January 2008 Blog Posts (17)

Recently a parent spoke at one of our districts board members ranting and raving about a "filthy" (her exact word) book that her child checked out at a middle school library. This parent did not contact the Teacher Librarian at the school nor did she contact the principal. She went straight to the board meeting and blindsited everyone involved. As a result our district has pulled this particular book and removed the Accelerated Reader quiz. I do not have the title in question "TTYL" but if I… Continue

Currently enrolled in school right now is the video game generation. Why not take advantage of this in the library by programing lessons on the computer that are like video games? I've been researching this recently along with my school site computer tech. We're exploring ways on how to incorporate a role playing game such as "Age of Empires" into Middle School Social Study standards. It does seem like this is possible but there are obstacles like expense, copyright issues, and time. Stil, I… Continue

7:30 am: Small committee meeting to evaluate 8^th grade “technology” literacy assessment test pilot data. Yes, we understand that you can’t really adequately assess these skills in a multiple choice test. However, this is what our middle school principals want. Okay – for one year. After all, the data might be very interesting. We decided last month that information…

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With out a doubt one of the top things I like about my job is ordering books. It's like fantasy shopping. I really like researching reviews and finding out what's hot in YA and other genres. Thankfully I am in the process of building a book collection for my library and finances have not been a major obstacle. I am pleased that so far my orders have payed off in increase circulation. The Meg Cabot collection took off better than I expected and I of course can't keep the many copies of "A Child… Continue

Video book talks is something I started this year at my middle school. My school is lucky to have enough technology to incorporate a broadcasting class that cast a daily broadcast. Using my background in television I took the initiative to learn iMovie and create my own book talks much in the style of a movie trailer.



I love the fact that I can use my Telivision/Film background in a way that encourages reading and markets the library. I wish I had more time to create my own video… Continue

I sort of have a love/hate relationship with Accelerated Reader. On one hand I dislike how it seems to test just recall skills, has questionable reading levels, and can turn off students from reading for fun. On the other hand it's good for showing accountability, has an incentive for students to read a variety of books, and most importantly job security for elementary and middle school Teacher Librarians.



I've had more fun with the AR program this year because I attached a theme to… Continue

I just joined the Teacher Librarian Network here at Ning. Since I already have four blogs and a MySpace page I'm not sure just how much I will be using this, but hey, why not try something new? At least I'll have something in common with the folks here.

For those who might be interested, I have another blog called Not Your Mothers Librarian. You may want to take a read. Or not. But, you know, all the cool kids are!

Hello everyone,



From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog comes the upcoming Wow2 Schedule.



From the Blog: Every Tuesday night at 9pm EST, I meet with three dear friends over at edtechtalk.com to co-host the Wow2 show. (See the archive of past shows and this is the RSS feed to add it to your podcasts.)



Put March 4 on your calendar: Doug Johnson AND Joyce Valenza are the invited… Continue

Joyce Valenza, Cathy Nelson, and I will be leading a conversation about libraries at a conference this Saturday called Educon 2.0. The session, Extreme Library Makeover, will be a discussion of what Library 3.0 could look like at your school.

The session will be streamed LIVE on Ustream, at 2:30 Eastern time.

For the link to the stream, click here:

http://educon20.wikispaces.com/Agenda

In fact, all the sessions…

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Check out my latest post on M A G E E's Blog about Colorado Technology Fairs.

Hi everyone,



I am pleased to post this information. Congratulations to Laura Amy Schlitz from Park School in Baltimore. Additional information can be viewed below.



Park School librarian wins Newbery Medal for children's literature

Baltimore Sun

January 15th, 2008

By Mary Carole McCauley and Jill Rosen | Sun… Continue

Hi everyone,



I came across this article in the Grand Rapids Press. It describes librarians as thus:



"Today's librarians are high-tech information Hardy Boys and Nancy Drews, masters of mining cool databases and wizards at "wikis" -- a Web site or other online resource that allows users to edit content -- as well as social networking Web sites such as Facebook and MySpace."



More information can be found… Continue

M A G E E's Blog is my original blog and I don't feel like it gets any hits. It certainly doesn't get many comments. So, I'm writing about it here in hopes of gaining readership which will hold me more accountable for journaling on it. You can signup to have emails when I post something new.

The latest post is about the "Learning 2.0 A Colorado Conversation" Conference. You should check out if you don't already know about…

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I have discovered some new 2.0 technologies that I have found useful. These include Clipmarks, Twitter, Secondlife (I need to learn more about this to use it well), del.icio.us and podcasting (I need to learn a lot more about this to be really useful.) I also was given the opportunity to do my first booktalk. It went well with one book of the two being taken out.

Wed, Jan 02, 2008

Laptop project enlivens Peruvian hamlet

For early recipients of the One Laptop Per Child foundation's XO computers, life is profoundly different

From eSchool News staff and wire service reports

"The children of Arahuay prove OLPC’s transformative conceit: that you can…

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Would you read a book from your email or an rss feed? I am going to try it out. My initial thought is yes of course I would, but time will tell. I am a little skeptical of myself.



Dailylit began in May of 2007 from an idea generated from the NY Times special supplements of serialized classics. Dailylit takes the same approach only through email or rss.



I've been reading "The Message" online this way for the past two years. Yes, many days I do not read it as the amount of… Continue