I Am Inspired By These Summer Sparks Reading Journals...You Will Be Too!

My son Hagan finished up 6th grade today.  We love our summer break together.  

One of the first things we do in the summer is make a stack of books we want to read.  This year we have something new to do....the Summer Sparks Reading Contest with our friends at Buncee and Capstone.  Hagan will be reading and researching in Capstone Interactive and PebbleGo Next to create stories in Buncee.  

You can see Hagan's awesome Summer Sparks Buncee here. 

Over the past few days, other friends have sent me the Buncee's their students are creating.  

I want to share a few with you that Tracy Ferguson, who is a 2nd grade teacher in Van Meter, Iowa, and Elaine Deja, who is the teacher librarian in Florida, students created this week and last with the Summer Sparks Reading Prompts.  

You can find these in the Summer Sparks Reading Buncee starting on page 10.

Please check these out to look at all of the creative ideas...and share with your students for inspiration too.   

A Future Ready Librarian Tells All....Join Us For This Conversation!

On June 14 at 8:00pm EST, I am excited to join EdChat Interactive for a wonderful conversation about Future Ready Librarians.  In an early preview for  FETC 2018, we will discuss how you can help your students, classes, schools, and libraries become future ready too.

The site states, 

Shannon will discuss how librarians, teachers, administrators, and students are collaborating, and how you can participate in these types of partnerships in your school, in order to help children develop to become the best that they can be. You will have the opportunity to discuss how you can help your students, classes, schools, and libraries become future ready. 

Shannon will provide practical tips and techniques to align your practices with Future Ready Libraries around the country and the world, and you will have an opportunity to talk to Shannon about your own questions and concerns...and of course share your school library stories too. Learn how the role of the teacher librarian is changing to accommodate new learning goals, learning styles, and pedagogies.

As you can see, this will be a conversation that you can be part of too!  

Please register here for the free event.  

What Lesson Topics Do You Use In The Library With Grades 3-8?

Our friends at Capstone need our help.

They would like to know what lesson topics are frequently used by librarians in grades 3-8.  The ideas we contribute will help them as they develop a new Capstone product.

Please think about this question and add your ideas and thoughts to the Padlet by clicking here.

Thank you, friends.

Here Is What Your Students Need For The Summer Sparks Reading Program Each Week

As your students participate in the Summer Sparks Reading Contest, you will want to share the Buncee above.  

In this Buncee, they will find the easy steps to follow including the links for PebbleGo and the eBooks in Capstone Interactive.  

They will also find the Summer Spark Weekly Prompts which are VERY important each week.  

These start on page 10 of the Buncee above. 

The second #SummerSpark Prompt for the week of May 22 is there.  This week we are asking students to create a Buncee answering... What's your favorite hobby?  

I can't wait to see what they create!

So share this Buncee with your students and families....It will keep them connected to Summer Sparks all summer long.

Empowering Students As Creators...Join Us For The Next Future Ready Librarian Webinar!

We are excited to announce that the third Future Ready Librarian webinar is coming up on June 13, 2017 at 4:00pm EST.  

It is going to focus on Empowering Students As Creators, one of the gears within the Future Ready Librarian framework.  

And I couldn't be more excited to share that Traci Chun, Teacher Librarian Lead, Skyview High School and Vancouver Public Schools in Washington and Diana Rendina, Media specialist, Tampa Preparatory School in Florida. 

This webinar will examine how librarians can empower students as creators. Library leaders will share how they encourage and facilitate students to become increasingly self-directed as they create digital products of their learning that engage them in critical thinking, collaboration, and authentic, real-world problem solving.

Please join us by registering at this link.  Participants will receive a certificate of participation after the webinar too. 

We can't wait to see you on June 13 as we talk about empowering our students as creators today and tomorrow.  

Flipgrid Wants To Show Off Your Students Art Work!

 Flipgrid has announced a very special Student Art Contest!

They are putting together a new batch of images to use when customizing grids.  To make it even more exciting, they are asking students to submit art work to showcase their creativity.  

You can go here to find out more.

Easy Steps In Creating A Buncee!

As you get your students all signed up for the Summer Sparks Reading Contest, you might find it helpful to have a couple videos to use when you teaching your students and parents about Buncee.  

Here are three that will be helpful and give you easy steps in creating with Buncee. 

A New Place To Share & Celebrate Our Photos!

I love photography.

I love taking photos of my family, home and all the places we travel.

I love seeing the world through others eyes and their photos too.  

In fact, I love sharing my photographs with my friends at Buncee, because they like using original photographs for their backgrounds, which make our creations even more special.

Today, they announced a very special new place for all of the Buncee Photo Friends and the photographs we have contributed.

You can go to Buncee Photo Friends to see the photographs and...

 learn more about everyone who has shared their photos.

Then when you go to Backgrounds as you are creating a Buncee, you will find photographs under each category.  

