Thing 12 - Books, Books, & More Books

I know that my students will be interested in these apps. I downloaded Free Books and Audio Books, but I will also promote Wattpad. The two apps I tried were again, easy to use. I specifically appreciated that the Audio Books app had genre categories that included a teen option. I've already had students ask about getting digital versions of some of the classic books that they need to read for school. So I've been telling them about digital books we already have, Project Gutenberg and Librivox. These two apps will be a nice addition for them. 

I also downloaded Yalsa's app. When I'm shopping at book stores, I'm constantly looking for information about titles before purchasing them. Having this app, along with the Hennepin County app and better access to my Destiny catalog will definitely help with this process!

Thing 11 - Library & Reference

This Thing was very helpful! I'm aware of these many apps, but once again, I hadn't taken the time to review them and add them to my website for users. So much to do, but so little time! 

I loved the Hennepin County Library app. It was so streamlined and simple to navigate. I think the Hennepin County Library system rocks, so it was nice to be able to access the site so easily. Students will appreciate this too - I often check Hennepin County and let students know how easy it is to request a book if we don't have what they are looking for.

I also knew that Follett had apps, so I finally loaded Destiny Quest. Again, I will have to promote this to our students. I see an app page in my website's future.

Finally, I tried out Elm4You.org on my phone. I have the ELM databases set up on my website. I know that students have been having issues accessing the EBSCO options from mobile devices off site through the school. I assumed this was because of authentication. But I just tried via the ELM4You site and had no issues. I will contact the people at ELM (also rocks), but this could be the answer to an issue that I haven't been able to address to date. The more I have been promoting the ELM databases, the more our students use them. So this option will definitely help.

Thing 10 - Sharing Photos

I definitely know about these two tools since they are in the news a lot for both good and not so good features. Instagram is easy to use and very popular, and I should probably embrace this fact. But I feel that I need to do more with Facebook and Twitter for promoting my library before adding another social media outlet. Since I know about Throwback Thursdays, I can't be too far behind on this one!

Thing 9 - Taking & Editing Photos

I do some work with photos, so I was interested in trying out some of these tools. I used Line Camera and Color Splurge. Line Camera was easy to use, and I quickly modified an existing vacation photo. I can see how this will be handy for easily adding some extra interest to photos for promoting the library, clubs, etc. Photo below:

 

I also tried Color Splurge because it looked cool. I can see how this app could be fun to use. But I didn't like the little icons on the bottom advertising games, and I'm not sure what else, that I wasn't interested in getting. Unfortunately their placement made it a bit difficult to work with the app without hitting them. But, I suppose the app developers have to make money too.

Definitely fun and useful tools.

Thing 8 - Social Media Management Tools

I'm actually going to come back to this post at a later date. I currently have an after school club that consists of a group of students who love to create and edit their own films. They have a You Tube Channel and Facebook page. My dilemma is giving students access to post videos and information to these accounts, as well as me being able to post and tweet to staff for example, without having to sign in using multiple profiles. One feature I've appreciated in You Tube is to be able to have one account, but create multiple profiles. Perhaps one of these apps will help as well. So stay tuned...


Update: Well, I still haven't decided what I'm going to do about consolidating accounts and devices. This dilemma will be one of my goals to work on over the summer. I'm sure others are facing this problem: Personal and professional accounts as well as personal and school issued devices. Both my principal and our new superintendent are Twitter advocates. So I will get this task completed one way or another. 

TweetCaster looks like it may work. But I appreciate having this list available for future reference. One question that comes to mind is that Twitter and Facebook accounts can already be linked, which I have done. So I'm not quite sure of the advantages of using something like TweetCaster. Hopefully I will have an answer to this question once I have more time to investigate.

Thing 7 - Content Saving & Sharing

I had signed up for Pinterest a while ago so that I could find another way of posting new books and other book news for our library. At the time, I found it a bit difficult to get started with pinning the book covers. On a funny note, users had to select three or five categories to get started. I randomly chose some including "Cats". So in that account I ended up with all sorts of cat photos. I didn't spend a lot of time looking, but it was also more difficult to edit these randomly chosen categories. Meow!

This time around, the interface seems more user friendly. On a side note, the addition of bookmarklets and extensions is a big improvement in the web version (maybe I missed those the first time around, although I still had to search for them). 

So I will have to give my book board idea another go. Obviously others are doing this. Surprisingly, I feel like the mobile version is more user friendly than the standard web version. 

Thing 6 - Creating & Editing Docs

I had read about QuickOffice previously, so I tried this App out. It worked seamlessly with my Google Drive items. What I really liked is how it made MS Office documents editable, but storable on Google Drive. We don't have a 1:1 program, but more of the teachers in my building are using iPads for various tasks. This App worked great for a Work Experience teacher who needs to do evaluations of students at their work site. The teacher's documents are in the MS Office format. But now she can get to the documents, edit them, then convert them to Google Apps as needed. It ends up being a simple way to move her work to Google Apps at her own pace. Perfect!