Pecha Kucha is pretty cool. What it is, basically, is a 20 slide powerpoint that advances automatically every 20 seconds. Each slide is one image, and the speaker advances his or her speech based on the image. Now, for this session there were many speakers, but only three stood out in my mind as relevant to me.
The first Adri-relevant presentation discussed libraries and social media. Now, because we are not allowed to friend students on facebook and other social media sites (for good reason) most of the presentation was irrelevant, except for this: paper.li. This is a social media aggregater that will create a newspaper type webpage your students can view without being your friend. I haven't played with it yet, but I think it could be useful. I'm thinking maybe a page of YA Author tweets?? I don't really know yet, but it's an idea. This presentation also wins the award for the best quote of the conference and that is "Avoid the creepy treehouse." This means do not force you students to be your friends on social media sites because, let's face it, that's just creepy.
The second presentation I found useful was about digital identity. A few presenters at this conference talked about the importance of students developing a google-able digital identity. In other words, post their good stuff. Their digital footprint can be a good resume just as much as it can be a bad one. We should teach them what's appropriate, but we shouldn't be so overpretective that they reach adulthood without a searchable digital profile - preferably a GOOD searchable digital profile. That being said, our district has a postable policy - no full names, secured site if possible, pictures of groups not individuals, etc. It's a good policy, but I think I will encourage our students (remember High School here) to start blogging and creating their own school-work sites outside of school. That way if they have a really great project, they can share it and begin building their good searchable digital profile.
The last one was about QR Codes. These are Quick Response Codes that can be printed out and attached to things - like posters, signs, books, etc. When the code is scanned by a WiFi connected device (cell phone, laptop, iPod, etc) it will take the user to a webpage. Note - you need to download a free app to do this. I found this particularly interesting because I plan to use these in the library this year. My friend Elizabeth mentioned using QR Codes to link books to booktrailers, and I immediately stole that idea giving her very little credit for it. :) After digesting everything at the conference regarding QR Codes this is what I decided to do this year. I, along with my student (we'll call her K.), will be affixing QR Codes to the cover page of new popular fiction books. The codes will link to the catalog record of the book. This will give the students information about the book including student reviews, AR information, and, once I or K. link them all, booktrailers for the books.
So, in order to do this I will be ordering as many iPod Touch devices as I can afford. I think these would be a good investment because the students can also use them to video things for our many projects. They can also use them to download and check out audio books. And now the search is on for a good deal on the iPod Touch. :)
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