Lisa Newgard's List: 2012 Automation Free Resources

 Link directly to quizzes from your website or emails. Randomize quiz questions and set time limits. Create multiple choice, true false, free text, short answer, fill in the blank and punctuation quizzes. Add your own images to quizzes.  I see this free resource benefiting the classroom teacher, teacher librarian, and the student.  Formative assessments can be given frequently, and completed online to check for understanding and knowledge over subject material.  Tests and quizzes are easily checked, scores recorded, and questions are randomized for fidelity of delivery.  Downfall of delivery....it is only an ideal resource for a classroom who has adequate and consistent access to technology.

Collect a pool of resources online. Live Binders allows a user to organize them neatly and easily, present them as a valuable and public resource dealing with any topic. Easily add the livebinder button your browser toolbar. Find a link you want to save then click on the button to automatically add the link to a new livebinder.  I see this tool being beneficial to a teacher, teacher librarian, student, administrators, and parents.  There are SO MANY online resources that are related and valuable.  Livebinders has premade and shared resources built already that can be shared on ANY topic, plus it can be a great environment to build your own personal PLN.

Offers resources and lesson plans for Reading and Language Arts for grades K-12. 
 
The librarian would benefit from this resource by providing lesson plan ideas for collaboration between the classroom teacher and teacher librarian. Teachers would see the benefit of new ideas that align with National and State Standards for K-12. Media lessons could also be found that would compliment a classroom unit. Student interactive tools are found on this site, as well as parent resources for additional student learning at home. There also are professional development strategy ideas and meetings and events given. 

Very easy-to-use site to build your own website. This is perfect for those teachers, including myself, who are frustrated with the other website-building sites, like Googlesites. It is completely free and would take a user a very short amount of time to build a website. There are hundreds of visually appealing display choices to choose from. The tool bar gives options you simply drag into place to build your site. Options include photo galleries, slideshows, maps, videos, and lots more. I am excited to try this out and show other teachers. Teachers who I know would love to build sites but feel like they don't have the time.

I used this at the beginning of the year to start off with book excitement and hopefully get kids started on a "wish list" of books they would like to possibly read. It was a success and throughout the year kids asked to go back and explore some more trailers on the site. It contains hundreds of book trailers on new books, award-winning books, and book trailers made by students. It shows the reading level, to get kids more familiar with how that system works. There are also links for more information about the author and the book.

Books Available in Iowa Libraries in multiple copies
•The librarian should be familiar with this resource because it is a great one to recommend to the teachers in your district when they are looking for multiple copies of a title. I used it to find multiple copies of a book for our high school English teacher. It was a very simple process. I called the library on the site, and they mailed them to me. They paid to send them to me, but my school had to pay to return them. If I use this service a lot next year, and I’m concerned with shipping costs for the school, I may be able to get some help from my local public library. They might be able to order them through SILO (State Library of Iowa). If they do that, they will be able to send them back for me, too. When I used this last year, I took care of it for the teacher and checked everything out in my name. This worked fine; however, you may want to be careful. If the teacher doesn’t get the books to you on time or if a student loses one, you are responsible for the books and/or any fines. 

Book Reviews, Games, Trailers
•This is a great resource for students, parents, and librarians. It contains book trailers, links to student appropriate search engines, links to author webpages, links to various online research tools (dictionaries, encyclopedias, atlases), book reviews, and school games. This librarian should be familiar with this resource because it would be a nice site to use for library lessons. For example, I noticed trailers for some of the Iowa choice books. Also, it would be a great site to recommend during exploratory research because of the dictionaries, encyclopedias, and atlases. It would be a nice site to allow the kids to explore independently during library or computer time, too.

Authors who Skype with classes and book clubs for free
•This resource would benefit teachers and librarians if they would like to enrich a novel they are reading. This is a nice list of authors who will Sype with a class for free. I was excited because there are some recognizable names on the list. One is Sara Lewis Holmes. She wrote the Iowa Teen Choice Book, Operation Yes. I planned to Skype with her after reading the book with some 8th graders; unfortunately, in the end it didn’t work out in our schedule. We did Skype with my niece in the Air Force stationed in Korea, though. In the book, the main character’s dad is in the Air Force and has to go to Korea. So the kids were able to make some connections to the book as they visited with my niece. I think Skype is a great resource for teachers and librarians because it brings speakers, visitors, and authors to your classroom without a lot of cost.

Free educational videos
•I’m always looking for more ways to teach and reinforce Internet safety and appropriate online behavior. If you use the Technology in the Classroom link there are 227 videos relating to media literacy, effective searching, cybersafety/cyberethics, and social media, and web 2.0 tools. These will be beneficial to me as I’m preparing lessons next year. So far, I’ve recommended this site to my math teachers because there are 5980 math videos! They are interested in starting to “ flip” their math lessons by assigning videos and readings as homework before class so the kids are prepared for the lesson when they arrive. This is a resource we can recommend to the teachers and use when we collaborate with them. 

Offers technology resources in this blog that are free to the teacher. 
 
The librarian would benefit from this site by the many free technology resources. The librarian would be able to bring a tool or resource to the classroom teacher that would benefit the curriculum being taught. Our school is going 1:1 this fall and there are resources given on how to create blogs and websites, videos, Google tutorials, and even developing a PLN. There are resources for Science and Math, among many others. 

This is helpful for Librarians to get the word out about the latest books, up coming library events, and web tools. TLs can also follow other TLs to keep up of news, trends and events.

Shelfari is a great way to TLs and students to communicate about what books they have read and enjoyed or rejected. Students can also see what their friends have read and what they recommend.

This is great for coordinating with teachers and administrators. It helps every one see who will be in the library and when. There are extra features that also send reminders to staff and students about upcoming events.

Offers computer games for learning Math and Language Arts, along with keyboarding and typing skills, for grades K-5.
 
The librarian would benefit from this site by being able to pass this along to the classroom teachers and parents for a fun learning site for Math and Language Arts along with their daily classroom lessons. Also, the teacher librarian who also teaches Info Tech to elementary (as I do) will benefit from the keyboarding practice also that the site offers in a fun way. There are different grade levels and the teacher could use the different levels with the students depending on their own personal learning level. 

This site is free and similar to Diigo and Symbaloo. Seems to be very visual and easy to use. You are able to organize favorite websites by creating tabs to categorize. The site works well with tablets and touch devices. You can keep it private or share the link with others. This site would be great for me to share the popular book review and book trailer sites with Language Arts teachers. Also to share those handy Web 2.0 tools with other teachers. Others can add to the categories too, to build the lists of tools to try and explore.