12 Days of #GaLibChat
A slow chat of resources for GA Library Media Specialists
We have a lot to share with you!
Join in the fun at your own pace, but Robin and Martha will be posting a feature daily starting on December 11th!
First Day of #GaLibChat: Top 3 Favorite Virtual and Augmented Reality Tools
Quiver Vision Quiver allows you to take your coloring to the next level with augmented reality! There are so many options through the Quiver Vision website you can print off for your students to color and then use the iPad app to use the augmented reality component. We suggest using the Quiver Education app for added components like being able to record audio over the app. When using the app, students can also record themselves speaking along with the process of scanning the coloring page and it has the option to download the video! Appsmashing wtih Flipgrid can help make this experience into an opportunity for deeper learning and collaboration. The app is available for free for the Google Play store, App Store, and Amazon. Suggested idea: Print off the Christmas Tree coloring page. While students are learning about how different countries celebrate Christmas or the holidays, have students record a video using the Quiver app to explain what the most eye-opening or neatest tradition that they learned was. Students can then upload the videos to Flipgrid in order to create a whole class compilation of what they learned. Share it with parents on your weekly newsletter or through Class Dojo. You can also use this for students to share what some of their own holiday traditions are! Virtual holiday cards to military. The ideas are endless with this app and it's educational components. | Google Street View Google Maps and Street View helps students visualize and understand the world around them. There is so much that Street View has to offer beyond the Google Maps directions. If you have not visited the Street View webpage, do it now! There are so many options for virtual field trips here. What a great way to introduce or expand on your lessons to make the places your students are learning about come alive! The gallery option allows students to explore on their own or your could send students the direct link to a virtual field trip through Google Classroom or by QR code (try Google Shortner for a quick QR code generator). It's a long link to type out so make sure you are prepared when sharing with students or teachers. As part of the Future Ready Librarian Framework, though, we should be challenging students to become creators rather than consumers of information. Google Street View allows you to create street view 360 degree images as well! To do this, you can use the Google Street View app or use a 360 degree camera, which you can use to capture an image and upload at a later time. This is our favorite way of using this tool! Suggested idea: Capture 360 images of your community buildings. Have students to write descriptions for the buildings and upload the images to Street View. We live in a transient military town so I could see this being used to help families learn more about their new community and surroundings. | Capstone 4D Books If you are looking to provide more supplemental materials to your MakerSpace or if you are looking to add more interactive books to your library, we strongly suggest looking into Capstone's 4D books. With books like origami or epic cardboard adventures, students can read directions, look at pictures, and scan the pages to learn from different media and can help your reluctant readers, which tend to be non-traditional learners. When thinking about multiple intelligences and the different reading levels at our schools, I love that there are books that are now including ways of helping learners of all styles learn and feel confident in reading. |
Quiver Vision
The app is available for free for the Google Play store, App Store, and Amazon.
Suggested idea: Print off the Christmas Tree coloring page. While students are learning about how different countries celebrate Christmas or the holidays, have students record a video using the Quiver app to explain what the most eye-opening or neatest tradition that they learned was. Students can then upload the videos to Flipgrid in order to create a whole class compilation of what they learned. Share it with parents on your weekly newsletter or through Class Dojo. You can also use this for students to share what some of their own holiday traditions are! Virtual holiday cards to military. The ideas are endless with this app and it's educational components.
Google Street View
If you have not visited the Street View webpage, do it now! There are so many options for virtual field trips here. What a great way to introduce or expand on your lessons to make the places your students are learning about come alive! The gallery option allows students to explore on their own or your could send students the direct link to a virtual field trip through Google Classroom or by QR code (try Google Shortner for a quick QR code generator). It's a long link to type out so make sure you are prepared when sharing with students or teachers.
As part of the Future Ready Librarian Framework, though, we should be challenging students to become creators rather than consumers of information. Google Street View allows you to create street view 360 degree images as well! To do this, you can use the Google Street View app or use a 360 degree camera, which you can use to capture an image and upload at a later time. This is our favorite way of using this tool!
Suggested idea: Capture 360 images of your community buildings. Have students to write descriptions for the buildings and upload the images to Street View. We live in a transient military town so I could see this being used to help families learn more about their new community and surroundings.
Capstone 4D Books
With books like origami or epic cardboard adventures, students can read directions, look at pictures, and scan the pages to learn from different media and can help your reluctant readers, which tend to be non-traditional learners. When thinking about multiple intelligences and the different reading levels at our schools, I love that there are books that are now including ways of helping learners of all styles learn and feel confident in reading.
Second Day of #GaLibChat: Breakout EDU!

What is Breakout EDU?
