This and That

It's summer, so not much going on library wise, so though I would share some other links.

Last weekend we spend the weekend in Panama City Beach, Florida (my very FIRST trip to the gulf!) for my son's baseball tournament. On Saturday, while we were sitting on the beach, a group of men came by us with blue latex gloves on, picking up things on the beach, they were looking for tar balls from the gulf oil spill and were finding small tar balls on the beach. A few minutes later a woman came out of the water and her float had small patches of oil on the side that had been in the water. I never thought that the oil spill would touch me, but it just goes to show you how HUGE of an impact this disaster is going to have on our whole country.

In other news, take a look at this blog post by Lisa Adams about the book If You Knew Suzy: a Mother, a Daughter, a Reporters Notebook by Katherine Rosman- I already had this book on my to read list, but after reading her post, I think I am going to take a trip to the book store tonight to pick it up!

This week I traveled to Massachusetts by car with two of my kids and my Dad - my Dad is awesome - who else would take a week off from his high pressure job as a bank CFO and fly down to Atlanta, travel with us to see his grandson's baseball tournament in Florida, help me try and fix my toilet (then buy me a new one when the fix didn't work) then drive 2 days, 1000 miles back to Massachusetts with me but my Dad. While we were at my house this week we had a great conversation about social media - it turns out that a mommy podcast that I listen to (Manic Mommies) is produced/hosted by a woman (@kristinsb) who helps run her families bank marketing firm in Massachusetts. She and I had a twitter exchange a few weeks back about my Dad and banking - I told my Dad this and as it turns out he has been trying to bring in some social media to his bank - which is one of the things she has done presentations on a bank conferences. I loved this "6 degrees of separation" conversation we had and that even though we are in totally different businesses, that I could turn him on to how social media works!

And to all my librarian friends who are traveling to the ALA Annual conference in Washington, DC or to the ISTE conference in Denver - safe travels and know that I am SOO jealous of all of you, maybe next year I will get to one of these great conferences!

Well, I am off to go swimming with my kids and my 2 year old niece Lilly, who is just the cutest little girl EVER!

Year in Review 2009-2010

High School media GODDESS Buffy Hamilton inspired me to create an Animoto video about my year in the media center. I had never used Animoto before, but thought it looked cool so I thought I would give it a whirl. I learned a few things, mainly, if you have more pictures/text than the song you choose allows, it just cuts out whatever it didn't have time for (so I had to choose a new song). The text tool is VERY limiting, so I ended up having to abbreviate a lot. Also, wish I had taken more pictures during the year- I am VERY cautious about putting students in anything I post on here, but looking back, I wish I had some more pictures of students engaged in activities in the media center.

Since this is my first attempt at any kind of annual "report" I think now I will know what I need to save/document for next year. Of course, Animoto is blocked in our county, so I will have to send this as an attachment so that my administration can take a look at it. I know that my Principal knows what I do, but I think it can't hurt to have it documented, especially with these trying financial times.

You're Never too old...

photo by Sean McCarthy, Twisted River Productions

This weekend was my daughters (she's the one in green) 9th dance recital (8th year at her current studio, North Georgia Dance & Music Factory) and, if I can be a mom for a minute, she ROCKED IT! She got a lot of compliments this weekend of how much she has improved and I am one proud mama.

Adult tappers (I'm 3rd from the right)

BUT it was also MY recital too - I dance in an adult tap class at the studio - I have a lot of fun and get to partake in my first love - dance (I danced most of my young life until college,marriage,babies got in the way!) I love the reaction that I get from students who see me at the recital all dressed up in my costume and rocking it onstage - I love that they are seeing that you are never too old to do what you love and to try new things (although tap is not a new thing for me). Of course this lesson is a great one that my web 2.0 students are learning this summer, many of them are coming out of their comfort zone and trying new things - and I am SOO proud of them! Check out some of their blogs:

http://www.frees4thgradefrogblog.blogspot.com/

http://www.hernandezherald.blogspot.com/

http://www.passingthepaintbrush.blogspot.com/

www.ecptech.blogspot.com/

http://www.williamswoohoo.blogspot.com/

http://www.langfordslines.blogspot.com/

http://www.kindergartencooks.blogspot.com/

http://rsmathspecial.blogspot.com/

http://wileysworkshop.blogspot.com/

http://www.kymcrosby.blogspot.com/

http://www.writingrocksattherock.blogspot.com/

http://www.gegensgabsheet.blogspot.com/

It is one HOT day here in the ATL, stay cool my friends!

The Book Whisperer

I want to move to Texas so that my kids can have Donalyn Miller as a 6th grade teacher (ok, so two of my kids would have to repeat 6th grade, but it might be worth it...). If you don't know who she is...why not?? She is a 6th grade teacher, author of The Book Whisperer and from where I'm sitting, a FABULOUS teacher.

