Read. Think. Teach. 22 May

The Book Whisperer reviewed by Esme: "...a title that might do for independent readig what Jim Trelease's Read-Aloud Handbook did for read aloud."


The Essential Question comes from Doug Johnson.
"Does a school need a library when information can be accessed from the classroom using internet connected laptops?"

David Warlick has an answer in his post, Why Libraries?
"If the library might come to be seen more as a workshop where information isn't so much a product as a raw material (a "Kinko's for Kids" if you will), then it may remain not only viable, but and essential institution."


Seth Godin on the tribes we lead from TED.com (Scott liked it. So did Tim.) Good food for thought. He answerd some questions later.


Stirring Up Justice from ASCD Inservice has some more good questions for you and your school.


Doug Noon has been successful with "My Evil Plan," Bwa-Ha-Ha-Ha! C.B. rocked it as well, with Shakespeare no less!

"Some Thoughts on the Lost Art of Reading Aloud" from the NYT.

Outreach from xkcd.

An Open Letter to Oprah from Shirley. Hope it gets to her.

Exhale

Last day with students was yesterday. I think the weather in our county changed do to the 14,000 teachers exhaling all at the same time.

Still tons to do on these "post-planning" days, but boy is it ever easier without those pesky children running around.

I'm kidding! I'm actually lucking out since I don't have to move classrooms for one of the first times ever. That's always nice. Although, I gotta say that I don't have that much sympathy for those that do. Being a resource teacher I haven't even had my own classroom for about half the time. I've taught in hallways, in empty cafeterias, and even outside. I've had to share rooms with up to four other teachers. I had one room on the other side of a gymnasium with balls being slammed against the wall. (That's the one where I mostly opted to teach outside on the fire escape.)

The other problem is teachers are just plain pack rats. I am to some extent, but man oh man have I been enjoying purging my files. I'd already gone more to overheads rather than copies, but now with the ceiling-mounted projectors, there's little need even for those. So I dumped a ton of paper into the recycle bin this week. It's my goal to make as few copies as possible next year. The other thing that helps is that I've had the students keep their own composition notebooks for the last two years. Keeps all their work and writing neatly in one spot with no copies. Nice to bring to conferences as well.

Here's to a great summer for you all!

(image cc flickr)

Perspective--47 Million Years of It

Meet Darwinius masillae also known as Ida. She's 47 million years old and flatter than a pancake, but sure is making headlines. You'll hear the grating "missing link" term bandied about. Ignore that nonsense and read a bit deeper for what really awesome about this find.

Here's some perspective from an evolutionary biologist. "She's got wider significance than just her relationship to our narrow line." That's better.

"Go ahead and be excited by this find, I know I am. Just remember to be excited tomorrow and the day after and the day after that, because this is perfectly normal science, and it will go on." I love science.

Here's some more perspective from a great science journalist (who gets extra points for referencing a Tom Waits song).

Here's a link to hyperbolic the media onslaught.

Update: Another science writer has fun with this story.

Never Be Late Again!

ThinkGeek, as usual, has the answer!  I won't let any dastardly pirate charities get my ninja money!

Are we in control of our decisions?

Put your feet up and listen to this seventeen minute funny and informative TED talk about why we don't always know what we're doing.  His book is Predictably Irrational.  And make sure you're an organ donor!

This is the kind of thing I do when I'm bored...

...make new banners for the blog. Not that I should be bored, but I'm just too brain dead to write my paper or read anything academic. The little one is taking a rare nap so while I'm listening to one of my favorite podcasts, I'm dicking around with the blog format. I do that.

Hope the ads aren't too offensive. There's more discussion of that in the ad policy link. The short explanation is that I no longer think linking to that online bookstore that starts with an "a" is necessarily evil and the good people over at The Millions have a good rundown on why. If I make enough to offset the cost of the domain registration, I'm golden. Anything above and beyond that and I'll use it for books in my classroom. So click though to that bookstore named after a long South American river and somehow, if you buy something, then poor English Language Learners in Georgia will thank you when I get them new copies of our worn out Ricky Ricotta's Mighty Robot books.

Comments and suggestions, as always, are welcome.

Countdown

We're taking our six-year-old to the Land of a Thousand Princesses, Team Rat, also known as the Magic Kingdom this Saturday. For a week.

I know.

But today? Today I'm home from school with her because she has strep-like symptoms and I'm not taking chances. I'm pouring the amoxicillin down her gullet to make sure she's well and not infecting any of her beloved princesses!

The amount of stuff we have to do to be ready for this trip the day after post-planning is kind of crazy. Good thing My Lovely Bride is better at logistics than most generals in the field. She's already laid out everything in the guest room and has been stocking up on needed items. I, meanwhile, have been plowing my way through The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World which I definitely recommend. They have a website as well that makes custom itineraries for your visits.

For most vacations I think winging it is fine. For Disney I think it's better to have a plan. We'll see in a few days.