Breakout EDU brings critical thinking, collaboration, communication, and creativity together as students find and solve a series of challenging puzzles that involve various locks and coded messages that ultimately leads them to unlocking a final box. The puzzles have been created to cover over 16 different subject matters, as well as giving teachers a way to customize puzzles for their own content. But what if you don’t have a Breakout EDU kit yet? Then try the digital versions that they offer! Computers are all you need as kids solve puzzles and virtual locks to complete the tasks in the allotted time.
With Breakout EDU, students become the masters of their own learning as they work together to solve the puzzles, and teachers are able to observe how learners approach problem solving and apply their knowledge.
To connect with other educators who love Breakout EDU, try searching for groups on Facebook.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/breakoutedu/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/breakoutedulibrary/
Suggested Holiday themed Digital Breakouts:
1. Holiday Hideaway (Middle/High School) - https://platform.breakoutedu.com/game/HOLIDAY-HIDEAWAY
2. Finding Frosty (Elementary) - https://platform.breakoutedu.com/game/FINDING-FROSTY
3. Snowman Party (Elementary/Middle) - https://platform.breakoutedu.com/game/snowman-party
To learn more about Breakout EDU, check out this School Library Journal post.
Third Day of #GaLibChat: Video Game Design
Bloxels
Bloxels has been the biggest hit in our MakerSpace!
Bloxels is a hands-on platform for kids to build, collaborate, and tell stories through video game creation. Students can use colored blocks to design their characters and settings to tell their own amazing stories! The game board is scanned using the free iPad app to make the creation come to life! This engaging classroom tool is transforming learning off the paper and putting it in the hands of students. Imagine designing a scientific process, a historical location, or even a story about yourself! The possibilities are endless!
If you create an educator account, you have access to the educator hub with lesson plans and activities. Also, for every kit you order, you receive student accounts so that students can login and save their work.
Check out the Bloxels EDU website for more information and how to purchase your own kit!
Unity
This free download includes the Unity Curricular Framework and Professional Skills Standards, which map to learning objectives for academic standards and are designed to achieve high-quality outcomes in the classroom.
Fourth Day of #GaLibChat: Google Arts & Culture

What is it?
Google Arts & Culture is a my latest internet “rabbit hole”! Once I was introduced to this Google tool, I became lost in all that it has to offer! Formerly known as Google Art Project, Google Arts & Culture is an online platform that offers access to millions of high-resolution images of artworks housed in the initiative’s many international partner museums, but this is not a tool for just our art teachers. With the artwork, comes history and culture. Google Arts & Culture offers curated collections with images, videos, editorial features, and virtual tours on topics such as Latino Culture in the US and Women in Culture: From innovative artists to pioneering scientists. There is also a Daily Digest that offers three short interesting articles that highlight a current collection in one of the museums or offers interesting facts, such as “7 Amazing Facts About the Color Red.”
How can I use it?
Check out this article from EdTech magazine, “3 Ways Google Arts & Culture Can Enrich Your Lessons.”
or this article from The Art of Education, "Amaze Your Students with Google Arts & Culture."
Fifth Day of #GaLibChat: Coding Resources Beyond Code.Org
Made with Code-Upper Elementary and Middle School
Santa Tracker-Elementary
Incorporate coding all year!
Check out our Symbaloo of coding resources! Feel free to copy and use as needed!
6th Day of #GaLibChat: Embedding the Future Ready Librarians Framework

Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment Wedge
Seventh Day of #GaLibChat: 3D Printing Resources
Tinkercad
Google Sketchup
Beware: Thingiverse
Twitter Chat: #makered
Expensive, but super cool: Blokify
Eighth Day of #GaLibChat: BookSnaps
What are #BookSnaps?
A BookSnap is simply a digital, visual representation used to annotate and share reflections of any excerpt of a book or text.
If you are anything like me, you are always trying to find ways to balance motivating students to read while also challenging them to think deeper about their text. I love, love, love #BookSnaps because it helps students visualize their thoughts about their reading, makes reading more social and interactive, and helps students use technology beyond a consumption tool. Technology can be used with purpose and you can still have fun learning!
Why use #BookSnaps?
- to annotate and share excerpts of the books you are reading
- allows the reader to connect to an idea by creating a visual representation, which solidifies the text content within the mind and signals the brain to retrieve the idea from memory
- diagram the rise, fall, and climax of the plot
- notate character conflict and reasoning
- explain the main idea, themes, or supporting arguments
- socialize reading
- highlight figurative language and imagery
- and so much more! Why stop at using this in an ELA classroom? Use it to explain concepts from across disciplines!
Creating #BookSnaps is a SNAP!
*Buncee - It's no secret that I love Buncee! When I read this blog about how to use #BookSnaps with Buncee, I was blown away again by how amazing this tech tool is. The best part is you can use this within the Google Classroom platform or SeeSaw, making this so much easier for students to share their work.