For example, I am listed as Outdoor photos so you will find mine in the Outdoor Background Category.  Here are a few of mine that popped up above.  I took these with Eric and I visited Mount Vernon last month.  

I am also very excited about the new Animal Backgrounds by nature photographer Bob Birdsall. They are absolutely beautiful and your students will love using these in their creations.

If you are interested in sharing your photos, contact Buncee at info@buncee.com to learn more.

We can't wait to see your photographs too!

Don't Miss The Storyboard That Webinars On May 18!

Our friends at Storyboard That are hosting two 30-minute webinars at 2:30 PM EST & 5:00 PM EST this Thursday, May 18th! 

Topics they will cover:

• FAQ about adding students
• FAQ about creating assignments & templates
• Storyboard creator basic functions
• What would you like to learn? Tell us on our form!

Follow this link or click the button to register. You can choose which time works for you on the form.

Feel free to forward this invite to a friend.

Extra Bonus 

StoryboardThat are also going to raffle 1 free month of Storyboard That for one person attending the webinar. All you have to do is sign up!

*If you already signed up, you will be automatically added to raffle. If you are paying, they will add a month to your account.

Mark Your Calendars For The Future Ready Schools Twitter Chats!

We have some big news for all of you!

On May 23, 2017 we are kicking off the brand new Future Ready Schools Twitter Chats!

You will find the schedule above.

I will be hosting the Future Ready Librarians Twitter Chat on Tuesday, June 13 with a very special guest and topic I will announce soon.

We hope you can join us for these four amazing Future Ready conversations.

How To Create A Summer Reading Journal With Buncee and Capstone

I am excited because it is time to sign all students up for the Summer Sparks Reading Contest. 

As the Summer Sparks page states, 

Buncee and Capstone have teamed up to bring you the Summer Sparks Reading Contest.  With summer rolling in, we put our heads together to brainstorm ways to encourage students to read and learn all summer long.  Then, an idea was sparked!  We are now thrilled to offer this contest to your school.  

Through books and research, you can travel through time and space, meeting people and going places you've never been before.  Journal your summer reading adventures and ideas sparked for a chance to win.  

To participate, simply have your students create reading journals on Buncee! 

Buncee is providing access to their creation tool to participating schools, all summer long.  Capstone is offering free access to Capstone Interactive, their digital library, and to their K-6 research database, PebbleGo and PebbleGo Next. 

This post 4 Easy Steps To Get Started With The Summer Sparks Reading Contest will help get you and your students off to a perfect start.  It has easy tips for making sure they have what they need.  

Now, let's talk about inspiring your students with a few ideas for creating their Summer Sparks Reading Journals too.  

 

They will be using Buncee to create their journals and PebbleGo Next, PebbleGo and Capstone Interactive for reading, research and fun. 

With these tools and resources, your students will be able to create a very special summer reading experience by creating a Summer Sparks Reading Journal.

As explained on the Summer Sparks page, there will be a weekly #SummerSparks17 Prompt to research and explore.  Students will create a Buncee responding to the Summer Sparks question.  

The first #SummerSparks17 Prompt of the Week is out this week, so Hagan and I decided to kick off his Summer Sparks Reading Journal.

We read the question together and brainstormed ideas as we talked about the summer.

Hagan also researched states in PebbleGo Next and animals in PebbleGo Animals.  He also researched and read books in Capstone Interactive.  It was all coming together and he knew the Buncee he was going to create.  

You can see Hagan's first Summer Sparks Buncee above or click here. 

This is a great example for you to show your students as they brainstorm what a summer reading journal could look like.  

They can tell their stories with photographs, stickers, animations, text, videos, sound and more. 

Watch this video Buncee Creation 101 to learn all about Buncee.  This is the perfect thing to show your students as they learn about Buncee and start their summer reading journals.  

And here a a few ideas using Buncee as they read, research and create.  

And check out the amazing Buncee Gallery too which is filled with fantastic examples to share.  

We are very excited for Summer Sparks and can't wait to see what you and your students read, research and create this summer too!  

Sign up for the Summer Sparks Reading Contest today. 

ABCya....A Place For Students To Show Off Their Creativity Through Art, Storytelling, Writing and Fun!

Last week I was planning a few lessons and visited ABCya to use the Word Clouds creator.

As I was creating a little word cloud, I took a little look through the site.  I was so excited to find ABCya packed full of educational places for creating, learning, reading, writing and more.

As the site states, ABCya's award-winning computer games and apps are conceived and realized under the direction of a certified technology education teacher, and has been trusted by parents and teachers for 10 years. 

I have always loved ABCya, but what really caught my eye were the places our students can go to show off their creativity through art, storytelling and writing. 

Here are a few....

that will inspire your students.

These are so perfect to tie in as extensions to creative writing, art, computer science, reading and other curricular areas.

ABCya is a wonderful resource to share and send home with your students as something educational, fun and creative to do throughout the summer too.

