Out of the mouths of babes

A weekly segment in which I interview some young pup on what they are reading.

YFNL: Why, hello, Miss. I noticed that you are reading one of my favorite books, The book that eats people by the amazingly talented Ann Arborite, John Perry and illustrated by Mark Fearing.

Young Miss: Yes, I am.

YFNL: I wonder if you would mind if I interviewed you about the book.

Young Miss: I would not mind at all.

YFNL: For the purposes of our interview, I will allow you to choose an alias so as to prevent weirdos from reading this and knowing your identity. What alias would you like to choose?

Young Miss: I choose Your Friendly Neighborhood Weirdo.

YFNL: Are you mocking me?

YFNW: Maybe.

YFNL: Can you tell me a little bit about The book that eats people?

YFNW: This book is about a book that you should never read while eating food. If you do, it will eat. you. up.

YFNL: What is your favorite part?

YFNW: My favorite part is when the book eats Victoria Glassford after hitting her over the head.

YFNL: A fan of violence are we?

YFNW: Quite.

YFNL: How do you feel about the illustrations in the book?

YFNW: I like how the illustrations look like they are cut out of newspapers.

YFNL: To whom would you recommend this book or would you recommend it at all?

YFNW: I would recommend this book to my annoying brother.

YFNL: Are you hoping that the book eats him?

YFNW: Yes.

YFNL: Well, thank you for agreeing to my interview. I bid you a lovely day.

YFNW: See ya.

Just bought two of these bad boys for the library. I am going to download some stories from kids.audible.com I am looking for something short because my idea, at least initially, is to have the mp3 players set up as a center. I have several centers that kids can visit after they are done checking out: magnetic poetry, hangman, magnadoodles, brain buster puzzles, pop up books, bookmark making and this year I added flannel board storytelling and listening center.

One of the cool things about these mp3 players is their ability to record. I am hoping to have the fifth graders do some podcasts this year of book reviews and add them to my wiki. This looks like a simple tool to help me achieve that.

Wordle me this, Batman

I decided to try Wordle to write a review of the superly awesome book "Let's do something!" by Tony Fucile. Check it out then get over to Wordle and make one for yourself!

Whew! I made it!

Prior to participating in this class, I thought I was fairly tech savvy. I took digital pictures and uploaded them to the web, I made digital videos and shared them with others, I used Skype, made a Facebook page, kept a blog. But, I didn't use a lot of those things with my students. There were too many technological hurdles - old computers, stressed servers, lack of materials, lack of time. Throughout this course, I learned about many things that I CAN use with my students that circumvent some of those barriers.

I think the Thing I am most excited about is Thing 22. I created a wiki and I can think of some easy ways to use it with students. I am hoping that as the school year begins and my plate becomes full, I will still have the excitement and committment to editing and expanding the wiki.

I am also super excited about video podcasts. I did a quick one with my daughter - she is an excellent student - with just a few pointers. I can totally see doing this with my students and adding their video booktalks and presentations to the wiki I made.

I hope to keep up with new innovations by checking in with with the feeds on my Bloglines account, checking in with the wikis I discovered, reading the blogs of the participants in this course - everyone is going to keep those up, right? - and hopefully, participating in more opportunities like this class!

I feel I have a better sense of the opportunities for reaching students with technology than I ever did before.

My Wiki - Mrs. Gatto on books

Oh. my. god. I have been having sooo much fun creating my wiki! I created a homepage using Glogger which was super cool. The site has lots of free graphics and you can upload photos and videos of your own, as well. So much fun!

I changed my logo by uploading a digital picture that my husband took of me yesterday in my library chair. I did a video podcast of my daughter doing a booktalk and linked it to the homepage. I created a wiki page where students can add books they would like to see added to the library. I did a page of new books recently added to the collection. I have lots of ideas on what I can do in the future - book discussion pages, student video podcasts of booktalks and bookreviews, pathfinders for teachers, etc. My mind is swirling with all the possibilities!

Check out the wiki here!

I really like how the wiki has blog elements - you can keep an on line dialogue about what is going on in your classroom, library, life, etc. - but it also has the community aspect to it which rocks! Students, community members, can add their thoughts and ideas to create something totally new and exciting! I am looking forward to trying this out in my library this year!

Wikis

I haven't really thought about creating a wiki of my own - it seems like a lot of work although the ones I checked out today were really cool and inspiring. I really liked wikiHow. It had how to steps for all sorts of things. I learned how to make a book using old cassette tape inserts. I can see kids really getting into using wikiHow to discover how to do new things AND sharing what they know about with others.

I discovered BookLeadsWiki--Reading Resources at the collection of educational wikis and it is really cool! I loved the great ideas and resources that were compiled for librarians. It even includes videos, documents and step-by-step guides on things like creating book promotion screen savers for your library computers - something I am definitely going to do!

I would love to explore wikis and how they could be used in my library, but even with input from others, it seems like a big time consumer. Recently, my assistant had her hours reduced in the library which is going to impact everything from the daily running of the library to cataloging books. It will be difficult to squeeze in time to create and maintain a wiki.

Podcasts Part II

I played around with EPN and Podcast Alley, but I wasn't really successful. There were some podcasts that seemed interesting to me - ones I would use with students, perhaps - but many of them were out of date. Several hadn't been updated with new podcasts in a couple of years. There are some podcasts on these sites that I would download, but not subscribe to because they are no longer active. When you are talking about podcasts that are supposed to be reviewing new books, it has to be something that is updated frequently. I had much more success at iTunes.

I subscribed to a video podcast that has book trailers for popular children's books. While many of the books were geared toward middle school and up, there were several titles reviewed that would be appropriate to my upper elementary age students. I subscribed to the podcast, "Booktrailers, like commercials...for books!" and then downloaded past episodes that were relevant like the one for Neil Gaiman's "The graveyard book."

I think these video podcasts could be something that I would share with students in the library via our presentation cart. I can download the trailers I am going to use to my thumb drive then use the computer hooked to our data projector to share them on the big screen in the library. I know kids will be super excited to check out the titles I share in this way!