The tables we’ll be sitting at don’t have power outlets. No live blog of the event. Check back later tonight for a summary.
Archive for the ‘Administrative’ category
No live blog
June 23rd, 2010Coverit Live
June 21st, 2010This summer I watched part of E3 as well as game seven of the NBA Finals online. The broadcasters for both events used the same liveblogging software: Coverit Live.
Wednesday through Friday of this week I’m going to try and live blog using the software. It helps me stay focused and remember what was said (especially for a three day conference) and I’m always surprised about how many educators mention my blog to me in person. Students, it won’t be incredibly exciting, but teachers might benefit from it.
Today is the test run of the event. Below is the Internet equivalent of “Mic check…is this thing on?”
Vote on Tuesday
May 17th, 2010Don’t forget to vote on Tuesday. A lot of big decisions will be made.
Happy Book Day to you!
April 23rd, 2010Today marks the birth/death of Shakespeare on the Julian calendar and the death of Miguel Cervantes on the Gregorian calendar. Celebrate their work by giving a book away today. I’ve already given away tons this morning – and if they don’t come back in two weeks there’ll be a fine.
Cervantes is most known for writing Don Quixote. Shakespeare is known for writing everything else and having people copy his work. Click on their names to read a sample of their work.
How Librarians will Save the World
March 8th, 2010It’s great to see authors like Marilyn Johnson delve into the world of what a modern library actually looks like. Here’s an excerpt from This Book is Overdue that summarizes it pretty well:
Somewhere between Jeanette Moodie’s frontiers and Lena Kjellar’s is the story of a profession in the midst of an occasionally mind-blowing transition. A library is a place to go for a reality check, a bracing dose of literature, or a “true reflection of our history,” whether it’s a brick-and-mortar building constructed a century ago or a fanciful arrangement of computer codes. The librarian is the organizer, the animating spirit behind it, and the navigator. Her job is to create order out of the confusion of the past, even as she enables us to blast into the future.
I also appreciate the acknowledgment that a librarian helps you find your information efficiently, as well as the nod to libraries as a community center. Our local public library is offering business and network classes and helping people with their job applications. In a time where the majority of our population is being hit hard economically, a hub with free access to information is crucial.
Here’s a link to the article from NPR.
Hoops for Haiti
February 23rd, 2010Tonight is the Hoops for Haiti fundraiser. Our staff is taking on the GrJHS staff. All money raised goes towards UNICEF’s Haiti earthquake relief efforts. I’ll be playing as the tallest librarian on the court.
Hunger Games 3 has a release date
January 30th, 2010The third book in The Hunger Games trilogy is scheduled to come out August 24th, 2010!
Woo and hoo
Mixed Martial Arts Toy Drive
December 16th, 2009If a kickboxer asks you to donate toys, you do it.
The toy drive is for soldiers who are having trouble providing gifts for their families during this time of year.
The drop-off for the toys is:
1861 E. Baseline Rd, Tempe, AZ (480) 274-7637
If you donate at least three toys, you get 30 minutes worth of a training session with UFC Fighter Santino DeFranco.
2011 Grand Canyon Reader Award Nominees
December 8th, 2009How the Grand Canyon Award books work:
- We give you the top ten books from recent years.
- You read the books.
- When voting time comes around, you vote for the best book out of the ten.
- You sit back and relax, having enjoyed some really good books while you wait for our next list.
Check out the main site here.
I’m on the awards committee, so students of mine should recognize quite a number of these books:
The Brooklyn Nine by Alan Gratz (2009)
Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson (2008)
Crooked Kind of Perfect by Linda Urban (2007)
Evolution, Me and Other Freaks of Nature by Robin Brande (2007)
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (2008)
H. I. V. E: The Higher Institute of Villainous Education by Mark Walden (2006)
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (2008)
London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd (2007)
My Fair Godmother by Janette Rallison (2009)
Palace of Mirrors by Margaret Peterson Haddix (2008)
Choose Your Own Adventure Math
November 23rd, 2009Choose Your Own Adventure books kept me coming back to the public library daily as a kid and I would be willing to bet partly influenced my decision to become a librarian.
A friend of mine sent me this link a while back and it’s taken me until now to sort through all of the analysis of the Choose Your Own Adventure books. I hadn’t realized that as the series went on, there became less choices in the books. I have always wondered what it took to organize all of the pages to point to different places throughout the book. (I made a Choose Your Own Adventure radio show CD in high school, so I understand the effort on a smaller scale.) Check out this site for more of the math behind Choose Your Own Adventure books.
Also of note were the Lone Wolf books by Joe Dever. It makes sense that these types of books, ones where you jump around inside the framework of the book, came around during milestones in video game computing. (For my students that know how much I love video games, you should imagine what it would be like growing up on this game. Yeah, no 3D cards, just text.)
The Lone Wolf books were cool because they had a page at the end with random numbers scattered across them. This was to generate a score for your character’s skill checks and attacks. It was a book where you were the main character and it played out like a variation on a video game. You were supposed to close your eyes and point to one of the numbers, but my teacher would always get mad at me during silent reading time.
These books really grabbed my imagination because, no matter how hard I tried to predict where the story was going, it could always take a crazy turn. Some smart authors even put fake endings into the book to trap you if you were just flipping through the pages.
The worlds that these authors created I can still remember. That’s why the samizdat quote is so poignant:
It was the fact that after reading it you understood the logic of Gibson’s world. And that logic was portable to any new scenario you could dream up.
