Digital Flyers as Library Advocacy

I started using S’more last school year as a way to share all the awesome “goings-on” in the library.  My first S’more showcased some lessons I taught with our LEAP students, a hilarious video of me as Lady Gaga for our Contemporary World #Aid4Africa project, and a request to teachers to have me help with planning. My main audience was for teachers at my school.

See Spring Break Smore

Then spring got really busy and we Skyped with middle grade/young adult author Claire Legrand, had a ton of fun with Mozilla Popcorn Maker, and celebrated National Library Week with the  #LMShelfie!

See April Edition Smore

This school year I started using Tackk to create my library advocacy flyers and I love the way it embeds social media tools like Vine and Twitter.  My fall edition discusses International #DotDay, #readfortherecord,  Origami #makermonday madness, brushbot madness, and pathfinders for research. My new audience is now parents of our students, my Twitter librarian BFFS, and anyone who has been collaborating with the library.

See fall 2015 Tackk 

Digital Flyers as a 21st Century Research Tool 

I also found S’more to be an excellent tool for creating pathfinders for students.  Last Spring I started utilizing the Google Apps Add-on Doctopus to create and copy research Cornell Note forms for students.  I simply embedded a link to my S’more Pathfinder on the Cornell Notes, so that students would ALWAYS have access to the pathfinder and database resources.

   

Another thing I loved about S’more, is that I could put all of the teacher created resources in one place along with a visual guide to navigating a database!

Students would then take their notes in Google Docs and color code their notes with their sources.

You are a Witness Gdoc Template

You are a Witness S’more Pathfinder

Digital Flyers as Presentation of Teaching

During another Inquiry project this year, I created a PBL Google Site and then used the Google Apps add-on Site Maestro to copy and share individual Google Sites for my students’ 8th ELA All Songs project.  A lot of planning and co-teaching was involved in creating this incredible strategic design music-driven unit. During the whole PBL, I was tweeting, vining, and documenting every step.  Near the end, I realized I could streamline the entire PBL on Tackk so it would be easy to share with others.  You can learn more about the whole project a couple of episodes back!  This project was also showcased on our district’s 1:x blog.

Digital Flyers to Teach Students

I really enjoyed the presentation at TCEA by @sue_fitz and @kjrvaldez where they used S’more to present lots of amazing apps and ways to utilize them in their session “Take it Beyond an App for That!” Because of that experience, I decided to utilize a digital flyer (Tackk) when my Science teachers asked me to help them create a lesson about creating a Public Service Announcement whilst showcasing new tools for students to use in the presentation of their PBL.  I love how you can scroll through a presentation. For the last two days, I’ve been able to teach 6th graders about Public Service Announcements by showing them all of the different ways they could make one! The most enjoyable aspect was listening to them buzz about which #edtech tool they enjoyed the most!

See PSA Presentation for Students

Digital Presentations

So, I’ll admit, I’m having a bit of a love affair with digital flyers, and when I present #makerspaces at SXSWedu in a couple of weeks, I bet you can guess what I’ll be using?

Check back soon for that presentation!