It's Book Swap Time

In honor of Children's Book Week our school is having a book swap on Friday. Bring a book, get a book. Bring 10 Get 10. This is an activity the students really enjoy--and it gets their rooms cleaned up at home too.

Veteran's Day Activities

I am using wonderful book about honoring Veteran's for my 4th graders Veteran's Day activities. The book is America's Little White Table by Margot Theis Raven.

Below is the review from Amazon.com

The White Table is set in many mess halls as a symbol for and remembrance to service members fallen, missing, or held captive in the line of duty. Solitary and solemn, it is the table where no one will ever sit. As a special gift to her Uncle John, Katie and her sisters are asked to help set the white table for dinner. As their mother explains the significance of each item placed on the table Katie comes to understand and appreciate the depth of sacrifice that her uncle, and each member of the Armed Forces and their families, may be called to give.

As I have read the book to the students we have taken the actual objects and set the table

White Cloth

Plate with Lemon Slice

Salt-bitter tears of the family

Black Napkin --for the sorrow of captivity

White Candle--for peace

Red Rose in a vase tied with a red ribbon-

Empty Chair

It has been a moving experience for me and I think also for the children. After we have completed the story and the class is checking out books, there are always some who want to reset the table. (which I always let them do)

October Storytelling Fun

Each October my 5th and 6th graders love the scary "true" ghost stories of Kathryn Tucker Windham, storyteller extraordinaire from Alabama. The Hole that Won't Stay Filled and The Face in the Courthouse Window capture their attention and imaginations. Find out more about Kathryn by visiting these links

http://www.taletellin.selmaalabama.com/KathrynTuckerWindham.htm

http://www.auburn.edu/~willik5/selmavisit.html

She's a true Alabama treasure and a favorite of our kids.

Want your child to love to read? It takes work.

I recently found on the web this article originally published in the NY Times about how to create readers from our children. Take a look. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/14Rparenting.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Obiviously it's not something that will happen over night. But how about taking steps each day to see that it happens.

ISLD

Our bookmarks are all in for International School Library Day. We are in the process of sorting and plan to mail them to Sardis Elementary on Wednesday of next week. The fall break we have on Monday and Tuesday has delayed mailing. Hopefully Kevin at Sardis will receive them in time. On Friday SSIS received a package of information on Chilliwack and a British Columbia map from the students at Sardis. It is currently on display in our library.

Upon our return from our short vacation our 5th and 6th graders will be listening to Kathryn Tucker Windham on audio and video tape tell her famous Alabama ghost stories. This is always an anticipated event for the 6th graders who first heard The Face in the Courthouse Window and The Hole that Won't Stay Filled last year as 5th graders. Kathryn is an Alabama treasure that I have had the privilege of meeting on several occasions. You can find out more about her at this website http://www.taletellin.selmaalabama.com/KathrynTuckerWindham.htm

Where has the time gone?

I can't believe it has been almost 2 months since I last posted. The first nine weeks has gone by and report cards go out next week. We are very busy at SSIS preparing for International School Library Day. Our school was paired with Sardis Elementary School in Chilliwack, British Columbia, Canada. Each homeroom class has prepared a poster to place in the hall outside their classroom. On the poster there is information, flags, maps, pictures etc about Alabama, the United States, Chilliwak, British Columbia, and Canada. We have mailed a package containing an Alabama map and travel brochures about Alabama to the students at Sardis. The Sardis librarian, Kevin Kavanagh, has a package on the way to SSIS containing the same type information. We are busy making our bookmarks to send for ISLD which is held on October 22.

This year's theme is Learning: Powered by your School Library

http://www.iasl-online.org/files/isld2007small.pdf

This link will give you the ISLD poster which I cannot figure out how to load on this page.

First Week of Classes at SSIS Library

Today marks the first day of scheduled classes at SSIS. Students checked out books last week. Of course, the two series flying off the shelves the quickest were Harry Potter and the Series of Unfortunate Events. The students were eager to get back into the swing of reading. And the summer book checkout program was very successful.

