I’ve been asked to share some of the sites I use with my local school librarians and to make that as easy as possible I’ve decided to do a blog post rather than a powerpoint or similar.
There is a push to make better use of ICT and I see this as more than just making the kids click a mouse or using my Smartboard more (though I should probably do that as well). So here are most of the tools I use to promote the school library.
1) Blogger – school library blog featuring staff caught reading and recommendations on books or opportunities.
2) Tumblr – another blog but this time it’s a much more visual collection of photos, videos and quotes about libraries, librarians and books (as of now I’ve 58 followers). I also make use of the button you can pin to your Bookmarks Bar for Tumblr to make it easy to add stuff.
3) Facebook – set up like a company page pupils can ‘like’ and add comments (as of now 27 people like ‘like’ it). I used Pagemodo to create a free ‘welcome page’ so that when someone first goes to the facebook page this is what they see. (Memo to me – see if Google+ has a similar feature).
4) Twitter – I use Twitter more for my CPD than anything else but I do tweet the feeds from Tumblr and Blogger so people can follow the library news (right now there are 68 following).
5) I find trying to follow Twitter in real time impossible at work (but if it’s worth saying it will be retweeted!) so I make use of Paper.li to create a daily paper style site of the people I follows tweets. It’s good for a general overview (it lets you see what folks have linked to) but you miss those tweets with no links. I get round this by going direct to twitter and reading specific people’s tweets. (Just for the record I do feel slightly like a crazed stalker when I follow someone who over shares – on the upside ‘unfollowing’ isn’t as insulting to someone as unfriending them on Facebook).
6) So I don’t spend my life updating this stuff, I employ
IFTTT – if this then that which lets you link various sites together so that blogger can update facebook etc. it allows more tailoring and control than a simple linking of the two.
7) To collect links to share with pupils I use Only2Clicks though I’ve not fully tested this yet. I’ve had issue using it with one class where they couldn’t get on and it is slow to load. However, when it works it is a nice easy way of sharing links on a topic and can be accessed at home. (I have also used the pages element of the blogger blog to share links which also works though isn’t as pretty).
8 ) Also available from home is GLOW (the Scottish school’s computer network) though only available to pupils (assuming they remember password and user name) and staff (in my school unless I add a Glow user directly). I find it hard to remember to update so I use a couple of external sites to make it look better (adding them as XML webparts usually by simply copying in the ‘grab a button’ code or similar). I use Shelfari to show off book suggestions – I scan in my latest book talk or display pile. I made a free EDU-Glogster account and made a study skills poster. I’ve also created a GLOW blog where pupils can blog direct and I can then import those into the library blog (annoyingly GLOW can’t import my current blog or has the memory to store it).
9) I wanted to mention Pinterest 
as I’ve just go into that as a well. I use it to collect ideas and inspirations. A visiual pinboard of ideas that can be grouped into different boards – a good place to pop those ‘ooo…that would make a good display’ ideas. Unlike the others this is a personal collection and not linked to the school.
10) Now the other thing I’m doing is trying to find more ways to support myself and the library via the interweb and I’m working my way through CPD23 although the project has finished there is nothing wrong with working through it and on the upside you can see what others thought/said. Even if you don’t want to do the project it’s got lotas of ways to make better use of ICT on there (as well as some other CPD thoughts).
I’m sure I’ve missed a couple of things but I’ve no doubt mentioned them in my CPD23 posts or will in the remaining posts.
