Pinterest as a library marketing and information literacy tool

Sorry, I know I am behind on my 23 things! I have downloaded Jing and Audacity and will hopefully get to play them them in depth soon.

Lately I have been involved with a project using Pinterest to create useful resources for staff, parents, and students. The library I work for is an elementary school library and runs its catalog on the intranet. As such, it is hard to reach users at home. In order to make the library more accessible I decided to use Pinterest as it is a great visual medium and provides an easy way to bookmark various resources. In order to advertise the school's Pinterest page, it is regularly included in the school's news bulletin with a brief description to inform staff and parents of the new resource available for them.

To get the ball rolling I began by creating new material boards based on materials, language, reading levels, and type (i.e. fiction and non fiction). This was a great way to ease myself and new users of Pinterest to the library. It also made great use of the visual side of Pinterest to show off our new materials to our collection.

On the side I started to create secret boards of great Homework Help websites for K-6. I wanted a good grouping of resources before I made the board publicly available. An easy way to begin such a collection is to use what you already have. I did this by perusing the saved favorites already available through the library. I then added resources that I collected through my own research. This included other great websites with homework help pages, subject searches,  and of course ALA's Great Websites for Kids website. I made sure to only include free online resources so that anyone could use them.

I am also working on a board for websites and tools for teachers to introduce them to cool online tools and resources that might be of interest and helpful to them. This board is not very developed yet as I have been focusing more of the Homework Help page to get it established. There are so many great free resources for teachers (and librarians!), its wonderful. I love discovering them.

As you can tell I love this project! I really love online resources, tools, and media. So this project is something I'm really passionate about!

Have any great resources I should know about? Please share them with me!

Thing 17: The Medium is the Message - Prezi and Slideshare

Prezi

I have looked at Prezi before but did not use it. Since I joined up as a student I was able to get the free educational account (If you have an email account with a school domain you are eligible for this account). This account enables users to have the option of making private presentations, great for those of us just starting! It is very easy to get started making Prezis by using the ready made layouts (many layouts are available and some people make their created layouts freely available). Make sure to look at some "how to" presentations for tips, especially on how to make the presentations flow well and not be nauseating. I really enjoy how it is so easy to import PowerPoint slides into the presentation. Also, Prezi deconstructs the slides so that the pieces can be fine tuned. Another thing that Prezi does very well is it's ability to embed media, such as YouTube.

Slideshare

Slideshare is very easy to start using. Just upload your PowerPoint presentations and off you go! A great way to make your presentations quickly and easily available. I also like the ability of Slideshare to be easily embedded into websites. However Slideshare defiantly falls behind Prezi as it is not dynamic since it cannot embed video or have the ability to incorporate PowerPoint animation schemes. It is a very straightforward medium that is great to start off with. I have a free account with Slideshare and would like the option to make my presentations private. 

Both Prezi and Slideshare offer great examples of how to present and are full of great presentation ideas! If you are just starting to bring yourself online Slideshare would be the easiest to start with. However, you should still check out Prezi to see if you like it, as it offers the ability to create more dynamic presentations and enables you to be as simple or elaborate as you like. If you are interested in embedding videos, Prezi is the way to go.