Week 9 Thing 23 Summarize Thoughts

Thank you so much for giving us from out of state the opportunity to work through the SLL 2.0 program. Although we all "wish that we could be California girls", you provided us with the chance to gain a lot of experience and knowledge by sharing the activities and experiences this program provided.

I described my experience in a previous post but here it is again:

"Although not a web native, I do now feel like I am a naturalized citizen no longer an alien."

Previous to this experience I could email, shop, buy and sell on ebay,bank (but not bill pay) word process, search (boolean or not) and do basic stuff. As far as my school was concerned I was one of the knowledgeable ones. I was the tech contact at the local level. Boy was I just taking baby steps.

This program made me proficient in areas I did not even know existed. The photos and images, the rss feeds, the wikis, the tagging--all will be of great use.

I am four years from retirement and will then have 35 years experience. I am so thankful I haven't remained static but am still learning and doing. One of my young teachers who is tech saavy told me this week how impressed she was that I had done all this and had done it on my own. (You all gave great directions and helpful feedback)

I plan to continue my blog as an extension of the school library. I will definitely add the blog address to my signature. I have created a district wiki that we are using for collaboration. The district technology "main guy" heard that I had done that, gave me a thumbs up and asked for the web address.

Thanks so much for providing the information for participating in SLL 2.0 on the LM_NET. Otherwise, I would not have know such a great program was available.
Please do provide information should other such professional development become available.

Thank you again so much for the program.

Week 9 Thing 22 Completed

Following my son's directions for using writeable CDs rather than rewriteable ones, I am now listening to Peter Pan on the cd player in my car. Another task completed. Its really frustrating to finish an audio book and not be able to get another because I can't get to the public library. Now I will always have a source handy with LibriVox. Use for school---many teachers that use novel sets in their classes look for the audio book as well. This way I will have a source for them if it is an older book that we can't find commercially.

Fashion Show

A comment on another blog about an Avatar fashion show caught my interest. I am only about 1/3 of the way through but I thought I would post the results so far. These are all avatars from our School Library Learning 2.0 blogs.



We are now up to fifty or so avatars. If yours is missing and you would like it in the show make a comment and tell me your blog name and I will put it in. This was a long process. Bitmaps (that the avatars were) would not upload to Picassa and Flickr would not let me post as many pictures as I ended up with. An trial and error process. But the lesson is don't give up. I probably can put music with it but not tody.

I decided in the night that although I am not a web native I am really close to getting my naturalized citizenship! I don't feel like an alien anymore.

Week 9 Thing 22 Continued

On the way to school this morning (yes, today August 9 was the first day for our students), I popped the disk in the CD player all ready to listen to Peter Pan --(read yesterday's entry if you are lost). Nothing, nada, not at all! When I got to school and took the CDs inside and put one in my computer--yes, there was my story.

Enter said 20 something year old son.
"yes, Mother, you should be able to hear the book in your car. But wait, did you buy the rewriteable cds?"
"Yes, I did. That way when I finish one book I can erase it and record another."
"You cannot use those kind in your car. Go buy you some regular cheap CDs, Save the book back to your hard drive and then re-record on the cheap ones. When you are done with that book, just throw them away and buy some more for your next one."

The whole time on the phone my husband is saying--"I will just buy you the book!" (See yesterday's post.) "But if you are going to do it, do it at school, not at home"

So although not exactly a web native (yesterday I heard the term digital native used in place of web native), my son who was born in 1980 came through for me again.

Will post outcome soon. I still hope I get to hear Peter Pan!

