Cybils & Your Holiday Shopping

Take a look to your right (no not that right , your other right..) do you see that COOL widget, yep that one, well it is the new widget for the 2009 Cybil nominate books. It will highlight a new nominated book every time it loads. So how is this helping your holiday shopping?? Well, you can click on the Amazon or Indie Bound link and you can order up that book for someone on your holiday shopping list. THAT EASY - yes it is!

Thanks to JacketFlap for this great widget (this WAS the buzz word at AASL!).

Speaking of holiday shopping, can you believe that it is only 26 shopping days until Christmas (and even less til Hanukkah) - I for one am giving my young nieces and nephew a new book and new pj's to go with the book - you can never have too many books or too many comfy pj's in which to get into when reading said book! Of course my teenager and teenager wanna be only want gifts of the electronic kind (Xbox 360 and a cell phone are on their lists)..sigh.... luckily my youngest son has the right idea, he has asked for bacon for Christmas - yep - actually he was specific, he wants Canadian Bacon - good thing Santa has to cross Canada before he gets to us!

Happy Shopping!

National Educational Technology Plan

Diane Chen of the SLJ Blog Practically Paradise forwarded a message on her blog from Julie Walker, executive Director of AASL. Here is the message:

Julie A. Walker, Executive Director of the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) has asked us to forward the information below widely. I hope you will participate on behalf of all school librarians and our students.

Late in October, I sat in on a webinar regarding the National Educational Technology Plan. If you have not done so already, I want to urge all of you to go to the site: www.edtechfuture.org . The developers are seeking input on all four aspects of the plan: learning, assessment, teaching and productivity / infrastructure. At the time of the late October webinar, the developers expressed concern about the LOW VOLUME of comments they had received. They are particularly looking for examples of districts doing INNOVATIVE things.

I urge those of you who feel that school library media specialists can bring value to this planning process to register and to comment. I noted a number of topics of importance to the field:
Lifelong & Lifewide Learning
Measurement of equitable access to learning resources
Learning skills
Technology literacy
Equality of access (including gap between home & school)

For those of you interested in an overview of the slides from the webinar hosted by the National Coalition for Technology in Education and Training (NCTET) and PBS, “Shaping the Future of Education Through Technology” with Jim Shelton, Assistant Deputy Secretary, Office of Innovation and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education, they can be downloaded here: http://www.nctet.org/calendar.htm Please register and comment before the end of the month.

The Kid Lit community is made of AWESOME!

As many people who follow the kidlitosphere know, Andrea from the podcast Just One More Book is battling breast cancer. Her husband (and co-creator of JOMB) sent out a plea to the authors and illustrators and other kit lit folk to call and send a message of encouragement to Andrea - he got an incredible response and he compiled some of those responses into a theme that Andrea can listen to whenever she needs a pick me up - he calls it the Warrior Theme and it is so empowering to listen to. Listening to all the people in the kid lit world who responded is incredible- you guys (and gals) ROCK! (and as a side note, I loved hearing that fellow Emerson Alum and my Alpha Pi Theta brother, Henry Winkler was one of the first to respond!)

Andrea, I hope that you kick cancer's butt girl - you are already a kid lit warrior, now it is time to make you into a breast cancer survivor warrior!

** image from www.zazzle.com

AASL 2009 - Notes and reflections

WOW.. that's all I can say about AASL - WOW...

Well, I do have some other things to say about the conference but if you are a school media specialist, start saving NOW for AASL 2011 in Minneapolis- really, I can't believe I have waited this long to attend a national conference. What I came away with was SO incredible and I will be talking about it and dissecting it more in the next few weeks as I have time to really go through conference notes and websites, but here were some highlights:

* stumbling into the Bloggers Cafe (and not realizing where we were) and meeting Joyce Valenza and Buffy Hamilton first thing on Thursday (both of whom are just MADE of awesome!) and listening to some great presentations and meeting some other FABULOUS media specialists and even a corporate librarian from GA. Here is the link to the wiki from the bloggers cafe.

* Listening to opening speaker Danah Boyd - wow - she had some great things to say, I wish I could have my staff and parents listen to her presentation!

* Attending the Smackdown (wiki here) - this was the BEST session of the whole conference - I am SO glad I went in early and got a seat!

* The exhibition hall was great too - I got some free books (including an ARC of the new John Green/ David Levithan book - SOO excited about this), some coupons from other vendors and I stumbled onto a great publisher - Sylvan Dell - their books are beautiful and they have a GREAT subscription e-book service! It will take me weeks to go through all the STUFF I came home with!

I promise more from the conference, but Book Fair starts tomorrow and I better get some sleep!

I'm off to AASL

I am leaving for Charlotte with a good friend (and fellow media specialist) to attend my first national library convention. I have been a member of the American Library Association(ALA) and it's affiliate the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) since I was in grad school (we're talking 7 years now ) but the conventions are always SO expensive to attend. Most have been in far away places that require planes, trains or long automobile trips to get to and then require hotels and food and well you know how things add up - and my school cannot foot the bill and with 3 kids, neither can I - until now!

This convention is only 3 hours away (by car) and we are staying with my friends brother who lives in Charlotte. This might be my one and only national convention that I get to go to, so I am going to try and make the most of it! I am excited to hear the speakers and attend the sessions and also to hopefully meet up with some online friends.

I have a feeling I am going to be VERY tired on Saturday when I get back!