Learning & Growing

I'm lucky to be attending a workshop "Technology in the Elementary Classroom" through Ed Tech Teacher this week.  Today I have been totally impressed and overwhelmed with how present other people are in the world of networking and social media.  I  continue to marvel over the ways people manage their online presence--the fact that people can stay on top of blogging, facebooking, tweeting, etc, continues to impress me! 

With all of the resources I've seen today I have been most impressed by the promises and possibilities of the following:

• Kidblog: I love the idea of using blogs in the classroom as a way for students to communicate with one another and share their ideas.  I'm not sure if I'll be allowed to use this with my school, but if I can, I think it will be really promising. 
• Evernote: This is a resource that I signed up with many months ago but haven't figured out how to fit it into my life.  Spending more time with it today I foresee using it for my own notes and teacher-librarian thoughts.  I'm not sure I'll use it often with my students, but I think it will be a helpful professional tool for myself. 
• ViewPure: I show my fifth graders a lot of book trailers before they create their own at the end of the school year.  I hate going to YouTube to show the trailers because there is always the possibility of inappropriate content sneaking through on the sidebars or at the end of the video.  ViewPure is a way to watch those YouTube videos and clear out all the clutter.  I am so excited to use this next school year!  

Going to technology workshops can be a bit overwhelming--especially if you leave feeling like you are a bit behind... but I always leave excited.  I'm glad that I am going to this workshop at the end of July, it's good inspiration for the following school year (coming sooner than I may want to realize...).  

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog!  My plan is to use this space to communicate my love of librarianship and life as a school librarian in an elementary school.  As a librarian I get to spend my days surrounded by students, stories, books, and technology... I'm pretty lucky.