SHS: Book Reviews on Voicethread

Julia Roberts, library media specialist at SHS, recently worked with New Canaan High School library media specialist Michelle Luhtala to learn more about creating a Book Review Voicethread. Robin Stiles, library media specialist at SHS, soon joined in on the project. Julia began the process of adding several book reviews and other staff members have started adding their book reviews. Students and staff are encouraged to recommend new books and add video, audio or typed book reviews.

Julia wrote, " Our goal is to broaden our discussion around books...Having talked with others who have used this form of discussion schoolwide, I know it will take a while to catch on, but there have already been some voluntary student and teacher comments. The library staff has been commenting as they find time. (All comments and recommendations come to me first for some control.) Another goal is that the Summer Reading list will be on VoiceThread. Those who recommend a book for summer reading will comment. ... In the fall, we hope to have an online survey of What Was the Best Book You Read over the Summer? based on what we did in the spring to prepare for summer reading."

This Voicethread was shared with 30 teachers at the recent ITL Steering Committee meeting, and was motivation for several to start similar Voicethreads at their schools and many found new books to read on the Voicethread presentation! If you have read one of the books, please leave a video, audio or written book review. For the original larger version please go:
http://voicethread.com/#u5821.b316167.i1723018

CMS: French Class in the LMC

John Horrigan, LMS and Sharon Gardner, French teacher, co-taught an 8th grade French class at CMS. During 6 sessions, students researched a province in France utilizing a variety of print and online resources following a project description and rubric. They synthesized the information to create a coherent, interesting and informative story, harvested images to support their narration, created a digital story in Photostory and created a written handout to explain the final presentation. All students used Noodletools to create Works Cited Pages, citing all sources used in the creation of the final projects.

The following is one student's final Photostory project:

KHS: Bubbl.us in Action

Recently I observed Aimee Anctil, library media specialist at KHS, work with a 5th grade class to help students create graphic organizers during a pre-search process for their study of ancient Egypt using Bubbl.us. Bubbl.us is a free online mind-mapping tool. Teachers can make an account for a class (Ancient Egypt-5L, for example) with a password that can be used by all students in that class to create, store and share their bubbl.us products. (As usual when dealing with Web2.0 products, students should not use their full names and no personal information should be given.)

This is what the KHS account for one class looks like inside Bubbl.us:

(Click on image for larger view.)

Aimee described the process: "First, students completed a pre-search of 2 - 3 cultural universals that they wanted to research about ancient Egypt. After they had chosen the one with the most helpful resources, we wanted them to learn more about their cultural universal. Their job was to skim and scan a World Book Online article looking for key words that would help them expand their understanding of that cultural universal set in the context of ancient Egypt. They were encouraged to use colors and other features of the program to help organize and manage their work. We decided to use bubbl.us because not all students have access to Kidspiration or Inspiration at home, whereas bubbl.us is free and accessible to all. We posted the directions for logging in on the Assignment section of the LMC Blackboard page. Each class had their own login. We also used the recorder feature in Smart Notebook to record directions for accessing it and posted that under the login information."

Below is one example of a student's bubbl.us organization of ancient Egyptian concepts dealing with architecture.(Click on image for larger view.)