*Book Creator app on iPads - If you have iPads available, the Book Creator app is completely free and well worth the effort to install on the iPads. While it may take students thinkering a bit to get used to the ins and outs of the tool, this is a great option to create #BookSnaps in the elementary or middle school setting. I've used Book Creator for all sorts of projects in middle, but had never thought about using it for #BookSnaps until this blog post. For the social media aspect, I recommend students sharing their creations with you and then posting through a generic library Instagram or Twitter account students can follow as most social media platforms are for 13 years of age and up.
*Instagram or Facebook allows for you to create "stories" where you can create BookSnaps, post to your live feed, and has the option to save the image/video for later.
*Students can post their #BookSnaps to Padlet (love the collaborative element here where students can interact with other classmates's thoughts), SeeSaw, Google Classroom, Edmodo, and more.
Ninth Day of #GaLibChat: 2nd Round of Virtual and Augmented Reality Tools!
Discovery VR (app)Download the app and watch using a Cardboard viewer or by moving your device around you like a magic window, to reveal 360-degree views Check out more on how to use this in your library and classroom (with lesson plans) here! | ThingLink 360° ThingLink is a great technology tool for the classroom-both as a teaching and learning tool. This is one of those tools I overlooked after hearing about it the first time, but the more I have tinkered with it, the more I have fallen in love with this versatile, robust, and differentiated tool! ThingLink is an interactive media platform that allows students to use multimedia content and links to share their knowledge (or learn) by tagging images or video hotspots that include additional information. This now includes access to 360° images!! Check out the demo. Ideas: Use the new platform to have students explain layers of the Earth, force and motion, components of a computer, etc. Have students take images of historical sites, then use ThingLInk to add information for visitors. Museums could use this for tourists or schools. There are so many applications to this! | Nearpod Virtual Reality Nearpod offers engaging virtual field trips! You can create your own or use one of the many already made virtual field trips/lesson plans. While you don't need headsets for this to work, it makes the experience more effective (after participating in a lesson at GaETC). It's been a game-changer for lessons in our library and now that I know about the VR trips, I can see so many applications to our curriculum. |
Discovery VR (app)
Download the app and watch using a Cardboard viewer or by moving your device around you like a magic window, to reveal 360-degree views
Check out more on how to use this in your library and classroom (with lesson plans) here!
ThingLink 360°
This now includes access to 360° images!! Check out the demo. Ideas: Use the new platform to have students explain layers of the Earth, force and motion, components of a computer, etc. Have students take images of historical sites, then use ThingLInk to add information for visitors. Museums could use this for tourists or schools. There are so many applications to this!
Nearpod Virtual Reality
Tenth Day of #GaLibChat: MakerSpace Resources!
Eleventh Day of #GaLibChat: Librarians to Follow in 2018
- KC Boyd (boss_librarian) – School library media specialist, Washington, DC
- Todd Burleson (burlesot) – 2016 School Library Journal School Librarian of the Year, Hubbard Woods School, Winnetka, IL
- Valerie Byrd Fort (librarygoddessblog) – Former librarian, adjunct professor, University of South Carolina
- Morgan Chapman (kidlitbookaday) – Teacher librarian, Calgary, Alberta
- Tamara Evans (glassesgirl79) – Digital services librarian, Kings County Library, Lemoore, CA
- Laura Gardner (librarianmsg) – 2016 School Library Journal School Librarian of the Year Finalist, Dartmouth Middle School, Dartmouth, MA
- Colleen Graves (makerteacherlibrarian) – 2014 School Library Journal School Librarian of the Year Finalist, Lamar Middle School, Flower Mound, TX
- Carla Hayden (librarycongress) – The ultimate librarian… The Librarian of Congress!
- Gwyneth Jones (thedaringlibrarian) – 2011 Library Journal Movers & Shakers Innovator Award winner, teacher librarian & technology specialist, Howard County Public Schools, MD
- Travis Jonker (100ScopeNotes) – Teacher librarian, Dorr Elementary School, Dorr, MI
- Shannon McClintock Miller (shannonmmiller) – Teacher librarian speaker and consultant
- Kate Olson (theloudlibrarylady) – K–12 school librarian and book reviewer, WI
- Andy Plemmons (andy.plemmons) – 2014 School Library Journal School Librarian of the Year Finalist, David C. Barrow Elementary School, Athens, GA
- Diana Rendina (dianalrendina) – Media specialist, Tampa Preparatory, Tampa, FL
- John Schu (mrschureads) – Ambassador of School Libraries, Scholastic
Twelfth Day of #GaLibChat: Georgia Public Broadcasting Education
Martha Bongiorno and Robin Thompson
Martha: @mrs_bongi
Robin: @crazymrst