Skoolz Out!

I am a lover of all things visual. The more clearly my information is presented, the easier it is for me, my students and colleagues in making sense of the world.

When trying to motivate teachers to start using technology in the classroom as a part of their everyday practice, it is vital that we make it as easy as possible. There needs to be a need, a clear purpose for introducing a new tool, that improves the way it may already have been done in the classroom. If it is not quicker, easier, and does not enhance the learning process, teachers will quite understandably avoid it.

In my last post, I highlighted the power of ‘SimplyBox’ as a way of storing and sharing resources over the Internet. Its visual nature makes it easy to quickly locate what you are looking for, rather than the hit and miss method of clicking on text links. Teachers and students love how easy it is to find the important information they want, store it and retrieve it when needed. After all, isn’t this one of the key strategies and skills we should be encouraging our students to have for their futures?

Another fantastic tool is ‘Shelfari.’ This amazing program allows you to create a virtual bookshelf of books you have read, or plan on reading. It also allows you to share the books you have read and share them with your friends. While you cannot read or download the actual book, it provides you with the opportunity to review wht you have read, keep a record of books and enter discussions about books with people from all over the world. For bloggers, it even allows you to create you own ’shelf’ and add it to your blog – as you can see on my site here. There is even the ability to add your own books to the library.

This picture is a preview of all of the books I have added, reviewed and rated to my personal page. Imagine the power of this in the classroom? Students rating, reviewing, discussing, recommending, cataloging and searching for new books, all in a visual manner.

I am not an avid reader, but strangely enough enjoyed adding some of the books I have read, rating them, and searching for new titles I may like to read next. For the reluctant reader, I see this as a fantastic way to search for a topic I am interested in using the ‘tags’ facility, and then getting some honest reviews from other people who did and did not enjoy the book.

The biggest challenge for educators would be access to the site, depending on whether the filters at your school block it out. Check out the program, my ’shelf’ and start exploring!