Category Archives: Tech

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AASL Best Digital Tools 2020: Emotional ABC’s

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The American Association of School Librarians (AASL)  has announced their top choices for “electronic resources that provide enhanced learning and curriculum development for school librarians and their educator collaborators.” These resources were formerly separated into the Best Apps and Best Websites for Teaching and Learning and are now combined into the Best Digital Tools for Teaching & Learning.

You can check out our archive of past recommended apps here.

The curriculum Emotional ABCs Classroom “is a teacher-led, research-based Social Emotional Learning (SEL) curriculum that provides teachers (K–3) with 20 sequential Workshops, support materials, and a flexible structure for classroom instruction.” The program fulfills these foundations: Include, Collaborate, Engage, Explore.

This article from PR Newswire explains how the curriculum works and why it is important. EdSurge has this review of the program and states it is very easy for teachers to use. Common Sense Education shares pro/cons, more reviews, and teaching tools for using the Emotional ABCs program. And finally, the site itself has a free classroom teacher guide that includes workshops and additional materials.

Check out this two minute video about how the curriculum works:

School Media Specialist, Tech

AASL Recommended Apps: Chatterpix Kids

The American Association of School Librarians (AASL) announced their picks for Best Apps for Teaching & Learning 2019. “Apps recognized foster the qualities of innovation, creativity, active participation, and collaboration and are user friendly to encourage a community of learners to explore and discover. “

“Give your photos a voice with ChatterPix! Chatterpix can make anything talk — pets, friends, doodles, and more! Simply take any photo, draw a line to make a mouth, and record your voice. Use ChatterPix whenever you’re doing a video project with students on the “no photo” list. They can take a picture of whatever they want, record their voice and still participate.”

Platform: iOS & Android  
Grades: All
Cost: FREE

Journey with Technology has this article about several different ways to use ChatterPix Kids in the classroom. This page from Common Sense Education has tons of lesson plans that incorporate the app. The Digital Teacher has a detailed description and more ways to use the app in the classroom in this article.

Watch this EdTech tutorial to find out how to use the app (approx 3 min video)

If you are interested in the best apps for your library, media center, or classroom, you can read our 2019 series here or find all past apps discussed in our archives.

Tech

Fun and Learning With ClassVR Continues!

Thanks to Sarah Thomas from Maple Lake Elementary for the photos!

This program is funded in part with a grant from the Minnesota Department of Education using federal funding, CFDA 45.310 – Library Services and Technology Act, Grants to States Program (LS-00-19-0024-19).

Last week, we held an all-day training at CMLE for our member school libraries to learn how to use our ClassVR headset devices. (Huge thank-you to LSTA and the MN Dept of Ed for this grant!)

Thank you to all the members that took time to join us! Many attendees had already reserved their kits for the month of February and were able to take the kits back to their schools after training. It has been SO exciting to hear feedback already from how students are enjoying the headsets!

If you are in a CMLE member school library and haven’t reserved your kit yet, don’t worry! We still have SOME availability for April and May, and are happy to let you make reservations for the upcoming school year, too. Find the application here.

We will be holding another training session on June 11th, so mark your calendars if you’d like to join us to learn how to best use the devices when you bring them to your school! More information about the program can be found on our page.

As a reminder – this is a FREE program! We are so pleased to share this technology with our members.

Questions? Email vr(at)cmle.org 🙂

Thanks to Sarah Thomas from Maple Lake Elementary for the photos!
School Media Specialist, Tech

AASL Recommended Apps: Sora

The American Association of School Librarians (AASL) announced their picks for Best Apps for Teaching & Learning 2019. “Apps recognized foster the qualities of innovation, creativity, active participation, and collaboration and are user friendly to encourage a community of learners to explore and discover. “

Like last week’s featured app, Sora is an app that will definitely be great to use in your school library or media center!

“Sora is the school library companion to Overdrive and Libby. With Sora students and teachers are able to access audio and e-books through a digital platform customized for school library users. Sora is able to be connected to a school library collection, and given the school district permissions, the local public library collection. Educators are able to assign texts to students to read and students are able to self-select. Badges can be awarded to readers for various achievements.”

Platform: iOS & Android 
Grades: All
Cost: FREE

This link is for a PDF document from a Sora Training Specialist that will go over a variety of ways to use Sora in your classroom. This article from Publisher’s Weekly explains the history of the app and how it hopes to continue working with schools and teachers in the future. And this article from Granite Media has step-by-step instructions for getting started with Sora.

Watch this 1 min video to see how Sora works:

School Media Specialist, Tech

AASL Recommended Apps: Wakelet

The American Association of School Librarians (AASL) announced their picks for Best Apps for Teaching & Learning 2019. “Apps recognized foster the qualities of innovation, creativity, active participation, and collaboration and are user friendly to encourage a community of learners to explore and discover. “

We love to learn about all the exciting apps that AASL recommends, but we especially love it when we find an app that will be particularly useful to school libraries!!

Wakelet “is a one-stop shop for curating resources for your school library.  As an app on your mobile device, you can send links directly into a Wakelet collection for personal or public use.  You can create a collection of resources together with teaching teams for students to use for reference on projects. Collections can be made up of websites, links, notes, tweets, pictures from your device and more.”

Platform: iOS & Android
Cost: FREE
Grades: All

This article from Primary Tech explains how Wakelet lets you create collections of content from around the Web. It has several links to examples of Digital Citizenship topics. The site Ditch That Textbook has this post with several suggestions and videos for ways that students and teachers can use the app. Check out this review of the app from Common Sense Communication. Finally, this article from the UMass.edu blog shares resources, learning activities, and videos for ways to incorporate the app in your classroom.

Watch this 2 min video to see how Wakelet works:

If you are interested in the best apps for your library, media center, or classroom, you can read our 2019 series here or find all past apps discussed in our archives.