If you spend a lot of time online, you probably have a list of websites you use frequently. At home, it's easy to add your go-to sites to your Bookmarks or Favorites. But what if you want to find that frequently used site while you're not at home with your own browser? Or you want to put that list of favorites on your smartphone or tablet? Or maybe you have a collection of Web resources you want to share with others? Symbaloo can help! Symbaloo is an easy-to-use online graphic organizer for all your favorite websites. Each collection is called a webmix. The opening page of the site is a sample webmix loaded with popular Web destinations. If you create your own free Symbaloo account, you can start with your own blank webmix and fill it with sites that you choose. There are a number of ways to search for sites to add, and many sites automatically generate their own label images for the graphic interface buttons. You can even stack webmixes several layers deep... one webmix can contain buttons that link to different webmixes that cover different categories of sites. Check it out at symbaloo.com . And don't forget to try the CSMS Media Center's webmix at http://www.symbaloo.com/mix/csmsmedia . Happy webmixing!
Summer's not over yet! If you're looking for a great book or two to end your summer right, check out NPR's "100 Must-Reads For Kids 9-14":
http://www.npr.org/2013/08/05/207315023/the-ultimate-backseat-bookshelf-100-must-reads-for-kids-9-14 Thanks to John Schu (@MrSchuReads on Twitter), I have discovered the joys of Padlet. There are a zillion ways to use this, and I am looking forward to having kids share their ideas here. It's incredibly easy to create a wall and share a link so that kids can jump on and start collaborating. For starters, I think I want to create a wall for each class that comes for book checkout and ask each kid to share the title and author of one book they are reading. I got this far in about 15 minutes on two different desktops in my house and my phone. It's free to sign up for Padlet; all you need is an email address. Once you have an account, you can create multiple walls and share the address for each wall with anyone you want to have access. You can set the security for any given wall at several different levels, from completely private by-email-invite-only to public and Google-searchable. There are also different administrative settings for who can view the wall and who can post to it. To post, users can type or paste text and add files, photos, or links to their posts. Lots of possibilities here; looking forward to finding ways to use it...
Whatever this guy is doing, he has the right idea. This is the kind of effect I want to have on my students. Trying to join the 21st century and open myself up to social media as a PD tool, I discovered the awesome concept of Matthew Winner’s Shelf Challenge. Sadly, I only discovered it two days before it ended. In an attempt to jump in and get involved, I’m looking at a small section of my S shelves where the David Shannon books happen to be. Now, anyone who’s read a book to primary school kids in the past 10 years is familiar with David, the protagonist of No, David! and its follow-up titles. But are you familiar with David Shannon’s other characters?
Alice the Fairy Alice would just LOVE to be a full-time fairy, but she’s still too little. She has a good handle on what fairies do, though; she’s already using her magic wand to transform her dad into a horse and oatmeal into cake, among other things. The adorable Alice will seem familiar to readers young and old, as her antics aren’t too far off from David’s. The illustrations are drawn in Shannon’s trademark advanced-Crayola style, which enhances the pre-school storyteller’s tone. This would be a great read-aloud to get kindergarteners to think about playing pretend and using their imagination. Good Boy, Fergus! Fergus is an adorable, happy little terrier. He is not, however, the most well-behaved dog. His adventures include chasing cars and cats and getting tummy-rubs, and for the most part, do NOT involve doing what his master says. That doesn’t make him any less lovable, though… he’s ALWAYS a good boy, no matter what. This book is also drawn in a style similar to No, David!, and like that book, the text consists primarily of what is being said TO the main character. Kids will love Fergus and will certainly identify him with their own pets. Thanks for taking a look. My name is Richard Wurtz. I’ve been teaching for Washington County Public Schools for 19 years. I started out teaching middle school English Language Arts. Over the course of 13 years, I grew disillusioned with my job as teaching English became less about teaching kids to love reading and literature and more about teaching kids to pass a big test. Then, at one point, my classroom was located in an open area at the end of the library, and I became friends with our school librarian. Watching what she did all day, I told her what a cool job I thought she had.
Her response was simple: “So why don’t you get your master’s degree in school library media?” Good question. So good, in fact, that three years later, I had my Master’s degree in School Library & Information Technologies from Mansfield University. At the end of that school year, I looked for a library media position in our school system. Both elementary and middle school positions were available. I didn’t know where I’d fit best. I decided, hesitantly, to apply for an elementary position. Now I’ve been an elementary LMS for six years and I’ve just accepted a middle school position for the 2013-2014 school year. Why the change? Well, I’m ready. I think that’s all there is to it. I think when I started as an LMS, I was better suited to the needs of elementary kids. Now that I’ve been doing this a while, I have some different ideas about what I want to do with it, where I want it to go. I’ve gotten help, encouragement, and inspiration from some really amazing people in the field. I’ve seen people do things with kids and technology that I never would have imagined. (I even managed to do a couple of those things myself.) And as cool as I thought that media specialist’s job was 8 or 9 years ago, I’ve been shown that it’s actually way cooler than that, if I would just jump in and make it happen. |
Mr. WurtzI taught middle school English for 13 years. Then I was an elementary library media specialist for 6 more. Now I'm trying my hand at library media in a middle school. Archives
June 2015
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