Imagining to Planning

"Brainstorming" Courtesy of Philmckinney.com

As I imagine my school library's continued transition to a library learning commons , I see a space where teachers and students alike regularly access digital content from a variety or sources to enhance their lessons and their learning.  The question is, "How do we get there?" 

Last year our school district created a portal (from scholastic) to create a more interactive and user friendly interface with all school district resources and services.  Research for topics in this course have helped me to become more comfortable with the portal and our resource center's home page, which allows access to many data-bases and other resource sites.  From conversations with our staff I understand these resources are currently under used.  Many of the teachers at my school are still unaware of these resources and those who are aware have not had training or time to explore these sites, let alone use them.
  
One of my aspirations at the start of this class was to become more comfortable creating and publishing digital content, including video.  Recently I had the idea of creating some quick, on-line tutorials for teachers (and students) to showcase these resources and to help others feel confident using them.  I've included a screen shot of these resources as presented on our resource center's home page:    

A quick examination of this page and one can see this is a project which could take some time (more time than I have for the final vision project!)  The box which says "ERAC: BC Digital Classroom" leads to another group of resources including a series of World Book data-bases, a series of Incontext data-bases, KnowBC.com, and My Blueprint Education Planner.  I joined the weekly hangout one evening a week and a half ago to ask Aaron and others their thoughts about this idea.  Aaron advised me to start smaller and to focus on the creation of up to three mini--tutorials.  If these go well I would like to cover all of these sites, but for the sake of our final vision project I will narrow the scope.  The question is, where do I start?

Thinking about my idea very quickly lead to a number of practical considerations.  I wondered what type of filming would work best.  From what point of view should these videos be made?  Should I film a teacher or myself using the portal and these sites?  Would the tutorial be able to clearly show my screen?  I asked Aaron if he had any suggestions on how to approach this task.  He lead me to Screencast-O-Matic, which has the ability to film me and/or my computer screen.  I found a few videos on YouTube instructing how to use this application, including the one I've placed here.  I'm looking forward to trying out this application, though I first need to spend some time mapping out a script.  I am thinking about trying to access some professional development funds to meet with the director of our resource center and/or with our town's public librarian for more of my own training.  I have only begun to use many of these sites and they likely have more experience using them and may know more about each site's capabilities. 

Currently my plan is to post the tutorials I make to YouTube and to then send these links to teachers in a staff email.  I also am thinking about posting them to a shared file, and then to advertise where to find them through posters and perhaps later (someday months from now) on a library web page which I would like to create. 

 Work Cited

Brighton West Video.  "How to Use Screencast-O-Matic: Overview." Online video clip.

          YouTube. 12 April 2017. Web. Accessed 9 November 2018. 

Mckinney, Phil.  "Does Brainstorming Deserve its Bad Rap?" Web blog post. 
          Philmckinney.com, 24 March 2014. Web. Accessed 10 November 2018.  

School District No. 5 (Southeast Kootenay).  “District Resource Center.”  Sd5.bc.ca.  Web.

Accessed 10 October 2018.