Skype

I have to admit, I was a little skeptical about what exactly Skype could do for a librarian. After reading 50 Interesting Ways to Use Skype in the Classroom, my mind has been changed. Initially my thoughts were that a great use of Skype would be for author visits. A lot of author's will have a Skype talk with students for free and this is a great way to foster interest in an author's work, without having to shell out the big bucks to get them to your school. Another way I thought of to use Skype is for collaboration with other librarians. Skype has a great feature that allows you to add multiple users to a chat or video call. This lets people interact with one another without having to travel to one place, or have to send hundreds of e mails to each other.

    Some of the things that I read in the article that I would like to use in my own library are:

Meeting with other classrooms: this seems like a great supplement to a geography or language arts class. If the students are learning about a certain culture it would be awesome for them to talk with some kids from that culture to make it more personal and relatable.

Poetry collaboration: I really like the idea of writing and sharing poetry with other classrooms, what a fun way to get kids excited about writing poetry!

Meet with librarians, or advisors: Skype is a great way to easily communicate with people you might see very often. Having this technology allows us to hold question and answer sessions in real time with people who aren't around all the time. Similar to this, I like the idea of doing tutoring over Skype or holding office hours over Skype. It seems very convenient and I think that some students might prefer to ask questions over text instead of face to face.

There are a lot of really cool ideas to use Skype in school and I am excited to try some of them!

Wikis

Wikis are wonderful tools for a school librarian! Wikis allow multiple people to edit and add information into a document that everyone can see. This allows users to compile and exchange information in a manner that is both efficient and useful. Wikis can be great tools for librarians because they make it very easy for librarians, teachers, administrators and students to collaborate with each other. I think that wikis are awesome tools to communicate with other people. The downside to wikis is that anyone can edit one. Although this is the very thing that makes wikis amazing, it can cause problems. For instance, a number of years ago I had been thinking about some things and I wanted to remind myself of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. I went to the wikipedia page and much to my dismay someone had edited to have the word "fart" about every five words. Even though the content was still there, an experience like that definitely made me question the validity of wikipedia as a source, even for background information.

    One wiki that I think is really awesome is my Mom's wiki for the Albion Middle School Library . It has some really interesting and awesome links that would be helpful for both teachers and students. Some of those include booklists, book trailers, educational games, links to flash cards for various subjects, and common core information.