Blogs

Today is my first day back.  I'm really excited.  There is so much to do here, but it should be a lot of fun.  First major thing I need to get done is create my library advisory committee.  After that, we will really need to update my vision and mission.  If anyone has any suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Lauren, thank you so much for highly recommending this book! It was so right up my alley with what I truly love to read. Maggie Stiefvater crafted such a great story with a believable storyline about "water" horses, orphans, the rich vs the poor and a romance that slowly grows between Kate "Puck" Connolly and Sean Kendrick, a horse-whisperer of the carnivorous sea horses. The island of Thisby is a hard scrabble place that needs the tourists the annual Scorpio Races brings, to survive. Puck and her two brothers have lost their parents to the flesh eating horses and life has been very difficult since then for them. Whereas Puck and Finn love the island, older brother Gabe has announced he is leaving with his two friends, because he can't take it anymore. Sean Kendrick and Puck alternate telling their stories. Sean Kendrick loves his Capill uisce, Corr and Puck loves her quarter pony; and it is Sean who stands up for Puck as the first female rider, against those islanders that challenge her. I really disliked both Mutt Malvern and his father. I wanted to like Mr. Malvern, but I could see that he was like Sean Kendrick (poor) but he was never going to let Sean or Corr go. I saw true evil in Mutt and it was difficult to read when he tried to "hurt" those associated with Sean Kendrick. But it was the slowly moving, delicate relationship of Puck and Sean that I applaud. Stiefvater takes two people who are animal lovers and through deliberate situations, moves them from strangers, to acquaintances, to friends and then a mutual respect and love. Highly recommended!

View all my reviews

The Orange Houses by Paul Griffin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It took me awhile to get around to reading this book, but I was determined since it was listed on 2010 Best Books for Young Adults...
All of the characters were important, even Shanelle and her gang as Griffin tells of harsh urban life in the Bronx, where three people's lives intersect, they become friends, and the environment just crushes people. I want to say this book has a redemptive ending, but it falls a short---but that is just life and Griffin wants us to know about living on the mean streets of an urban, decaying city. Each chapter covers one of the friends; Jimmi Sixes is a schizophrenic war veteran who has love in his soul for poetry and the beautiful artwork of Tamika and Fatima. Tamika is hearing impaired and uses a bad set of hearing aids which she likes to "turn off" rather than listen to the loud, nasty insults and jeers of those who taunt her. Fatima is fresh off the boat from Africa where she has lost most of her family and she knows she has to be almost invisible to stay off the radar of the immigration police. Jimmi befriends Fatima, gets her a volunteer job at the veterans hospital when she is not selling newspapers and introduces her to Tamika. It is true friendship that develops between Fatima and Tamika. But Tamika is taunted, pushed and chased by bully Shanelle and she gets more and more in her gang to "take care of Tamika." Fatima meets her at school and walks her home but life is about to take an even nastier turn. For a look at real life on the streets of New York, Griffin's book does not disappoint.

View all my reviews

Now that I've been reading Pam Berger and Sally Trexler's book, Choosing Web 2.0 Tools for Learning and Teaching in a Digital World, I've decided to resurrect my blog that I'd started as part of the PSLA "23 Things" exercise.  I exported it to another email account and changed the blog URL, and in the process I lost my previous followers.  You can find the blog at http://librarythreads.blogspot.com if you'd like to sign up to follow it again.

We are appreciating the opportunity to use LibGuides at Chambersburg Area Senior High School Library.  See our page for our 11th grade English "Junior Project": http://palibraries.libguides.com/aecontent.php?pid=270348&sid=2236206 

We assign a separate tab for each research project, by the teacher's name.  (We haven't decided yet what to do when the teacher comes in for a second project.  I suppose we could put a "2" after the name.)  It's nice to have all the resources in one spot, and a lot easier to use than our school Web site.

The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Lauren, thank you so much for highly recommending this book! It was so right up my alley with what I truly love to read. Maggie Stiefvater crafted such a great story with a believable storyline about "water" horses, orphans, the rich vs the poor and a romance that slowly grows between Kate "Puck" Connolly and Sean Kendrick, a horse-whisperer of the carnivorous sea horses. The island of Thisby is a hard scrabble place that needs the tourists the annual Scorpio Races brings, to survive. Puck and her two brothers have lost their parents to the flesh eating horses and life has been very difficult since then for them. Whereas Puck and Finn love the island, older brother Gabe has announced he is leaving with his two friends, because he can't take it anymore. Sean Kendrick and Puck alternate telling their stories. Sean Kendrick loves his Capill uisce, Corr and Puck loves her quarter pony; and it is Sean who stands up for Puck as the first female rider, against those islanders that challenge her. I really disliked both Mutt Malvern and his father. I wanted to like Mr. Malvern, but I could see that he was like Sean Kendrick (poor) but he was never going to let Sean or Corr go. I saw true evil in Mutt and it was difficult to read when he tried to "hurt" those associated with Sean Kendrick. But it was the slowly moving, delicate relationship of Puck and Sean that I applaud. Stiefvater takes two people who are animal lovers and through deliberate situations, moves them from strangers, to acquaintances, to friends and then a mutual respect and love. Highly recommended!