Week 9 Thing 22

Explore ebooks and audio books. I went to the World's Ebook Fair Site several times and just browsed around. From what I saw you have to join to get the books.(I just missed the month of July when there were free books.) I really am not interested in reading a book through the computer. But I really enjoy audio books and am always checking them out from our public library. I saw on http://librivox.org/ LibriVox that Peter Pan was one that could be downloaded then burned to a CD so I could listen in the car. (I have about a 30 minute commute twice a day) The original Peter Pan is in my school library, I remember Mary Martin playing Peter in the 50's and watching the movie on black and white tv, and Peter Pan the play is coming to the Shakespeare Festival in Montgomery, Alabama, in November and I am considering going----so I thought maybe I should refresh my memory with the original. This has been some project. First I downloaded to my computer a 2 or so hour process that ended sometimes in the night last night. Then I had to so purchase some rewritable CDs because for sure I would be downloading more books and would just use the same ones. That being taken care of today, tonight after supper I started burning the 5 plus hours of book. Time to do this has been about 3 hours. The funny thing is that this has made my husband extremely nervous. He has told me several times during this process that he will just buy me the tape or I should just go check it out instead of all I have been doing.
I will start listening tomorrow in the car and report back on quality etc. However, it really was time consuming. So the jury is still out on whether I see this as worthwhile or not. Just glad I had a cable modem and not dialup!

Week 9 Thing 21

I searched around on the podcast directories given in the SLL 2.0 list. I was more comfortable in the Educational podcast directory. I found an interesting podcast on Teachers and Technology in Brainwave. There were only 3 posts on it though and the last was Feb. 2006, but the comments on use of technology by today's teachers--how it first started with Apples and dot matrix printers and banner makers--to where it is today with blogs and webpages was right on topic. I put a feed for this in my Bloglines account. Here is the URL for the feed if anyone else is interested
http://brainwave.bibliotech.us/?feed=rss2

Speaking with my mid 20s son last night I told him I was working this week with podcasts. He said he'd never "fooled around with that" because you needed itunes. I was able to tell him that was not necessary for some podcasts. Nice to still be able to tell them things they don't know!

Week 9 Thing 20

Explore Youtube. Initially I searched youtube for Upper Peninsula, Michigan. My husband was stationed there when we first married and we spent almost a year in the area. I found several videos and viewed them. It is still as beautiful as it was 35 years ago.

I then searched for children reading and found this wonderful video from Reading Rainbow. As a former reading teacher turned media specialist this video says it all!



I would love to use this in the library this year on the first library visit of say my 4th graders as a kick off for the year.

Week 8 Thing 19 Library Thing Favorites

Week 8 Thing 18

Google docs is an online word processing program that allows you to create, edit, save, email and publish your work. Others can also, if you like, edit.


The above two sentences were created with Google Docs. I decided to go their instead of the other suggested website because I already have an account. I can see the usefulness of this site especially if you never know which computer you are going to be on. You can always access your documents. Also I have trouble with my students being able to pull up what they have created at home--(on floppies etc) This way they should be able to access whatever they have created.

I can also see the usefulness of the editing tool. Teachers could use this to grade or indicate errors in the students work using the highlighting too--students could then go back and correct and publish their work. The end to "red ink"!

I went back and made a change to what I had first created on Google docs and then reposted to the blog. When I did that I lost all the musings on the subject I had first written after I returned to the blog posting and was forced to rewrite them. That seems to be a drawback.

Week 7 Thing 16 & 17

Explore wikis. I visited all the links in the SLL2.0 list, then I visited some blogs of others participating in the program and read their comments and ideas on wikis. After reading comments by http://cardinalreader.blogspot.com/ Mad Cardinal Reader I decided rather than try the pbwiki I would go with Wetpaint. I created a wiki there for the media specialists in my district to use for planning, collaboration, and scheduling meetings. We have previously done this by email, but I'm thinking this might just work. I have only invited 3 others at present and I don't think I gave them any rights. I need to go back and look at that. I was very easy to do and I can see us getting much use from it. ---Initially to chart the professional development meetings for the year with the host schools identified.

I then went to the SLL2.0 wiki and posted idea #28 under wikis.

Week 6 Task 14 ending

The task was to read some articles and blogs on the future of Web 2.0 and its impact on the future of libraries. I have done some reading and somehow ended up on the Bessie Chin Library Leaves blog that discussed the meeting of the International School Library Association in Taipei, Taiwan. The following link is to the blog and a statement that was of interest to me http://libraryleaves.blogspot.com/ . Look at the entry for Saturday, July 21st. I really am not sure how 2.0 savy my 4 - 6 graders are. I am looking forward to getting back to school so I can see how much of what we have worked on is blocked with our blocking software.

