As a person with a limited online presence, the goal for me in this class has been to familiarize myself with the current uses of technology especially in a school setting.  The sandbox assignments in this course have helped me on that path, and I am feeling more competent in my ability to facilitate the use of these tools.  To keep current on future trends, I found several websites that I really liked and felt would help me to that end. 

One such website was tech4schoollibrarians.com.  It appealed to me for many reasons.  First, Heather A. Turner’s Bitmoji illustration was familiar because Bitmojis became popular with teachers during the pandemic and that familiarity put me at ease.  The site had a clean look, was easy to navigate, and I found helpful blogs about topics of interest to me.  One blog compared Canva and Piktochart for use in the classroom.  Her experience with both led her to prefer Piktochart for her students because she felt it had great templates but was easier to use (Turner, 2022).  I will have to check it out to see for myself because I am a pretty big fan of Canva after using it for several projects.  She also included an article about the use of escape rooms.  Of course, when I saw one was Harry Potter themed, I had to stop and play, and I’m proud to say, I only had to rework one math problem in order to escape.  While I’m not sure an escape room would be my first choice in primary school, gamification is certainly used regularly in second grade especially for review and is something I am interested in learning more about.  One thing I did notice, however, is she does not post new information as regularly as some of the other sites.

Another website that I liked was ditchthattextbook.com.  Though I am not in favor of getting rid of textbooks because they provide experience with navigating books, I did find a lot of useful information on this site.  One blog I found helpful was called How to Chromebook.  I wish I had this two years ago when we were given Chromebooks because they are just different from laptops.  For example, there is no cap lock key on a Chromebook, but in the blog, I learned that if you press control + alt + ?, a keyboard shortcut page will appear.  There you can do a search and if there’s a shortcut, they will show you.  In case you’re wondering, to set the cap lock, just press alt + search (Miller, 2022).  This will be so helpful to me moving forward.  Another thing I liked about this website was that the blogs are sorted by category, like gamification, Chromebooks, virtual fieldtrips, etc. in a section called Explore the DTT Blogs.  I can see myself using this site a lot in the future to answer tech questions and see new trends.

Another amazing resource was the Digital Librarian’s Survival Toolkit.  There is so much information in there I could spend hours exploring though the site is very busy and a bit overwhelming.  One of the links I explored was Kristina Holzweiss’ video about applications for using QR codes with Flipgrid.  It was just a four-minute video but there were so many suggestions on how to use them I began to feel simultaneously inspired and overwhelmed.  One really cute idea she had was to celebrate kids with summer birthdays.  While school was still in session, she gave students birthday crowns with a QR code on them.  Classmates then scanned them and made videos for them that they could watch on their birthdays later (n.d.).  I loved that idea and wished it had been available for my youngest daughter.  She was always a little disappointed because she couldn’t celebrate with her classmates because of her summer birthday.  I also liked the sample library newsletter that she created with Wakelet.  In addition to providing an example of what might be included on a school librarian’s page, I found some really good videos for teaching sight words to struggling readers.  Again, there is so much good information in here, I was only able to scratch the surface.  I will definitely be going back to check out more of the tech resources in this digital toolkit.  

References

Holzweiss, K. A. (n.d.). Flipping over Flipgrid QR codes. A digital librarians toolkit. https://read.bookcreator.com/mvPgY7WlzpZ0iB6KWCYbUdmFdOo2/csMtTr4PTQCk-jfc8U6ygQ

Miller, M. (2022). Chromebooks in the classroom. Ditch That Textbook. https://ditchthattextbook.com/chromebook/#t-1642000206714

Turner, H. A. (2022, Feb. 15). Canva vs. Piktochart: Infographic wars. Tech4schoollibrarians. https://www.tech4schoollibrarians.com/canva-vs-piktochart-infographic-wars/