I'll be toting the laptop to the hotel for the occasional stab at grad school work, but I doubt I"ll blog much--if at all. I'll be sure to update when we return.

I'm sure I'll need medical assistance myself when we get back if only to surgically remove the Disney music earworms from my brain. It's a small world after all.

(photo cc flickr)

Read, Think, Teach for 11-15 May

Read

Advice for aspiring readers from Just One More Book

Librarians Rule from I.N.K.

Using 'Unshelved' In Your Library from 100 Scope Notes

The Top 100 Picture Books of all time poll results. An amazing collection of posts from Fuse #8.

(Wait, wait! There's more. And even more.)

Think

Common Ground from What It's Like On the Inside

Pressing Questions for Our Century with A. C. Grayling from Edge.org

Another acupuncture study misinterpreted from Respectful Insolence and Acupuncture Does Not Work for Back Pain from Science-Based Medicine (tip to onegoodmove)

Teach

Practice, Practice, Practice (Or: Homework, Homework, Homework?) from ASCD Inservice

which is related to:

In Praise of Standardized Testing from The Book Bench

It's really about the benefits of less homework.

Thanks are Welcome from the GLMA blog

Booking Through Thursday: Gluttony

"Book Gluttony! Are your eyes bigger than your book belly? Do you have a habit of buying up books far quicker than you could possibly read them? Have you had to curb your book buying habits until you can catch up with yourself? Or are you a controlled buyer, only purchasing books when you have run out of things to read?" (from BTT)

I certainly buy more than I read, but I try to strike a balance.  I don't know how many books I've owned in my life, but after a few moves it didn't take me long to discover the joys of used book stores.  I could go in with four milk crates full and come out with one in trade.  I'd say I have a couple thousand now and maybe a fourth (if I'm lucky) are unread.  Problem is, I don't know that I'll read all of them.  Some of them tug at me harder than others and I know some of them will probably remain unread.

I try to fix it by going to the library but then the unread purchased ones just glare at me like, "Um, those library books are fine, after you get through all of us bro."

This is also why I'll probably never buy an e-reader.  Unless I could get credit for all of the unread books I've already bought and somehow magically squeeze them into man e-reader, I'll be too busy for the foreseeable future to allow myself to make the switch.

This book thing.  There sure is a lot of guilt tied up in it, eh?

Read. Think. Teach.

I came up with that subtitle for the blog back when it first started just to broadly sketch out my areas of interest.  I like reading and promoting reading.  I like to think about things and am interested in critical and skeptical thinking in general.  I am a teacher, always looking to improve my practice.  All of these things are coming together with my new pursuit of becoming a media specialist, or as I like to say, a teacher-librarian.

I'm going to kick off a new (semi) regular feature tomorrow.  I have what I call "featured links" on the sidebar, but those of you who check this in their feed readers probably never see them. There are also things I come across in my web wanderings that I sometimes consider sharing but often never do.

So I'm hoping each Friday to post some of my favorite thought-provoking links from my web reading that week.  I say "semi" regular because I'm still in grad school and make no promises about regularity until I see if it becomes an easy habit to continue.  I also don't want it to be the only thing I post, but you never know.  I'm usually an infrequent summer blogger.

I used to post a weekly favorite quote but now just put up a random quote in the sidebar.  I'm debating whether or not to add that to the weekly post as well.

I won't post a crapload of links.  There are many in the blogosphere that go way overboard on these kind of things.  They also make the mistake of posting within hermetically sealed webs of interest.  Their readers have probably seen their links for themselves if it's a narrow field.  I try to have a bit of a broader scope and hope you see something each week that you would have missed otherwise.

Any thoughts are, of course, welcome.

(image cc flickr)

Teacherninja is Two

Two, huh?  Hope the blog goes easy on the tantrums, though.

This past year I made the virtual acquaintance of a whole gob of interesting people who dropped by.  Wish I had the time to name them all, but thank you all for commenting.  I love finding new blogs and old friends in the comment links and have learned so much this year from my fellow bloggers.

This year I also got into my media specialist program at UGA, wrote a novel, got a blog award, met my favorite skeptics at Dragon*Con, turned 40, read a few more books, found out you all much prefer the white background to the old black one, joined Kidlitosphere Central, joined the Comment Challenge, promoted Readicide and reading aloud, found a better time management system, had fun posting on April Fool's Day, built my daughter a playhouse, reevaluated my use of online tools, and...well...blogged a bit.

If I inspired anyone to read anything, teach a bit better, or to think about something a bit more critically then I'd have to call Year Two a success.  On to Year Three...

Ninja Seaweed

(via Cool Green Science)

Shutter Island

So I finished my final projects for the semester and decided to get back to some fiction for a change.  The cool thing about this book was that I picked it up at a used book store and then found out a week later that my book club had chosen it for their next meeting.

