At One's Fingertips: New Plan

Personal Information Management

I would say I have a good memory for the day to day things that I need to do.  “It’s all up there”  But when it comes to writing up the monthly reports for my work.  I end up short changing myself.  Yes, there are lists of what I have done.  But it sometimes fails to capture the qualatative value of the work.  Something a student says or an observation I might make about the library or an activity can be forever lost.  Where did I write it down!

Evernote – “Remembering everything”  after several weeks of using it, I think it has definitely put structure on this. It is easy to use. Initially I thought I would put a note in everyday.  But I ended up leaving it open on my desktop.  I liked that I could add notes to do with a whole variety of things.  I am great for writing things down on scraps of paper and then loosing or misplacing them. I have a notebook for taking notes at meetings or things I need to do, or sometimes when a student or colleague requests help  I take notes.   However it’s hard to find the page where you wrote the piece of information when your under pressure!!  It's never as obvious as you think even if you did underline the page!!   It doesn’t look very professional flipping through pages looking for a note you wrote down.  I liked  that you could tag and search in the title and body of text. Adding links and attachments was consistent with programs I am using.  I did look for an insert function to upload images, but then discovered it was as easy as drag and drop!

It was useful to share ideas and class plans with colleagues.  I worked with one of the English teachers on a Make a Book project - I was also able to share with the teacher and  students  text, ideas and images for this project.

In work we use  microsoft office, some colleagues use Onenote.  As a result of this task I will take a look at using OneNote.   They both appear to allow you to collect, organize and share pictures.  I suppose the biggest benefit offered by these packages is that they do away with notebooks, post-its and pieces of paper I have been using to jot down random bits of information, thoughts, reminders, telephone numbers etc.  Once I have created notes in Evernote I have the ability to gain access using my tablet, or mobile phone.  Keeping everything together at one's finger tips!

#Thing 13: Reluctant Networker

I must start by saying .......

I had ruled out applying for this badge Online Networker.   I though I am not that concerned about it.  The concept of having a personal brand didn’t really apply or appeal to me or so I thought.  The more I read (Thing 10 – 12) the more it made me reflect on my online presence and how important it is to take control of it.

Personal Branding and Managing it

The first thing I checked was my online presence.  Yes, I googled myself!  What came up wasn’t that shocking.  The order was interesting Linkedin, facebook and twitter.  Initially I went OMG I haven’t looked at or updated my Linkedin page in years!!  This exercise made me reflect on the social media accounts I have set up and how I use/don’t use them. 

My facebook account was setup for personal use, to stay in contact with family abroad.  I don’t post frequently.  However #Thing10,  prompted me to set up a professional page from this account and I sent requests to join other professional groups and individuals in the Library world. I also checked my privacy settings.

I have two twitter accounts one with my personal name and one under the handle @stpaulscclib.  I decided for now to delete the personal one.  I then linked my twitter account to my professional facebook page.

I realise that I have been very complacent about my professional /personal brand online.  So I set about updating my linkedin account.  My engagement with social media with the exception of my school twitter account has been lackadaisical.  I had registered for all of these platforms but I had not really signed up!  Hence I had not been really taking care of my brand. 

#Thing 11 Creating a Bio

I have worked hard at building my profile on twitter @stpaulscclib, but you wouldn’t necessarily associate it with me “Hilary Cantwell.”  I suppose I view that account as promoting the role of JCSP Librarians rather than an individual.   What gets lost is me as an individual, my passion for promoting the love of reading but also the important role librarians play in their communities, giving access to lifelong learning, culture and the arts.

It may also suit me to be anonymous. I probably lack the confidence in speaking up and I tend to be cautious in my use of social media.  I only share things but I am hesitant to share my opinions.  As a professional working in an environment which is dominated by another profession it is sometimes hard to voice your opinion and it is even harder to make your voice heard.  I need to proactively seek opportunities to make my voice heard and the unique perspective a school librarian has, that "birds eye view." 

I also know that my personal brand needs to evolve, it will change over time but I now realise I need to be in control.  I need to revisit and update my brand more frequently than I have.  It is after all in my best interest. Writing a bio made me focus on what I wanted people to know about me online.

Online networking has made it easier to join, get involved and engage with professional library organisations, so why haven’t I?  At the start of my working life I sent away countless membership forms to join ALA, NYLA – SSL, HVLA (Hudson Valley Libitrary Association) so what’s my problem.  I think there is pressure if you have an online presence you also need to be vocal, comment and post regularly,  For me I have found it a bit overwhelming.   

Orcid 

I had never heard of but found it interesting to read about why it was set up – ensuring individuals and institutions get full credit for their work and research.   I didn’t set up an account as I felt it was not appropriate or relevant to my current work.  But it is good to know what it it and the purpose it serves.

