CoolTools 2018

I am just going to go for it and bullet my final thoughts on CoolTools this year: I really enjoyed the topics I blogged about. I noodled around with other topics, but the ones I chose, I felt I would be most useful to me (both professionally and personally) and/or to share with others. I learned I prefer Blogger over WordPress, both because I found it easier to use and because it works with my existing Google account and I don't have to switch platforms. I used Bitmoji to create signage for my library and also to add a personal touch to emails and feedback to students and teachers. I showed several teachers how to Bitmoji and they loved it. Admittedly I still haven't done much with Instagram and I found out it is blocked at my school so I couldn't do the Instagram based Library Scavenger Hunt with students even if they were allowed to have their cellphones. I have used the Snipping Tool ad infinitum to save and/or print items that would not allow me to print portion

This topic is great! So far I have signed up for a NYC public library card, a GoodReads school account with focus on YA fiction and a GoodReads personal account to get some recommendations for my own summer reading. I also used some of the YA lists to help with book selection. I loved the “Groups” page. I liked how teachers used it to create private reading groups for book reviews and would love to hook up with one of the groups from another country so the kids could interact. I also found the “What’s the Name of that Book?” feature handy. Another feature I passed on to our ENL, Reading and Special Education teachers is the ICDL website. It may seem like this would be too young for high school level, but many of the immigrant and refugee students who either never had formal schooling in their home country or are in Special Education programs would love using these e-books. Similarly, I sent the link to Storybird out to our English and Special Education teachers. I know they would

I played with Classroom, Docs, Drive, Slides and Forms. Previously I had some exposure to Google Docs and Google Drive, mainly revolving around sharing documents with teachers and being able to edit them back and forth. I love being able to save things to Google Drive and have access to them anywhere. In school I now use Drive to help students print. Since students don’t have access to the printer, I have them share their Docs with me and I am able to print for them. I was not as familiar with Slides and Forms. I found Slides to be close enough to Powerpoint that it was pretty easy to manipulate. I could definitely see using slides in presentations for both students and teachers. I had never thought of making the slides interactive. I liked how you could use the Snipping Tool to create matching games within Slides. Forms was very easy to use and even intuitive. I played with making a survey with it and Forms knew what type of answers fit best with the question I was asking, be it shor

Awards for new things I learned: I have done CoolTools for the past couple of years and I always look forward to this topic to find tools for both professional and personal use. I have been taking some other Online Learning PD courses about Google and just recently learned about Google Drive. I LOVE being able to get my documents from any location and share them with others easily. Best Tool I can share with students: I did not know that EasyBib had an add on for Google docs and I know my students are really going to appreciate that. Tied with: JustRead-- I am an adult and I get distracted by the advertisements. Our students have trouble enough reading without additional “drama,” the simplified “cleaner” pages are super helpful. Best Tool I shared with teachers: Super Teacher Tools  had so many fun things to try out. As a teacher I would have loved the seating chart generator and the random name generator. This time of year teachers are all looking for ways to review- the game sections