View all my reviews

Look Back and Forward

My Capstone experience has reinforced my belief that in order to be an effective teacher, you must remain a lifelong student. My significant learning moments came when I applied what I learned from ISTE colleagues to my interactions with building level peers and of course my students! Informing my peers that they could work together even though they could not find a convenient meeting time for all concerned by using Google.docs was a fulfilling moment for me. Seeing my students reach out to others across the nation via ePals was also fantastic -  my students were so proud of themselves and felt so accomplished! I loved creating my personal learning community. I will definitely continue to maintain and grow my pln. I also loved sharing tools, resources, and strategies with colleagues and students and I hope to continue that learning as well. My next major professional step is to become National Board Certified as a School Library Media Specialist in the next several years!

Well as a culminating activity to my ISTE Capstone journey, I have to come up with a way to express all that I have learned in 3 to 5 minutes! UGH! I have never been to stay within a time limit. Anyways, I decided to try and use Prezi to highlight everything I’ve learned over the course of the last year about integrating technology into the curriculum, global citizenship, and the digital world. Prezi is an awesome digital tool and I will definitely be using it a lot in the coming months as I move away from being a PowerPoint Queen. My students are going to be so surprised as I generally have used PowerPoint as a cornerstone of library instruction for the past couple of years. I have been able to incorporate a large number of digital tools into the PowerPoint format but I have been trying to move away from it for the last several months and I believe that Prezi is going to be a new favorite tool for me.

Overall, my ISTE journey has been fantastic. I have learned a tremendous amount and I have made some very good friends. While I feel like I have benefitted enormously from my Capstone experience, the real winners have to be my students who have a teacher who has been reenergized and is brimming with enthusiasm for teaching!

See My Prezi at http://prezi.com/j2spbwtfwrmv/my-iste-capstone-experiences/

Forgive me for not being more active on this great NING.  Wherever teacher-librarians gather I find valuable resources and deeply caring people. 

I'd like to add to the resources by sharing by new online magazine. This is a curated publishing effort that is just getting started.  I think the content will appeal to this audience. 

Digital Magazine: Information Fluency . If you like what you see, just click follow so we can stay connected.  

~ Dennis

Please see my blog Thoughts from a LiberryGurl

The cornerstones of exceptional educators continue to be collaboration and communication. Technology has simply expanded the methods educators can successfully collaborate and communicate. Using digital tools such as Skype, Google docs and ePals, educators can stretch far beyond traditional classroom walls in order to provide their students with truly 21^st century learning skills.

However, you must be able to distinguish between collaboration and communication. As defined at Dictionary.com, communication is the interexchange of thoughts, opinions, or information by speech, writing, or signs. Collaboration, on the other hand, is defined as working together. The core difference is that while with communication, people are sharing information; with collaboration people are creating something together rather than separately. Technology has made it so that people may collaborate across vast distances and learning abilities in a way that has never been possible before.

While I teach Internet Safety to over 800 students every school year, I do not compartmentalize Internet Safety into one or two discrete blocks. Instead, Internet Safety, digital ethics and etiquette compose a portion of every Media Center lesson. However, before reading K. Walsh’s blog entry on special needs students and Internet resources for educators, I will admit that my Internet Safety, digital ethics and etiquette lessons did not have enough information for me to model effectively for my students with special needs.  I am reviewing materials and incorporating as much as differentiation and accommodation into my lessons as possible. Communication and collaboration for all students should take in the needs of all students and technological tools, used appropriately, can effectively allow educators to introduce new resources and avenues of inquiry to all students equitably.

This is one of many many many poems which i've written over the last five years of "retirement" as a teacher.  

Many are in my books or on my website (Google JOSIE'S POEMS) but this one you can use in your classrooms or libraries to read to the children as autumn is well and truly here.  Well it is here in England as my back tells me because I've been picking up many leaves today.  Do let me know if the children enjoy this poem:

An Autumn Visit

By Josie Whitehead

Autumn is wearing her bright golden crown.

