Putting it Together and Taking it Apart

This week, we created a unit that incorporated 10 of the tech tools we learned about this semester. Whew, it was hard. Not to find 10 apps I liked, but to put them all into the same unit. The only way I made it work was that I grouped some of the tools together for the same lesson (like posting podcasts to a blog, and then uploading to iTunes). It also worked because I picked a unit I've love to teach, on Newbery Award books.

Looking back at all the tools we've been introduced to in the last module, here are my favorites so far:

1. Glogster
Glogster is the multimedia version of the poster making projects of the past (or, let's face it, now too!).  Your creativity takes you anywhere. Starting with a template, you add colors, graphics, text, audio, and video, all mashed up into a Glog. I've seen good Glogs about everything from Judy Blume or Christmas wish lists. Here's an awesome one.

2. The humble blog
It may not be as flashy or new, but the blog is still a great way to hear unique voices around the world. No matter what your interests are, there's someone out there whose blog calls your name. My current find this week.

3. Flickr
Although I'd used Flickr briefly for transporting a picture, I see so many more benefits to it now. Curating, tagging, mapping images, etc... the applications are endless. I like the idea of having a school or class repository of images that can be used for the school. I've been thinking of uses for artsy Flickr accounts like this one, Passionate About Stairs:

4. Diigo
I love Diigo! It's great to have a place to keep those links that I used to bookmark even just put on sticky notes. The tags are great, too--no need to go through the whole library. I like saving things I don't have time to look at now.

5. Twitter
Although I've been on Twitter for a while, I'm really starting to see the benefits of using it to connect to other teachers and librarians. Twitter is like having your own list of headlines. Opening up mine right now, I get: Jerry Blumengarten with cybraryman; comedy; Huffington post; Downton Abbey; edutopia; US Weekly; Book Riot; Savvy Authors; Writer's Digest; psychfeed; Disability in Kidlit... all in that order! I love the mix of the fun with the more serious tweets; I don't want it any other way!