On the back cover someone blurbs that it's part Agatha Christie and part Stephen King.  I found it more along the lines of a Hitchcockian thriller but it was pretty good just the same.

I'm just glad I didn't look up the movie stuff before I read it.  I'd heard Scorsese was making it and that sounds about right, but I would have never pictured the people they've cast--not that that's a bad thing.  That's why books are usually better than movies.  It'll be interesting to see how the film turns out but it was a fun read.

But not tonight.  Tonight is for Star Trek.

Five Things I've Gotten From Literature

Here's something that has the potential of being fun and, I hope, more than your average blog meme.  Traci Gardener came up with it here.  I 'll give it a shot.

1. What piece of literature has stayed with you, even though you haven't read it recently?

The madness of King Lear has always stayed.  I love much of Shakespeare, but the tragedies, of course, have real staying power.  Lear and his vanity and what happens because of it has been with me since I first read it.  The message I get is that the only hope for us, any of us and all of us, is to try to be kind to one another.

2. What character or story has influenced something you've done?

That bit where Calvin from Calvin & Hobbes flushes the toilet paper straight from the roll just to drive his babysitter bonkers?  Ran straight to the bathroom to try it.

3. What character or piece of literature seemed to relate to a recent news story or personal experience?

"The airborne Toxic Event" in Don Dilillo's White Noise stands in for so much these days. It's a brilliant satire on the way the media can sometimes be more of the problem than the solution, as with the recent swine flu scare.

4. What character has made you wonder why he or she said/did something?

I've never understood that tree in The Giving Tree and I don't really believe anyone who says they do.

5. Name something from a work of literature that you (such as a character, setting or quotation that you find beautiful or vivid.

I've always loved this fragment from Raymond Carver:

"And did you get what

you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth. "

Pass it on.  Or leave yours in the comments.

(image cc flickr)

Now THIS Is An Author Visit

Here's how to do it up right!  I'm taking notes, Battle Ground Elementary.  Thanks for sharing, April Pulley Sayre.

"My experience is what I agree to attend to."

The quotation is from William James.  It's from this article on time, attention and concentration. It's about some research in this area and a book, Rapt, by a Winifred Gallagher.  I haven't read the book, but it sounds like goes along with many of the things I've been thinking about lately and why I've been limiting my online time.

That's not true.  I've been online for the same amount of time.  I've just moved around some of the containers and removed some of the distractions.

Many people in our hyperconnected world seem to be doing fine, but many are struggling.  How much is too much and how do you draw the line?

I'm working on the answers for myself, but I think everyone has their own level of comfort.  As long as you're productive and happy and your other real-world relationships are strong, then you're probably fine.  If your girlfriend is leaving you because of your Twitter addiction then you might have something to work on.

The author of the article has set up a space for questions for the researchers here.

(image cc flickr)

Twitter Redux

Just to clarify, I have nothing against Twitter or any other social networking tool.  A commenter left a link for me that leads to this posting of uses for Twitter and I agree that there are many uses for such tools.  In fact, I'm loving the new Duck Duck Go search engine and now often make use of their right column link to Twitter searches for things that I want the most recent info on.  I don't need a Twitter account to do this however and I'm at a place where my personal time is more important to me than my social-networking time.

I enjoy blogging and using my feed reader.  I was less enamored of Facebook but see why it's so popular.  Twitter was fine, but due to limitations on my end (no access during the school day, not much time for it after the school day) I decided to give up my account.  I agree with Joyce Valenza that teacher-librarians should be aware of any new and useful communication or information tools out there that will help their clientele.  I don't think, however, that we need to be constant users or all of every single one of these tools.

Different people have different needs.  Some will like Diigo over Delicious.  Some will like 30Boxes over Google's Calendar.  It's good to be aware of the choices available and how they work--especially for us in the information media biz.  Ms. Valenza herself prefers to use a wiki rather than a bookmarking tool.  Pointing people to the right tool for them is important. But that doesn't mean I have to Ning and tweet and whatever else.  We can't be all things to all people. Why would we want to?

This weekend I was much to busy blowing bubbles and playing shadow tag with my six year old to worry much about it anyway...

(image cc flickr)

Dragon*Con 2009

Got my ticket confirmation today, so I'll definitely be at Dragon*Con this year! My main point of interest is, of course, is the Skeptic and Science Tracks just like it was last year (since I'm too poor and busy to make it to TAM 7).

It's great to catch up with all those critical thinkers and scientists in a sea of costumed superheros at a Nerdvana.

Big As Life

You've seen this awesome site with the life-sized blue whale, right? Someone needs to do a whole bunch of stuff like that.  I put it on our projector and the kids loved it.  Said it was like being in an aquarium.  Freaked out when they realized they could probably fit in that blow hole.

Maybe Ben Hillman can put the stuff from his books online.  How awesome would it be to have an online life-sized jet, or Eiffel Tower, or Saturn V rocket, or giant squid?

Pretty awesome, I'm thinking.

Whose up for it?