Check out her latest post about what her students read this year, it BLOWS MY MIND that the average number of books read in her class this year was 57 - WOW.

So ever since I read her book I have asked myself the question, as a librarian, how can I spark that kind of interest in books with the students??

I started doing book talks on the announcements... that helped a little. I try and "hand sell" a book (which I think is one of Donalyn's most successful methods in getting her kids to read) but with 950 students, this is SO hard for me to do with every student. I have a reading program, but I KNOW it does not generate the excitement that I would like to see, and I still haven't figured out what would generate that READING excitement that obviously Donalyn generates in her classroom.

These are the things I think about all summer long, hoping that the light bulb will go off - I'm still waiting....

Feeling Summer!

I am sitting here reading my "students" blogs from my web 2.0 course and I am already SOO proud of these ladies - some of them are coming out of their comfort zone to take this course and it is SO great to see them embrace the technology that I love so much!

My daughter has her annual dance recital this weekend and so we have been listening to the same 5 songs all week that she will be dancing to this weekend - this one brings me back to the 80's - when I thought the B52's were so funny and never in a MILLION years thought that someday I would be "heading down the Atlanta highway" everyday. This song just SCREAMS summer and makes you want to dance!! Happy Tuesday!

Summer is here!!

photo by APDK via Flickr

Well it has been a week since the kids have left school, a few days since I left school for the summer and already, I am sunburned (from the Braves afternoon game I went to today) and have yet to put a toe in our neighborhood pool (but it does look promising for a pool day tomorrow!) but my exciting summer news is that I am teaching/facilitating an online web 2.0 class this summer.

This web 2.0 journey started earlier this year when my Assistant Principal asked me to come in and explain podcasting to her - when I started going on and on about podcasting, blogs, wikis - she called me a geek and told me that I needed to teach her what I was talking about. It got me thinking to the original 23 things course by Helene Blowers. As I did a little more research I came across Shelley Paul's awesome adaptation for schools, called K12 Learning 2.o. I came up with the idea that I could take these two courses and tweak them a little for our specific school community (after getting permission from the original course facilitators). My administration loved the idea and told me I could offer it to our teachers as a summer course worth 2 PLU's. I expected to get a few people interested, I would have been happy with 5 people, but to my surprise, I now have THIRTEEN teachers taking the class this summer!

We started last week and today I had my first three students start their blogs (and they look great!) This is an online course, but since it is offered just to teachers in my school I will be available for tutoring sessions, either in person or remotely by phone/email or google chat. If this goes well I am hoping I can offer it to media specialists in our county and other teachers at our school.

Of course, as with most of the things I take on, it took me a lot more time to get everything up and running, but I think that (or hope that) the people who are taking the course get something out of it and at the very least, be more comfortable using technology in their classroom.

Well, it is time to do one of my favorite summer activities - watch 2 hours of So You Think You Can Dance with my daughter!





Happy Summer!!

Author Visit - Matt Tavares

It has been a YEAR in the making, but last week our school hosted author/illustrator Matt Tavares. Matt was great and the students loved him. He talked about how he writes and illustrates his books and he tailored each presentation to the different grade levels he saw throughout the day. He also has the COOLEST story about how he uncovered some facts about Hank Aaron's first home run in the major leagues - my students found that to be pretty cool! The story is on his website if you would like to read it.

While Matt was here, he also filmed a segment for our local school districts' TV station, GCPS TV. They call the series The Author in You and Matt filmed here with a few of our students. The TV station is now online and I will post a link to the show when it is on their website. In the meantime, check them out, they have some great original programing.

Since Matt writes a lot about baseball I decided to try and get our local minor league team, the Gwinnett Braves (GBraves) to host a night for my school and also host Matt that night since his latest book is about the most famous Brave of all time, Hank Aaron. I put the GBraves in touch with Matt's publisher Candlewick Press and they arranged to have Matt throw out the first pitch, have the first 200 kids receive a copy of Henry Aaron's Dream and have Matt sign them. And I SWEAR I had nothing to do with this, BUT who were the GBraves playing that night... yep, the Pawtucket Red Sox. My youngest son, the aspiring Red Sox player ,got to go on the field with Matt and help him warm up before the big pitch, I think it was a thrill for BOTH of them to be on the field. Matt did a great job throwing out the first pitch, but I think he was a little disappointed that the Paw Sox didn't come recruit him (then again, the way the Sox are playing these days, maybe they made a mistake!). I ended up selling 400 tickets to the game and our chorus sang the national anthem (they did such a great job!) We all had SUCH a good time and the students thought it was SO cool that Matt and his family sat with us at the game!

I love author visits, and to me, they are so worth the time, effort and money that a media specialist puts into having them, but the two days that Matt was here and all the activities that we had planned while he was here was SOO much fun and so worth it. It might be hard to top this next year....

Take a look at this quick slide show for pictures from Matt's visit.