#Thing 12 Collaborative Tools

Although I work as a solo librarian I am part of a larger community of JCSP Librarians. Our work is largely collaborative and this approach has provided much needed support in an environment which could be isolating.  We use google drive to share documents.  We share a project calendar, lesson plans and a myriad of documents to do with library practice.  As well as being part of a large group of 30 librarians, I also work collaboratively regionally with a smaller group.  We have used google drive to plan and organise South East Spelling Challenge which takes place March 15th. This has been really efficient way of delegating and getting work done rather than meeting up, which is not practical.  Alot of  time would have been lost in the commute.

Trello a collaborative tool that allows you organise your projects into boards in one glance was very appealing I liked that it tells you what's being worked on, who's working on what and where something is in the process.  The boards have multiple lists.  I liked it.  The closest tool to this that I am using at the moment is padlet.  It is very popular in the school environment.  I have used it to manage and work on projects with  teachers in other schools.  I recently participated in a paired science project which was a city wide initiative.  We shared work using padlet.  I have also used padlet to share work and get feedback from students and with student council.  I think Trello is far more sophisticated and I will try to encourage my working groups to use it.  

I had never heard of slack I intend investigating all its capablilities in the future.  

With regard to doodle, I have never used it and I am embarassed to say when we have tried to  schedule a meeting for all the jcsp librarian we have used a google form, suggesting possible dates and people selecting the one that works for them and the meeting being determined by the majority.  It seems a little bit laborious after looking at doodle!

I have used skype in the past to participate in projects with schools mostly abroad.  For the most part it was a positive experience but really depended on the quality of the connection and equipment being used.  I am a fan of WhatsApp - video calls when speaking to colleagues and also have used them to conduct interviews.  

Collaoration makes sense for JCSP libraries.  There is never enough time to do everything so rather than duplicating the work using the tools above will help me and my colleagues manage our time more efficiently.  This online networking badge has really opened my eyes to the benefit of being proactive and the need to nurture my online brand.

Infographics

I have tried several times to create an infographic using publisher with little success.  I realised for me it would be impossible to create one from scratch.  I need a template.  Pikochart provides templates that you can easily change to fit your purpose.  There is a free edition which I accessed using my google account.  Editing and modifying these templates is a drag and drop action which you can then modify.  It allows you to upload your own images.  However once uploaded you cannot make changes to them.

There are tutorials, blogs and lots of helpful videos/tutorials on youtube. This online tool has autosave and an undo, redo button which I used.  It also had an inspiration section where you can see other people's work.  

Pikochart also has tools to make charts, maps and video which I plan on looking at.  I think this is a valuable presentaion tool and I hope to use it for communicating information with students and also reporting on my work to management.  

https://piktochart.com/

Thing 6: Reflective Practice

Reflective Practice can be defined as the capacity to reflect on actions so as to engage in a process of continuous learning (Schön, 1983). 

In 2018 visual communication is a natural and effective form of human social interaction.  Photographs and video capture key events in the world much more powerfully than any writing can do.  Thing 3 -5 has confirmed this for me.  

I found PhotoFunia wonderful and have to admit that I am slightly obsessed by it.  I have spent the last several years editing photographs in word removing backgrounds and superimposing objects,  props in order to make what I thought were witty posters.  It took hours!!  and was not the most efficient way of managing my time -  in a one person library! Photofunia is great  for creating photo collages, flyers, posters.  I really liked that you didn't have to sign up.  It has hundreds of effects and filters.  I liked that you can add shadows, age your photographs or render them black and white in the filters category.  I also liked that you can add features such as an astronaut or a witch’s hat which will be handy when making materials to support the many themed weeks and holidays marked and celebrated in the school environment.  There are endless options such as writing on sand,  putting graffiti text on walls, or creating your own road sign using text effects.  The program is so easy to use pick the effect and upload a photo.   I liked that you can save it to your computer or email it to yourself. I have used postermywall to produce promotional materials however it requires you to register with the website and when it comes to downloading and printing materials there are several steps.

Most of the photo effects appeared appropriate for use in the school environment I had only one concern over a photo effect "the fat maker." 

I am not an artistic person but this website appealed to me I was able to transform photos into amusing images.  You can also adjust the image’s colour, intensity using the filters option.  This would be helpful to edit photographs to fit with a styles of photos for example with a history project or to set a mood. 

Photofunia will save me loads of time and my student volunteers will enjoy using it!  You can see how much I enjoyed it from my post!!

https://jcspperspective.blogspot.ie/2018/01/thing-4-communicating-visually_1.html

Image Banks

Most images used in my school are found through google images with the general attitude among younger students "I found it on the internet, so I can use it!"  Teachers I think are under the impression because they are educators the rules are more flexible - "Fair use".  Telling Teachers that using copyright materials leaves them open to copyright infringement is usually met with an attitude that I am being a little uptight. 

