Karin's Cool Tools Blog

Over the weekend, I had the chance to play with Google Cardboard and ViewMaster viewers, and go on a couple of Google Expeditions, and it was a lot of fun! It was a little frustrating to get the hang of at first (full disclosure here in a minute), but once I did, my mind began to whir with how I could share this tool with my fellow WSWHE librarians and how they, in turn, could bring some amazing virtual field trips to students. Okay. Full disclosure. When Google Expeditions was first introduced to me, I couldn't get it to work. I tried all kinds of things...I rebooted the phone...uninstalled and reinstalled the app... went online to look for troubleshooting and FAQs to figure out what was going on...and then I asked to peek at a colleague's Expedition so I could see what it looked like. I figured, maybe I'm just fighting too hard with the wifi (my phone was constantly disconnecting from it). No biggie. I figured I'd deal with it when I got home. I brought home a Cardb

I love screencasting! I've been screencasting for a long time, and it's quite possible that my screencasts may have been one of the elements that led to me landing the job I have today. (In my former district, I used to create screencasts to answer frequently asked questions about our region's automation system, which I would then share on our local Listservs.) For a long time, I primarily used Screencast-o-matic, but after I started working for BOCES, I quickly discovered that Screencast-o-matic didn't want to play nicely with my brand-new computer. Thankfully, Screencastify is really easy to use, and in no time I was back up and running with my screencasts using this Google tool. Not long ago, I decided that I needed to play with how to record video on my phone, so that I could show my fellow librarians how to use Overdrive on an app. I figured out how to screencast on my iPhone and uploaded it into my Google Drive:  Overdrive app I've slowly been consolidatin

So okay...full confession here...I've been a bit of a slacker lately with regards to showcasing what I'm doing. It's not that I'm not exploring Cool Tools (in fact, I use a number of Cool Tools every day), but it's just thinking about sharing out what I'm doing beyond my target audience. Looking through Thing 5, I realized that I use presentation tools often. Like, a lot. Part of my job (by the way, did I mention that I LOVE my job?) is sharing cool tools with others, and I often use presentation tools in that sharing. I am in area school districts at least once a week, and I'm a BOCES Model Schools trainer as well. I'm gradually using Google Slides more and more often as my presentation pizza box to package tools to share with my audiences, so they can take that presentation, make a copy of it, and have it to keep and refer to after the presentation is over. With Google Slides, I can create a sort of hyperdoc, where teachers can click on links, watch