And with the ABCya app, which is free, these activities can go with them everywhere they go.

You can go to ABCya here too.

6 Ways To Use Your Destiny Library Collection With Biblionasium

Biblionasium is my favorite reading community for our readers.  It is a place that my students absolutely loved being part of as they built their shelves of book read, recommended and reviewed books and created reading challenges for themselves, among lots of other things.  

Now, we are so lucky that Biblionasium is integrated with Destiny Discover.  This makes our collections come to life and become a living part of the reading culture within any library and community.  

With the end of the school year here, Biblionasium will be the perfect way to keep your students connected to your collection and library all summer long.  

You can watch this video to learn 6 Ways To Use Your Destiny Library Collection With Biblionasium this summer and all year long too.  

It's Here....Collections by Destiny® and Look At The Difference It Is Going To Make!

Curation is defined as the gathering, organizing and online presentation of content related to a particular theme or topic.  

I have always enjoyed the process of bringing together digital resources and tools.  I think we all do. As we curate, it is also important for us to have tools to use that are the perfect fit for us and our school community.  It is essential we teach our students and teachers to use curation platforms and techniques too.

As Future Ready Librarians, we lead in the selection, integration, organization and sharing of digital resources and tools to support transformational teaching and learning and develop the digital curation of others.  

Well, our friends at Follett announced something very exciting on July 7 that will fit our curation needs as we Collect, Create, Deliver and Share within our library, community and world. 

Follett added the new Collections by Destiny® functionality to Destiny Discover which will take your resources to new heights!  

This will enable us to curate collections of resources; create more collaborative opportunities between the teacher and teacher librarians; find what others have created to use as our own; and so much more including...

being able to share these rich, beautiful Collections of resources with your district and publicly too.

Within a Collection, anything on the web and all resources found in Destiny can be included. 

Can you imagine the change these amazing new features will bring to your library and school community?  And just think about the change it will bring to your teachers, students and to you.

Let me show you how!  

 

When you are logged into Destiny Discover you will see Collections at the top.  You will click on Collections and it will take you....

into all of the Collections you have created like...

Our Favorite Digital Tools and Apps for Creating and...

I Am A Future Ready Librarian, two collections I created.  

Aren't these awesome?  

Now, let's take a closer look on what is inside a Collection.  

 

We will start by clicking on the Digital Makerspace Collection I created.  

 

In this Collection, I added digital tools, books from Destiny, a post and Buncee on how to create Makerspace signage for your library and space,

a couple Google Slide presentations about Makerspaces, blog posts, music and stories from Cantata Learning, a Makerspace Symbaloo,

Pinterest links and more.  

You can even add OER resources to Collection, which are searchable in Destiny Discover.  You can read all about this wonderful feature here. 

It is really exciting to find and add items like I did with the Makerspace Collection. 

You can add items by URL... 

or Upload files from Google Drive and One Drive.  

Once you have a Collection, there are several ways to Edit Collections including by...

 Visibility, 

 Grades, Subjects, 

 Colors, 

and even by the Photo to identify the Collection.  There are a lot of beautiful photographs to choose from. 

I love curating all of these digital resources to create amazing Collections.  It is so much fun and will change the way we organize and share resources with our students, teachers and others.  

 In fact, Collections can be shared in a variety of ways.

We have the ability to keep a Collection private by giving no one else access.

We also have the ability to let anyone who has a link View the collection and anyone with a link to Edit the Collection.

 It is easy to share links by either URL, Google Classroom or...

email. 

I love this feature because it is going to empower our teachers and students to collaborate with the librarian and one another as they are organizing and curating meaningful Collections too.  

It is very important for me to find a curation platform that lets me not only share and collaborate, but also find something someone else has created and use it too.  

I will show you how this works with this Star Wars Collection someone created and shared.

You will see in the corner of the window it says Copy and Create PDF.  

I can Copy Collection giving it the title and description I want.  I can also select the Visibility, just like I would do with a Collection I would create on my own.

I love the ability to Create a PDF too.  The PDF includes the URL and QR code to that resource, description and image.

We also have the ability to Copy single resources, as long as they are public, to...

specific Collections.  You can see that I found a link to The Force Behind Star Wars from Time for Kids and I copied it to my Digital Makerspace Collection.

It was that easy.

Oh...and of course there will be a Collections Bookmarklet that...

lets you quickly add resources you find on the web to any Collection too.

Collections can also be viewed in Destiny Discover and I love how they can even become on of the handy ribbons you can set up on your homepage.  

Students and teachers will LOVE this feature too. 

I can't wait for everyone to check out Collections with the new Destiny Discover update.  

And as Follett says, 

Collect. Create. Deliver. Share.  Everyone's invited to learn when there are no limitations.  

Collections will bring change and inspiration to your library and community too.

You can read more about Collections and all of the new updates to Destiny 15.0 here.