Initially when student arrive in First year  I have tended to guide  them to Pics4Learning.com  and  imagebank.ie .  They are copyright-friendly image libraries for teachers and students.  The Pics4Learning and imagebank collections consists of  images that have been donated by students and teachers.  Unlike many internet sites, permission has been granted for teachers and students to use all of the images donated to these websites.  All images are reviewed to ensure they are student-friendly before they are uploaded to the library.  The downside of this Pics4learning is the content is American based and searches need to be broad rather than specific, for example searching for Irish flag yields no results, while searching for Ireland, the flag comes up in the results. Also the images tend to be quiet flat.  Imagebank focuses on providing photos of Irish places but other subjects are included.  Imagebank is a supportive resource for students and teachers in Irish Education and is a growing resource.  Creative commons licensing is used to allow sharing of photos.

I welcomed the opportunity to look into Flickr and Pixaby as a possible solution to google images.    Flickr is an excellent source of creative commons images however like google images you have to refine your search to get free copyright images that you can use.  My students will not narrow their searches take that extra step!

I couldn't quantify how many images students and teachers download every week.  This task has made me reflect on how I provide information on copyright to teachers and students and how regularly I update /remind them.  Maybe I need to get the guidelines on usage into the Teacher /Student Diary?  On doing a search around the issue I was surprised at how little  guidance there was on the PDST websites.  There was one support document for primary teachers but I could not find the equivalent for secondary teachers.  Maybe the impression is that primary teachers make more resources than secondary school teachers.

http://www.pdst.ie/inspectorate2015  - powerpoint presentation slides 11 - 16

https://www.scoilnet.ie/site-info/help/copyright-basics/

http://www.pdsttechnologyineducation.ie/en/Training/ICT-in-Classroom-PDFs/ICT-in-the-Classroom-PDFs/Copyright-Primary-13-20.pdf  - information sheet from 2013

Video For Social Media

Quik & Ripil

Quik let me assemble a video and share it quickly and easily without needing to know the complex process of video editing.  I choose photographs from my photo library and used one of the many templates on offer.  These templates contain particular titles, effects, transitions and filters.  Each video style also has music from Quik’s own library.  I liked that I could just let Quik do its thing.  I like the fact that you can have some degree of control over the editing process and add your own music, choose the clip order and select video format (square or cinema).    I am not a natural when it comes to using apps.  I liked the Quik Help documentation it is clear and talks you through each step required to select video clips, apply video styles etc.  I think it is great for short videos, memories, and recollections and digital storytelling.   I think Quik would be good for learning situations that benefit from  short creative pieces.  For example, Leaving Certificate Geography students could combine still images and video clips they took on their mobile devices on a field trip. It would be really useful when writing up their geographical investigation project for recapping and prompting this process.  I used it to make a promotional video for a reading streak.  https://quik.gopro.com/v/finn2JWjUt/  As I become more familiar with this app I would like to take more control of the editing process and not be restricted by the templates.  

I didn't like Ripil - Social Media for Good.  Kindness Tracker, all a little cheesy and disingenuous for me.  It had the feel of facebook "See follow and gain followers to increase your GOOD influence."  "World deed population meter" etc. However although not for me, I could see it working in a school setting using it for Social Innovators, Friendship, healthy/wellbeing weeks in school.  I didn't like the menu either I didn't feel it was helpful in setting up.  I managed to upload photographs and give it some text /context.  But it was fairly basic.  Although I should like this in theory - positivity and celebration of all things good.  It didn't work for me.   I need to put together  short videos for assemblies, to promote events, to help students present their work.  Social networking component likely to derail my work and students work.

Having said that it was interesting to see that Facebook in recent days has decided to change how its news feed works.  Posts from businesses, brands and media are to be less prominent.   Mark Zuckerberg on his page said "instead, content that sparks conversations among family and friends who use the site will be emphasized".   He also went on to say "We've gotten feedback from our community that public content - posts from businesses is crowding out the personal moment that leads us to connect with each other."  He went on to say that he and his team felt a responsibility to make sure Facebook was good for PEOPLE's WELLBEING." By making these changes Facebook hope that time spent on it will be more valuable! 

I am not sure how useful these apps will be for me at work as we are not an ipad school and we have a very strict mobile phone policy.  No phones.  But this may change and I am glad I have some insight into these app.  I need to investigate them more.

