning network journey from before, here are some GREAT resources I collected which provide excellent How-To's on building your PLN. If you have been toying with the idea and feel overwhelmed, then despair no more! 


1. A Principal's Reflections: Eric Sheninger posted an article on his blog that suggests several tools along with a short description and links to videos demonstrating how these work.
2. A Teacher's Thoughts: Ian Snyder, a 2nd grade teacher, has a post on his blog that lays out the process of building a PLN just like one of those diet charts: breakfast, lunch and dinner. Although this post is a year old, it is still timely and organized specifically for newbies.
3. Thinking in Mind: Neil Stephenson is a professional development and outreach coordinator at Calgary Science School. This particular blog post collects videos, links to articles and some interesting commentary. 
There you go! Three resources on PLNs complete with links to blogs you can add to your own network + plus some folks to follow on Twitter.  ]]><![CDATA[Personal learning networks or why I changed my mind]]>Tue, 16 Aug 2011 18:21:41 -0800http://www.bradandlucygreen.com/1/post/2011/08/personal-learning-networks-or-why-i-changed-my-mind.htmlWhen I first heard the term Personal Learning Network, it seemed like a waste of time...or maybe the name seemed like a waste of time. Wasn't I already reading up on stuff, grabbing ideas, going to conferences? Why did I need to name it or put it all out there?  Then I watched a video by Skip Via and he pointed out that I had a responsibility to SHARE what I had learned with others. You might think this is an obvious idea - after all, we're educators and our main job is to help others learn. Right?  

Then again, I'm not talking about developing a lesson plan or training. I'm talking about the unofficial stuff - like how do you use Twitter or networked blogs? The kind of informal learning that happens almost by accident.  Personal Learning Networks formalize that learning. PLNs grab all the random bits of websites and postings and tutorials and chats and conversations, and videos that you comb through and give OTHERS a chance to travel through your mind map. If you think about it, this is an incredible result!  My colleague, Dr. Repman, sent me a link to an article today (I linked it at the bottom of this post for you too). It ends with this quote: "the best teachers in (students') lives are going to be the ones they find, not the ones given to them." Woa.

So for a while, on this blog, I'm going to take you all on the PLN journey with me. How others do it, what they use, what they've learned. If you have thoughts and ideas to share, please comment and let me know.

Article of the Day (courtesy of Dr. Judi Repman): Students cast wide net for mentoring with PLNs
Awesome Blog for techie questions you don't want to ask your co-workers: AskAdria ]]><![CDATA[Why that free weebly banner is going to stay for a while]]>Thu, 28 Jul 2011 12:23:15 -0800http://www.bradandlucygreen.com/1/post/2011/07/first-post.htmlWeebly is not the best tool around for free web design. It can be restrictive and buggy - although HUGE strides were made since I first started using Weebly as a teaching tool 4 years ago. Even so, I love it. I love its templates, I love that I can go in to code and scramble up breakfast and I love that beautiful design is possible in a free WYSIWYG. This is important. If this website isn't lovely and peaceful to look at, you'll go somewhere else. 
Now, why is that annoying Weebly banner going to stay at the bottom? Because I go on and on to my students about the benefits of having a professional website that LOOKS professional but is FREE. So I am going to practice what I preach.
Article of the Day: Unal, Z. (2008). Going the extra step for parental involvement. Connecting family and school with the power of teacher websites. Journal of College Teaching & Learning. 5(6), 43-50.  ]]>