Monthly Archives: September 2009
Save the Date for Howard Rheingold, Joyce Valenza, and Frances Jacobson Harris: Librarians and Truth Detection
Howard Rheingold, Joyce Valenza, and Frances Jacobson Harris: Librarians and Truth Detection – The Future of Education via kwout
This is going to be a “must see/hear/participate” session coming up on Wednesday, September 30 at 8PM EST. If you can’t attend live, the session will be recorded and archived for viewing at your convenience. Here are the details from the Future of Education Ning:
Date: Wednesday, September 30th, 2009
Time: 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern / 12am GMT (next day) (international times here)
Duration: 1 hour
Location: In Elluminate. Log in at http://tinyurl.com/futureofed. The Elluminate room will be open up to 30 minutes before the event if you want to come in early. To make sure that your computer is configured for Elluminate, please visit http://www.elluminate.com/support. Recordings of the session will be posted within a day of the event.
Webcam Observers
Last week, a teacher in the gifted program brought her class of 5th graders to the media center for a lesson to compliment their reading of The Westing Game. One of the characters in this book is an avid bird watcher, and his skill at observation proves to be instrumental in his actions in the book. We collaborated on a lesson to explore bird watching and put ourselves in the shoes of this character.
To start, I shared my own experiences with close observation of nature. A few summers ago I went to Skidaway Island to take a class, and my focus was on taking careful notes about the observations I made in nature and using those notes to create poetry. I then connected this to authors such as Jim Arnosky who does sketches of the wildlife he observes and writes about his journeys in observation. I also shared poems written by Jane Yolen using photographs of birds that her son took. We had discussions of how being a good observer can benefit you in life. Students paired and shared their thinking and came up with many benefits to being good observers.
The big fun came when we moved into the computer lab and practiced our observation skills by watching webcams of birds. Some of these cams were live at bird feeders. Others were recordings of webcams that had previously captured bird behavior. Students explored these sites through Delicious and used their detective books from their Westing Game project to take notes and sketches of what they saw. After careful observation, we came back together and students shared the observational notes and sketches using our document camera. All of the students were able to clearly see the descriptions and sketches that students captured during their viewing of the webcams. What a fun lesson. I loved hearing one student say, “I can’t believe how fast our time went by”. Our work together was 50 minutes, so it was nice to hear students excited about how engaged they were in their learning. Check out pics of students viewing the webcams and pics of student sketches and observations.
If you have other examples of using webcams to support student learning, then post a comment and let us hear about it! I would love to discover other ways to use these great tools that really engage student attention and interest.
Andy Plemmons
Media Specialist
Athens, GA
National Book Festival, 9/24/2009
2009 National Book Festival Poster
I’m not sure about snow or gloom of night, but I can prove that a little rain will not keep readers at home when the National Book Festival came to Washington, DC in front of the Smithsonian Castle. Huge white tents set up in various genres held hundreds and hundreds of readers eager to hear from some of their favorite authors, live and in person! Sponsored by the Library of Congress, this year’s event was a huge success. The autograph lines were long, the bookmarks were plentiful, C-Span was live, the digital bookmobile was demonstrating e-books, and the LOC was webcasting every author. It was great!
Kathy Disney and I got on the train in Atlanta at 8:30 Friday night and arrived at Union Station at 10 am on Saturday, September 24. We walked to the mall, picked up an event tote bag and a program, and headed to our first tent. After a full day of standing shoulder to shoulder (literally!) with other book lovers to hear James Patterson, John Irving, Nicolas Sparks, Sue Monk Kidd, Mary Jane Clark, and Nikki Grimes (there is only so much time in a day!), it was back to Union Station to catch the 6:30 Crescent back to Atlanta. We rolled into the lovely old station at 8am, ready to start making this an annual pilgrimage.
The LOC has an archive of the podcasts from previous years on their website and you can download them for free from iTunes. I’ll be watching to see when this year’s are added in order to hear what I missed – John Grisham, Judy Blume, Ken Burns, Steven Kellogg, David Shannon, Sharon Creech, David Baldacci, Michael Connelly, Mo Willems, our own Carmen Agra Deedy and so many more! There just aren’t enough hours in one day!
Please read on….
Book-lovers will also enjoy the launch of the website Read.gov, which will put all of the literary programs sponsored by the LOC and the Center for the Book together into one place. The Book Festival also had another launch that school librarians must know about and it, too, begins with another train ride through the night: The Exquisite Corpse Adventure!
Ever heard of an Exquisite Corpse? It is an old game where you write a phrase on a sheet of paper, fold it over and pass it on to the next person to do the same. The game ends when someone finishes the story, which is then read aloud.
This Exquisite Corpse Adventure works this way: Jon Scieszka, the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, has written the first episode, which is “pieced together out of so many parts that it is not possible to describe them all here, so go ahead and just start reading!” He has passed it on to an outstanding cast of writers and illustrators, who will eventually bring the story to an end.
Every two weeks, there will be a new episode and a new illustration. The story will conclude a year from now. An RSS feed will make it easy to get bi-weekly updates with new Exquisite Corpse Adventure chapters. You must take a look and share with your students!
Sign Up to Present at the AASL 2009 Bloggers’ Café
Are you attending the 2009 AASL National Conference in Charlotte, NC? If so, please consider being part of the bloggers’ café!
What is a bloggers’ café?
Have something to share, but for whatever reason you are not scheduled for a concurrent session? Consider signing up to present your stuff at our Bloggers’ Café! Presentation equipment and Internet connection will be available.
Want to take a comfortable break from the conference hubbub? Stop by and listen as your colleagues share their ideas at the Bloggers’ Café.
Use the time to:
- Host a discussion
- Create a Birds of a Feather session
- Present your best ideas
- Expand on your Exploratorium poster
- Expand on your concurrent session
- Teach a skill
- Other?
Sign up now by visiting http://aaslbloggerscafe.wikispaces.com/.
Buffy Hamilton, School Library Media Specialist
Creekview High School
Canton, Georgia
Conference 2.0: Participate in the COMO 2009 Ning
COMO is only a few weeks away! Whether you are attending in person or participating from afar, we invite you to join the official COMO Ning network. You can view resources shared by COMO presenters and participants; in addition, join in or start your own conversation about a conference session. Ning members may also post events such as meetups for specific groups of librarians or meetings that may be taking place during the conference.
If you are a presenter, we strongly encourage you to post information and resources for your session in the forum discussion thread, “Session Information and Resources from 2009 COMO Presenters”. By sharing session information and resources, you can help enhance the conference experience for those who are attending in Columbus as well as those who will experience the conference virtually.
Buffy Hamilton, Ed.S.
School Library Media Specialist
Creekview High School