Video Presentations

Powtoons & Screen-O-Matic

https://jcspperspective.blogspot.ie/2018/01/thing-5-video-presentations.html

In thing 5 I looked at Powtoon and Screen-O-Matic.  I was automatically drawn to Powtoon, I liked the creative aspect of this website.  I like video style apps.  However Screen-O-Matic is probably a more practical app for the school environment.  It's function to deliver clear concise information/instructions is useful for giving basic help for using websites creating presentations step by step the visual audio aspect is very useful.  Screen-o-matic is a good alternative or complement to written pdfs/ handouts.  But like any instructions they need to be constantly reviewed and updated for relevancy.  The school is involved in Age Action's Getting Started Program - Transition Year Program where TY students teach older adults how to use the internet, set up email accounts etc.  This would be a great addition to the program to be able to put onto the learners laptop for their reference between classes.

The presentation tool of choice in our school is PowerPoint. We have tried introducing other presentation tools such as prezi in the past with little success.  I think Powtoon will appeal to the creative student, the animations and graphics are appealing if somewhat limited in the free edition.  I wasn't particularly quick at creating my presentation.  I found having to edit each slide so characters and objects appeared and disappeared fiddly.  It was a bit like movie maker, more involved than I thought it was going to be.  Your presentation needs to be planned before you start working with Powtoon. I need to use it more.  Definitely could see it being used as an option for the Junior Cert Short Course on Animation.

Being digitally literate and using social media to communicate will be an integral part of the new Junior Cert.  At present my students are creating and sharing media all the time.  It is an important feature of how they communicate and engage with each other.  I need to harness these skills to engage them in self-directed learning.  This will require us to work together to understand and discriminate between multiple sources of information and to use tools to participate safely and effectively in an online educational environment. It will also require me to engage with social media and to use social media  something I have been cautious about.

Thing 5: Video Presentations

Powtoon  

This free animated presentation tool was good, but I didn't love it!  There are lots of templates available to edit or start from scratch.  You can easily modify each slide by changing text, font, image and props.  You can preview your creation at any time with the play button and then stop and make changes, I did this alot!! There are lots of options for sharing via social media buttons on the powtoon page to facebook, twitter etc.  You can also export to Youtube.  I decided to use the embed code provided which was easy to embed into this blog.  Overall I found powtoon fiddly but that maybe due to my lack of familiarity with it.

Screencasting

Screen-O-Matic

I like the idea of screencasting for the classroom especially when it comes to basic computer skills such as saving documents and setting up folders where a set of short self help tutorials would be extremely beneficial.  I think it would be also useful for teaching information literacy skills - especially when it comes to searching the internet and showing how to search efficiently - perfect for capturing  "thinking  aloud strategy".  The tutorials on this site were very helpful.  The only challenge now is to get over the sound of my own voice!!  I need  practice and a better script! 

Thing 4: Communicating Visually

This morning started off well, with my personalised latte complements of photofunia.  2018 was looking good.  I liked the fact that you didn't have to sign up to the site you could use it right there and then.  The choice of themes and effects are great.  I also liked the blog feature on the site which gave you lots of ideas to think about and put everything in context.

For most of my promotional materials I have been using postermywall, very similar allowing you to customize their existing templates.

I loved photofunia it is humorous and definitely would appeal to the students I work with.  There was only one feature I saw that was probably one to watch "the fat maker." 

However my morning took a turn when I nearly went up in......

Well almost!  I had spent some of the morning making room on my phone for the new apps I was hoping to download.  Alas having removed lots of photographs and videos I discovered they were not compatible with my microsoft phone!  After hours of negotiation I finally secured an Ipad.  I am vaguely familiar with this device.  I successfully downloaded Quik & Ripil and after a little while....

https://quik.gopro.com/v/finn2JWjUt/

I really enjoyed using Quik it was straightforward to use.  I did find the text feature limiting not being able to change font, size or colour.  I appreciated that you were able to turn off the logo unlike the watermark of Ripil.  Disaster struck again when my post mysteriously disappeared.....  So I am posting this quickly before anything else happens.  I enjoyed THING 4.

Thing 3: Flickr for education......

Flickr is a great resource and  it makes sense for education. In schools we use digital media as a way of engaging students.  I found Flickr very straight forward after registering using my google account.

However I was disappointed initially with the quality of images that my searches retrieved but I guess that is inevitable with the huge numbers of images being uploaded.  Not every image will be great I suppose.  I found the social networking for me personally a bit distracting but then I wasn't interested in being part of  this photo community.  I just want to use the images!!!

Things improved when I clicked on Explore and looked around The commons and participating institutions.  I also found the trending menu interesting.  After exploring the site I definitely see students using the images to tell digital stories, capturing events with images and saving their work for project based learning in a digital portfolio.

With regard to uploading photographs in work, there would definitely be restrictions on using this website.  Photographs of activities and students would not be compatible with our Child Safety guidelines.  I see Flickr as a resource for creating resources to be used in the classroom by students and teachers.

flickr.com

https://www.education.ie/en/Contact-Us/List-of-Contact-Details/Flickr-Policy.html