ChatterKid App

When I stumbled upon this cool app, I couldn't wait to share it with my teachers and students!

The app is called Chatter Kid, and I can think of so many possibilities for students to use this cool tool!

Since most of my students are in the middle of a biography unit right now, I asked several classroom teachers if they would be willing to try this new idea with their kids.  With such wonderful staffs at both of my elementary schools, they were all "game" to give it a try!  

This is SO important! As a Library Goddess, if you are worried about trying something new because it might flop, you'll never TRULY be a Library Goddess!

Here is what we had our students do:

1. Students had already read a biography of a famous person, so they simply brought their biography books with them to Information Literacy class.  It was great to see so many books FULL of Post-It notes to show just how much kids were thinking as they were reading!

2. I gave students a sheet of paper to write on. You can download it here. Students used the time in class to write about their famous person. I told them they would only have 30 second of recording time, so they had to really edit their writing and practice their reading.

3. After practicing their readings, students used their iPads (we are a one-to-one district) to do a Google Images search for a picture of their famous person. They saved this photo to their camera roll on their iPad.

4. Students opened the ChatterKid app and uploaded the picture, drew a line where the mouth was, and recorded what they wrote!

5. Students exported the video to their camera roll, and emailed me the video.  All videos -- which export as Quick Time movies, were uploaded to library's wiki. You can see many of them here, or you can play the one below.

Kids LOVED this project! I had several kids stay in from recess so they could make some more videos "just for fun!"  

The classroom teachers and I were able to complete this project in one, 45-minute class period -- even better!

Download ChatterKid today, and see what you and YOUR students can come up with today!
     

-- Jenn McMahon, Library Goddess

Mission Accomplished!

Mission Accomplished!

Even this techie girl -- this self-proclaimed geek -- still enjoys one, very old, very low-tech vice.  I love, love, love to read books.  And when I say that I love to read books, I DON'T mean on a Kindle, Nook, iPad, or other electronic device.

This techie loves the old-fashioned feel of paper between her hands.  

Yup -- I love "real" books.

For the last four years, my new year's resolution has been to read at least 52 books in a year -- averaging about one book per week.  Now, since I often read story books to my students and to my own children, those don't count.  The books I use to reach my goal have to be novels or books longer than 100 pages.

I've NEVER met my goal -- until this year. I hit December and realized I was only four books away from reaching my goal! I couldn't believe it.  To help motivate myself, I told as many people as I could about my goal. I wanted them to keep me on track and encourage me. 

It worked!

Many people ask me how I keep track of the books I read. I use a social networking app called Goodreads.  It's a great place to keep track of the books you read, want to read, are currently reading, and more.  There is also a "social" aspect to it in that you can become friends with people from around the world and see what they are reading as well.  I love this site.  Not only does it give me a quick and easy way to track what I'm reading, but I can get all sorts of ideas for new books to read by looking at what my friends are reading. The app itself will even make book suggestions for me based on the books I've already read.

For parents who read this blog, you do you have to be 13 or older to be a member of the site/app.  Members can read and write book reviews -- which are not filtered.  It's quite rare that I come across an "offensive" book review; however, I needed to put that disclaimer out there.

Hmmmm . . .  this blog post started out as one that spoke to my "non-techie" side, but I still had to squeeze some tech into this one, didn't I?

What is YOUR new year's resolution? How do you keep motivated to accomplish your goals?

Interested in the list of books I read during 2014?  My list is HERE.

Image from: http://sarahockwell-smith.com/2013/12/31/six-new-years-resolutions-every-parent-should-make/