Prompt for Module 8:
As your prompt, you are asked to assemble learning technology tools for your tool-kit. What you put in your tool-kit should be strategic. Briefly explain your organization and demo a few tools. Think about how they would be used as a teaching tool through the library.
My Curation:
My curation is organized into 4 separate, smaller curations. For each curation, I’ve included a brief description of my thinking for that collection as well as a demo for one of the tools.
Overall, this process helped me understand the importance of careful selection and organization of technology tools. THERE ARE A LOT OF TOOLS. I have experienced many of these tools through a wide variety of grades, teachers, and subjects at my DL school, but have also included some recommendations from colleagues (both in my school and students in this course). There is a tool to fit every need but, when compiled together, it is overwhelming.
I had previously kept a list of tools in a Google doc that was more difficult to sort through (even with headings), but this layout works so much better! I can see this becoming a living professional resource, where tools are added and removed regularly, so I always have a great list of technology tools.
While I’d be happy to share with colleagues, I probably would only choose a couple tools that are most relevant when introducing an assignment to students, so the technology options don’t overwhelm the learning. It would, however, be a great idea to have students compile their own curation of technology tools. A well curated list of tools would also be a great addition to a virtual learning commons, whether for an SLLC or a DL school library.
Explore: https://www.symbaloo.com/mix/explore23
The ‘Explore’ category contains tools teachers and students can use to find digital resources, such as images, videos, and audio. I’ve also included some links for safe search engines for younger students. This section is an excellent resource for teaching students about digital citizenship, especially when it comes to copyright and ownership. Many of the tools I’ve selected will find either open-source or royalty-free resources; knowing the difference, as well as when an owner needs to be cited and when it does not, is essential to avoiding plagiarism.
I’ve chosen to demo a website called unDraw for this section. This tool provides free, open-source illustrations for students to use without attribution. The cool thing about this website is that each illustration can be customized to a chosen colour. Click here to watch the demo.
Create: https://www.symbaloo.com/mix/create47
The ‘Create’ category contains tools that can be used to create original content. It contains everything from creating posters, to presentations, to image and video editing. This category connects perfectly to the idea of 21st century learning, where students have the freedom to show what they know in creative and connected ways.
For this section, I’ve chosen to demo Google Slides. However, Google Slides is about more than creating presentations, it is a very simple to use, yet powerful, tool for publishing. In this demo, I show you how to set up the document for creating a newsletter or magazine, though the instructions are the same for any kind of publishing. Click here to view the demo.
Organize: https://www.symbaloo.com/mix/organize
The ‘Organize’ category includes technology tools that would be used to help students with executive functioning skills. It contains tools for curation, note taking, project management, and citations. This category could be used as a foundation to build 21st century and digital literacy skills students need to complete other projects.
The tool I demonstrate for this section is the tool I used to create my curations, Symbaloo. It makes curations easy to create, use, and share by tapping into skills students already know from bookmarking. Click here to view the demo.
Teach: https://www.symbaloo.com/mix/teach15
One strength of curation is the ability to visualize where your collection of resources needs strengthening. While completing this curation, I noticed that my resource collection focuses specifically on tools for student use, and that I really don’t have a lot of tools bookmarked specifically for teaching. I’ve decided to add a 4th curation, called ‘Teach’, to the collection. It hasn’t been developed yet, and I don’t even feel that I have enough resources yet to decide on categories and organization; however, this new curation stands ready to collect teaching resources – something that really makes this a living, working curation.
Note: For this curation, I created 4 webmixes using a curation or bookmarking tool called Symbaloo. I was impressed at the ease of use and flexibility in organization. However, you do need to plan ahead of time because it takes a lot of time to move around the bookmarks and markers (colour coded areas with labels) if the webmix was resized. Because of this, I’ve left extra room in some of my categories for future growth.
Mrs. Nichol's Library 