AASL Best Websites

In the hopes of staying current in best practices, I perused the AASL Best Websites this week.  I was happy to find many of the sites that I have come to know and use often on there, but I wanted to look through three sites that I was unfamiliar with.

The first website I found interesting was listed in the Media Sharing section – Haiku Deck (https://www.haikudeck.com/).  Using technology to present material has become commonplace in 21^st century learning and giving students fun and easy ways to present can make learning more interesting for them.  I liked that there was not only a website but an app for Ipad.  It was easy to learn about using the videos and examples that were posted on the site.  Once I entered my e-mail to get started, every option that I could use was clearly labeled with tags and arrows to point me in the right direction!  I think this would be a very useful site/app for students to use as an alternative to PowerPoint.  There are multiple themes to choose from that will easily allow students to make their presentations unique and interactive.  In the library, students could create presentations about books or authors to share with other students.

The second website that intrigued me was Kaizena (https://kaizena.com/), in the Manage & Organize section of the AASL Best Websites.  The description spoke of embedding comments on student work and providing feedback via Google Drive.  This fascinated me since I will be working in a Google Apps school this fall and thought it would be a good website to look into for assisting teachers in its use.  I thought this would be very useful for students to use to get critique on assignments no matter where they are.  I like that the mission of Kaizena was “to enable real time, continuous improvement of education.”  I thought the idea of education technology really aligned with what we strive for in library science – to prepare our students for the 21^st century workplace.  As for a use in the library, students could submit their assignments on Google Drive and the librarian could assess for use of information technology skills while the teacher assessed for content learning.

The third and final website that I found useful was Storify (https://storify.com/), which was a Social Networking & Communications tool.  With Storify, like the name implies, users can create a story but they use information from the web to create it!  Students can select material from social media posts, weblinks, articles, and more.  I thought this would be really useful for current events and having students view reports and make their own.  For the library, I thought it would be very interesting to have students create their own perspectives and reactions to different books, especially book to movie adaptations, and use media to help tell that story.  It’s almost like creating fan fiction, using things created by others!  I thought it was a fascinating concept and I think students will really get a kick out of this.  Making learning fun is key!