 She’s coming this morning to visit our town,

    And Wind, her best friend, will be joining her too.

    Will they have a nice day and what will they do?

She’ll be changing the colours of leaves on our trees

And Wind likes to tease with his cold, playful breeze.

     As the leaves tumble down in a pile on the ground,

     He will take a deep breath and blow them around.

They’ll both knock down conkers for children to find,

But the nuts aren’t just there for the good of mankind.

    The squirrels like nuts and they’ll store them away

    But then out they will come on those cold wintry days.

So what do you think that the two friends might eat?

 What sorts of things would be good for a treat?

      There are sweet tasting berries and fruits of all kinds

      Which are wonderful treats for the two friends to find.

They will chase over hills and along by the river.

 Wind’s cold wintry breath may well cause us to shiver.

     The swallows will see them and say their goodbye,

     Calling “See you next year” as they fly through the sky.

With the sun going down there’s no time left to play,

But the two friends have had such a marvellous day!”

    When you look all around at this colourful scene,

    You will see very clearly where these friends have been.

Copyright 2011

What fun when I read this to a class recently:

"So, what do you think the two friends might eat?"  Answer:  "Crisps, chocolate, sweets, cake, biscuits."  

"No, they didn't eat these things.  Think "healthy eating".  No answer.

"Well, look out of your classroom.  It is autumn outside.  What do you see by the window that they may like to eat?"  (There were berries and apples outside).

Answer:  "Pineapples".  Teacher:  "Now you are being  really really silly and you don't want Mrs Whitehead to think that do you?

  Look out of the window.  What do you see".

Answer:  "Berries and apples".  Another child:  "No they didn't!!  Mummy told me that we must not eat berries or they would poison us."  

Then trying to explain to them that Autumn and Wind are personifications is a bit difficult, so we told them that of course they are not human beings.  One was a season and one was an element of nature - ie weather.

At last we have them completely satisfied and decided it was better not to ask any more questions. ha ha So what would your answers have been?

Smashwords - School Libraries: What's Now, What's Next, What's Yet to Come - A book by Kristin Fontichiaro via kwout

Dear Colleagues,

On behalf of the over 50 authors who contributed to School Libraries: What’s Now, What’s Next, What’s Yet to Come, we are delighted to announce that our crowdsourced eBook is now available for free download!

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/96705

We hope you will enjoy downloading and reading these diverse perspectives on where school libraries are and what school librarians are doing to redefine, stretch, and expand traditional services.

Please feel free to share this link with your colleagues, administrators, professional and union organizations, Board of Education members, and more. Help us spread the word and build the conversation about the possibilities of school libraries!

We have it available for free download in three formats:

• PDF for those who want to read it on a desktop/laptop
• .mobi for those who want to read it on Kindle software or a Kindle device
• .epub for those who would like to read it on Adobe Digital Editions software, iBooks, Sony Reader, the Bluefire Reader app, Nook, and most other eReaders

While you can find the eBook on Smashwords now; in about 2-6 weeks, Smashwords will send it out to the major eBookstores (including Apple’s iBookstore, Barnes and Noble, Sony Bookstore, and others, although Amazon is in negotations) for free distribution.

With deep thanks,

The Authors of School Libraries: What’s Now, What’s Next, What Comes After

Editors:
Kristin Fontichiaro, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
Buffy Hamilton, Creekview High School, Canton, GA

