by Ida Mae Craddock and Heather Moorefield-Lang, August 2022

Every year the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) releases a new list of best digital resources. We also check out bloggers, tech authors, and other publishers as they share lists and reviews of new websites, apps, and digital tools to try out for teaching and learning. This month's article focuses on a few favorites from the past year that might be new to you or might be worth sharing with your peers.

Classroomscreen: https://www.classroomscreen.com/

Use this site to manage classes during information literacy sessions and other instructional opportunities. Classroomscreen offers QR codes, groups, timers, whiteboards and more in one easy to use space, and it lets users manage classes and groups in one spot. Librarians and peer educators can create duplicate boards, which makes this tool highly intuitive and useful for those of us who teach more than one class with the same material. Classroomscreen has a variety of tools and features for educators to streamline their instructional process.

Novel Effect: https://noveleffect.com/

This digital resource has been around a few years, but it is a favorite among Heather's students in her storytelling class at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. Novel Effect is an app that combines stories, sound effects, and narration. This resource layers interactive music and sound effects as librarians, peer educators, and students read aloud. Novel Effect lets you add sound such as music, voice, or sound effects when reading children's picture books out loud. The app uses speech recognition technology to place the sounds exactly in the story as needed. Novel Effect has a collection of popular books in the app which are already in many libraries, homes, and classrooms. The idea behind this digital tool is to increase interaction with stories. It is a lot of fun and students of all ages will enjoy it.

Ziplet: https://ziplet.com/

If you like to have exit tickets and immediate feedback from your research or maker sessions in the library, then Ziplet is the tool for you. This is a student response system very much leaning toward quick answers and online exit ticket activities. Students can answer questions using any device and no login is required on their part. Librarians and peer educators set up the questions, send out a code, and students respond. There are many different options for student responses, including multiple-choice, short answer, emoji reactions, or a scaled score. Emoji reactions, of course, are always a big hit.

Frame: https://learn.framevr.io/

We have had a long two years in online spaces. We have been talking, chatting, meeting, and teaching in spaces like Zoom, BlackBoard, Google Classroom, and so many more. Frame offers a more immersive online meeting experience. It reminds us of Second Life but more three-dimensional. Frame is a space where people can meet, design, talk, move, show artwork, collaborate, view videos, work, and more. Users move around the space as avatars and use voice or text to speak with each other. It is well worth checking out and a little something different from the flatter experiences we have been having in some of our current online learning spaces.

Walling: https://walling.app/

Who doesn't like a vision board? Students, librarians, and peer educators alike can share visions on a piece of poster board, but they can use Walling to share them in a digital space. This digital tool offers a space to organize, imagine, manage, and find clarity. It helps users to see the bigger picture as they think through projects on their own or in groups. Try Walling for organizing ideas, projects, dreams, or life.

These are only a few digital tools to explore. There were so many to choose from and experiment with. We picked some favorites from this past academic year, which was mostly in person but still fraught with challenges. We always want to feature predominantly free and user-friendly resources fun for your peer educators and students alike. Thanks so much for checking out our recommendations!