Thanks

Thanks to a posting on PageSpace blog I found you could post del.icio.us tag clouds on the blog. So that I did. Now I have my cloud and like PageSpace said I think I am moving on.

Week 6 Thing 14 Completed

Sometimes it just takes the light of day to accomplish task. When the website says post something to the template---that's what you have to do. Not to the body of a post. Finally it is done. Now if I can just get a cloud of tags I will be happy.

Week 6 Thing 14plus

Explore Technorati and see how tags work. I claimed my blog through Technorati and created some tags and will try to add a favorite button on bookladyspeaks...................
I think it worked let me view blog....................... Great, it did. BUT when I clicked on it I got an error message so let me try again. Three times now and link still doesn't work.

No tags yet, but why is there a screwdriver under my Avatar?


SJLIBRARY 2.0

I got the tag! It's really helpful to read the hints on the School Library Learning page. DUHHH!

This exploration tonight has been challenging and somewhat confusing. If I am right now you can read my blog at my blog's url and also on Technorati.

The one thing I wanted on my blog was a cloud of tags--is that possible? The tag clouds remind me of something we did as teenage girls 40 odd years ago--we would cut words out of magazines and glue them on bottles--in a collage, completely covering the bottle and then painting the bottle with shellac. We spent hours looking for just the right words to use. As the commercial once said "We've come a long way baby!"


tags ancestors art bible books cats children's currentevents education fun Genealogy images juvenile library librarylessons news photo professionaldevelopment reference RSS scarystories schoollibrarylearning2.0 series slideshow study technology tutorials Ussery web2.0

I went to del.icio.us and copied my tag cloud and pasted it into the blog. Doesn't look like a cloud here but it is satisfying enough that I'm going to bed.

Not yet, one more attempt

Week 6 Thing 14

Explore Technorati
When I went to Technorati and searched for my blog (after searching School Library 2.0) I found 1 authority listed by an entry. It was from Rob Darrow of California Dreamin'. I went to his blog and there mine was along with a comment about mashup postings. Wow. That was unexpected.

It seems to take me several visits to find things out and complete all the tasks. I will try tagging next. I have noticed on several blogs the tags following the entries--is this what I am going to be getting? That will be a "this afternoon task".

Week 6 Thing 13

Explore Del.icio.us View 12 introductory tutorial---After several days of trying this link still does not work. Explore using SJLibrarylearning2 account. I did look around using this. I created an account on Del.icio.us added buttons to my toolbar and moved some bookmarks I had on my pc to the del.icio.us one. I added tags to them. Usefulness? not sure yet. The link
http://www.beelerspace.com/index.php?p=890 to us.ef.ul helped me to do the adding, signing up, tagging, etc. I read Several Habits of Wildly Successful Del.icio.us Users and found some other areas I need to explore. Will reserve judgement for a while.

I do like the concept of tags as a cloud rather than a list. Appeals to the global side of me.

Week 5 Thing 12 (revisited)

Select Search Engine...InventorsSearch The Web

Powered by

Rollyo Another library 2.0 participant had a cute little red rollyo picture on her website, but for some reason I didn't get that. However, the option to search the inventor websites as a selectable search engine.

I went back and figured that out too. This is definitely a work, rework, and rework to learn experience.

Week 5 Thing 12

I played around with rollyo, registered, created a search list about inventors but for the life of me could not get it on the blog. Maybe I'll try again tomorrow.

Week 5 Thing 11

I went to the Web 2.0 awards list and looked at several sites. I especially enjoyed Guess-the-Google http://grant.robinson.name/projects/guess-the-google. It was fun for me and on one game I broke 300. You know how in the language arts classroom you sometimes play Categories--I think this might be adaptable to that situation. I don't know though how appropriate the images would be. I know on the image wall in Bloglines there was a qualifier that photos possibly could be x-rated (my words not theirs) and sure enough one was on the wall I saw.



Also the One Sentence http://www.onesentence.org/ appealed to the writer side of me.



And 43 Things http://www.43things.com/ was fun to read.

