Google SLAM - like speed geeking but different

Since completing the GAFE course earlier this year I have wanted to participate in a way of sharing the great things we have at our disposal with Google. Our school is a Google School. We use many of the great apps Google provides - gmail, calendars, all the drive apps and of course youtube. Tomorrow the New Literacies team will be running a Google SLAM event at our Professional Development Day. We will be presenting on some of the Apps available to us through the Google suite.

I have chosen to present about SEARCH. After all - search is what Google is all about. I know as a librarian I should be really good at using all the search tricks Google provides but the truth of the matter is there are so many I feel somewhat overwhelmed by them all. Don't get me wrong I love Google and use it all the time. I am not convinced I use it efficiently and some times it takes me a while to find the results I want. So with a little bit of practice I hope to get better. I should try the Google-a-day to build my searching muscles. 

I love the website 2lingual it offers a google search in two languages simultaneously. My ELL students love this site too. They get great websites in their home language and then the English language sites help with the keywords and vocab. Awesome understanding and language building at the same time.

I was going to share Search Stories as well but in preparing for this presentation I discovered they are no longer supported by Google - too much went into maintaining this marvelous video creation tool. Barry Schwartz blogging for Search Engine Round Table shares the sad news.

Here are the slides for my presentation tomorrow - I hope you find them useful.

Google slam search from librarybond

Google is all about search

This week I started the GAFE course, Google Apps for Educators run through Buffalo State University New York this course if facilitated by Jeff Utecht.

What attracted me to this course was a colleague's recommendation. He included the link to the website and after  reading what it was about - I was sold. This course is all about using Google Apps and Cloud based technologies in the classroom. The first learning outcome listed was "Search more effectively" Just what a busy school librarian needs to know - especially when every student and staff member has a default setting of searching on Google. My own default setting is to search on Google.

Today I did the first lesson on searching (there are 4 lessons on this all together including one called "Becoming a search master" - just what I need to know. All the resources are for teachers in schools.

The scary part is that I will be assessed for comments in forums, tests and a final 10 minute presentation showing work I am doing in my school using the things I have learnt on this course. YIKES. If you want to take the course - the next one begins April 1st.

I will keep you posted as to how I am going....

Blogging in two places

Our school has developed class and subject blogs this year and of course our library has it's own blog.

We are using Wordpress and have a generic banner for all classes which could use some beautification in my humble opinion. BUT we are there and it is our goal to blog at least once a week. My colleague Pla is very good at creating photo galleries. There are some lovely galleries about lunchtime in our library, seminars and the like. I add the content pages and have started a libguide style section for our staff and students in the tab 'Learning Support for classes'.

Here is this week's offering about the Destiny Quest mobile app. This post will also be added to the IICS Facebook page to let parents know as well.