Foreword:
R. David Lankes, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY

Photographs:
Diane Cordell, Retired Teacher Librarian, Queensbury, NY

Contributors:
Kelly Ahlfeld, Mettawee Community School, West Pawlet, VT
Diane Erica Aretz-Kernahan, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
Emilia Askari, Living Textbook Project, McCollough Unis School, Dearborn, MI
Kathleen Atkin, Louis Riel School Division, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Robert Baigent, National Library of New Zealand, Auckland, New Zealand
Susan D. Ballard, Consultant and Simmons College, Boston, MA
Angela Washington-Blair, Emmett J. Conrad High School, Dallas, TX
Dan Bowen, ICT Learning and Teaching Consultant, Surrey, England, UK
Holli Buchter, St. Vrain Valley School District, Longmont, CO
Jennifer Branch, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Len Bryan, Cedar Ridge High School, Round Rock, TX
Jennifer Colby, School of Information, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
Diane Cordell, Retired Teacher Librarian, Queensbury, NY
William Cross, Copyright and Digital Scholarship Center, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC
Meg Donhauser, Hunterdon Central Regional High School, Flemington, NJ
Joanne de Groot, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Stacy Dillon, LREI - Little Red School House and Elisabeth Irwin High School, New York, NY
Andrea Dolloff, Ethical Cultural Fieldston School, New York, NY
Meg Donhauser, Hunterdon Central Regional High School, Flemington, NJ
Laura Fleming, Cherry Hill School, River Edge, NJ
Lorna Flynn, American International School in Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus
Elizabeth Friese, University of Georgia,Athens, GA
Rachel Goldberg, East Middle School, Plymouth, MI
Beth Gourley, Western Academy of Beijing, Beijing, China
Dorcas Hand, Annunciation Orthodox School, Houston, TX
Alida Hanson, School Library Teacher Program, Simmons College GSLIS, Boston, MA
Violet H. Harada, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI
Heather Hersey, Lakeside School, Seattle, WA
Valerie Hill, Ethridge Elementary School, The Colony, TX, and Texas Woman’s University School of Library and Information Studies, Denton, TX
Kimberly Hirsh, Butner-Stem Middle School, Butner, NC, and G. C. Hawley Middle School, Creedmoor, NC
Shannon Hyman, Byrd Middle School, Henrico, VA
Pamela Jackson, East Wake High School, Wendell, NC
Melissa P. Johnston, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY
Jesse Karp, LREI - Little Red School House and Elisabeth Irwin High School, New York, NY
Sara Kelley-Mudie, The Forman School, Litchfield, CT
Tricia Kuon, Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, TX
Neil Krasnoff, New Tech High School at A. Maceo Smith, Dallas, TX
Jennifer LaGarde, New Hanover County Schools, Wilmington, NC
Teri S. Lesesne, Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, TX
Margaret Lincoln, Lakeview School District, Battle Creek, MI
Kate MacMillan, Napa Valley USD, Napa Valley, CA (see also Chap. 9)
Adrienne Matteson, White River Elementary, Noblesville, IN
Kathleen McBroom, Dearborn Public Schools, Dearborn, MI
Walter McKenzie, ASCD, Alexandria, VA
David Meyer, TMC Furniture, Ann Arbor, MI
Ben Mondloch, Cherry Lake Publishing, Ann Arbor, MI
Leslie L. Morgan, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN
Cathy Jo Nelson, Dorman High School, Spartanburg District 6 Schools, Roebuck, SC
Beverley Rannow, Otsego Public Schools, Otsego, MI
Howard Rheingold, UC Berkeley, Stanford University, San Francisco Bay Area, CA
Nikki D. Robertson, Auburn High School, Auburn, AL
Daniella Smith, University of North Texas, Denton, Texas
Evan St. Lifer, Scholastic Library Publishing, Danbury, CT
Jennifer Stanbro, South Portland School Department, South Portland, ME
Caitlin Stansell, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
Jeff Stanzler, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
Carolyn Jo Starkey, Buckhorn High School, New Market, AL
Wendy Steadman Stephens, Buckhorn High School, New Market, AL
Michael Stephens, San Jose State University, San Jose, CA
Linda Straube, New Trier High School, Winnetka, IL
Cathy Stutzman, Hunterdon Central Regional High School, Flemington, NJ
Mega Subramaniam, University of Maryland, College Park, MD
Margaret Sullivan, Smith Systems, Plano, TX (see also Chap. 6)
Joyce Kasman Valenza, Springfield Township High School, Erdenheim, PA
Karen Villegas, Grosse Pointe North High School, Grosse Pointe, MI
Jeanna Walker, Portage Public Schools, Portage, MI
Donna Watt, Invercargill City Libraries, Invercargill, New Zealand
Holly Weimar, Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, TX
Senga White, James Hargest College, Invercargill, New Zealand
Erin Drankwalter Wyatt, Highland Middle School, Libertyville, IL
Amanda Yaklin, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
Alice Yucht, Retired/rewired Teacher-Librarian, NJ
Marci Zane, Hunterdon Central Regional High School, Flemington, NJ

PS - Want to create a Smashwords book of your own? We recommend the Smashwords Style Guide (http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/52).

Students as the center or heart of the learning process? AWESOME idea. Self directed learning using technology as the structural platform seems to be one possible educational future. Self motivation is the key to successful self directed learning per several academic articles on the subject. However, technological tools cannot take over the educational process instead the two (technology and education) should be a seamless marriage that allows students to do what everyone wants them to do: LEARN.

Scoop.it Young adult novels

Thanks to Eric Bateman for his wonderful scoop.it and giving out this idea!