Thank goodness this blogspot saves as a draft if you click off of it by accident. I momentarily thought I was going to have to type all of this over.



I visited the Library Thing http://www.librarything.com/ and decided I would rather be reading than fooling around with it.

Week 5 Thing 10

Play with image generators

The above posts were made with http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/

Week 4 Thing 8 & 9

I set up a Bloglines account and added some feeds. Will give it a try for a week or so. Don't know if this will be helpful to my situation or not. Most everything we are trying is right now blocked at school. Our tech guys can unblock if we need certain sites though. Use in the classroom? Maybe a current events activity or health classes. As far as comics are concerned the one that is my favorite did not have a feed.


www.comics.com/comics/arlonjanis/index.html

Flick Cube

Cool Slideshows!

Week Three Thing 7

Blog about anything technology related. Hhmmmm? So much technology out there and it is changing so fast. My first classroom computer was an APPLE IIE. Remember the game "The Oregon Trail" that we played on these? My son is 26 and he remembers it fondly. Where else did the students learn the word dysentery?

One of my favorite technology finds this year is a flyer drive. That drag and drop is wonderful.

SSIS Library Activities

This has taken all day long. For some reason the html was copying and pasting with a broken link. Don't even know how I got it right the last time. Instructions were very easy, but the doing was difficult.

Week Three Thing Six

Exploring Mashups---made the trading card. Very easy. Can see it used with students perhaps during February--Black History Month activites. Or inventor or explorer reports.

Alabama Spring 2007

Week Three Thing 6

I explored a third party site that allowed me to do a montage of my own pictures. Didn't know I could even do that. Then I imported from that site into the Bookladyspeaks blog. Results--Alabama Spring 2007

Week 3 Thing 5 (retry, retry)

Uploaded using URL. I went to some other people's blogs on School Library Learning 2.0 and just happened to read that you have to use the URL of the photo not the webpage---so I tried again. Thanks for the help of all of you successful before me--especially Joan's School Library Learning where I found my tip.

Week 3 Thing 5 (Retry)

Last night I was able to copy from flickr to my desktop so I know I can do it. Now an attempt to put one on the blog----hold on

Hooray! I did it but only by copying to desktop and then putting in blog. I was not able to put in the url and get it. But whatever, it is here now.

Now a new task.

Week Three Thing 5

I have been exploring Flickr for a week or so now. Always amazed and intrigued by the pics. So many tags to look under. Such a suprise today when I happened upon this post.

I tried to upload a picture from Flickr of a tshirt that reads Librarian 2.0 but I am only getting boxes with an x in it. The site said the picture is public so I thought it should work. Not yet away!

Maybe the pictures are copyrighted and I don't know it. I am going to try a picture from my computer of the library cat....Tigger

That worked! Tomorrow I will try Flickr again.

No work

With company from Florida, babysitting grand-darlings, and Bible School with 2, 3, 4, and 5 year olds I have done no work on my Library 2.0. Maybe back on task next week. The kids have been fun though.

District Media Specialists Come Onboard

I have contacted the other media specialists in my district to see if others would want to participate in these activities. Two have responded favorably. We may get a local community online after all.

There have some been some changes to my avatar since I first posted. You now will see a library cat in the picture. We actually have one in our 4 - 6 library. His name is Tigger and he has been a presence since 1998. You can see his picture on the following link http://www.ironfrog.com. Click on How many library cats are there in the world, then on the map click on Alabama, then Tigger's name. You will see that my virtual cat is almost a twin to the real one!

Getting Started

Week 1 & Week 2

I have been finding out about this Library 2.0 for several weeks and have hoped to have others in my district participate also. So far, only me.

The 7 1/2 habits powerpoint was user friendly and gave me some food for thought. I really do accept responsibility for my own learning. I am determined to complete this course even with no professional development credit. This is stuff I just really need to know--credit or not. As far as an area of problem--it is beginning with an end in mind. I really think in the school library setting if your "end in mind" is too inflexible you miss an awful lot of good stuff all day long.


I have now created a blog--really easy. I guess picture is next.

Corrected---she is an avatar and she is done! and at school