More haste, less speed

At work I encourage pupils to take 5 minutes to think about the task they have been asked to do, to come up with a plan of action for their research and task over all. I would have done well to have taken more time to explore the SlideShare site before launching into my review for Thing 17. While not wrong at the time, the area of most frustration to me - the lack of a notes section, was indeed there all the time, I just hadn’t noted it. The notes held in the notes section of PowerPoint Presentations do transfer with the file, which means I can continue to make use of the notes section in PPT when putting together my presentations which is a great relief. This doesn’t mean all faults are gone - interactive elements don’t transfer and there doesn’t appear to be a section to upload a text document supporting a PPT. Further website exploration may reveal these options yet. But it has become eminently more useful, though taking five minutes to think about whether I want to share a file and where at the start of the creation process, will allow me to decide how to continue with my presentation, depending on if I want to put it in SlideShare or use another file sharing website. Take five and reflect.

Comments

Get reviewing

At school we often ask the kids to review a book they have been reading. Recently I thought to myself when was the last time I produced a book review. I couldn't remember. So I decided to write several for the website www.readingzone.com to remind me what it is like to write a book review to a deadline. I found it quite a challenge and realised that some kids will find the process equally as challenging! I do feel we shouldn't ask kids to do something we are not prepared to do ourselves. Ultimately I enjoyed the books and creating reviews which have been published on the website, and I have a better understanding of what I am asking the kids to do when I ask them to write a short review. Hopefully I can offer better guidance to those who find the task a struggle, and I will keep writing reviews for the website too. The links are below for the two books I recently reviewed: The M Word by Brian Conaghan https://readingzone.com/index.php?zone=sz&page=your_review...

Simply Symbaloo

I've been using Symbaloo for a couple of years now and it's a great free web tool. Essentially it's a bookmarking tool for websites which you can curate into different webmixes - collections of websites. Each website is displayed as a tile, which you can re-name, alter the image and move about the webmix You then click on that tile to go to the website. I have various webmix pages including for collating web resources and videos for future projects, for CPD reading and webinars and also one for books I've reviewed for Reading Zone. It's a great being able to see what I've read and reviewed and bring up the review with just a click, and remind myself what a book was about before a book talk! As Symbaloo is a website you log into it from any device and manage your webmixes. Also, as someone who used to keep websites open in a tab on his iPad till I needed them, using Symbaloo has allowed me to tidy up by web browser and keep it much less cluttered! One other adv...

Challenging times, time for challenges

We are in challenging and unusual times, and the library sector has been as much affected by the Coronavirus control measures as any other work sector. I'm a librarian unable to access the two school libraries I manage. I am finding this difficult to accept as there is much more I could do for the students and teachers by physically being in my libraries. The sudden move to providing teaching and learning to students via online platforms like Teams has left me playing catch up and unable to engage with students as teachers are able to do. While I'm struggling to find a role this doesn't mean I can't have an online presence to support teachers and students. Rather than dwell on the negative side of things, I'm looking at using this time of challenge and change to challenge myself to find ways to have an online presence. While I still get to grips with Teams and what this can do, I have created a Symbaloo page, https://www.symbaloo.com/shared/AAAAA-8TxUUAA41_W...

Stamping The Books

Search This Blog