Gary Hartzell, Research Star

Earlier this month, I asked you guys to vote on my professor's list of library-field "research stars" and you cracked me up by voting on people not on the list. Doug Johnson (on the list) voted for Joyce Valenza (not on the list) and Alice Yucht (on the list) voted for Christopher Harris, Buffy Hamilton, Deb Logan, Carl Harvey, Diane Chen, Cathy Jo Nelson and Kristin Fontichiaro (not on the list).

Thinking I had to choose someone from the list, I was going to go for Doug or Alice but since an earlier class had already gotten to pick (sheesh!) I snagged Gary Hartzell.

But then I used my ninja mind powers to convince the professor to add all the new names to the list, so there will be some new blood in the projects this year.

I'm happy with Gary Hartzell, though. I've found some great stuff on him--including a video interview--and he's great. His book, Building Influence for the School Librarian was recently named by Doug as "probably the most important book written for our profession. Bar none."

Since Dr. Hartzell seems to approve of more free-flowing presentations rather than the typical web pages or slide shows, I think I'll do a Prezi presentation on him. I'll share what I come up with soon.

I Am A Paleontologist

(tip to S.)

Sigh.

"I think reading is part of the birthright of the human being. It's just such an integral part of the human experience--that connection with the written word."
--LeVar Burton

Reading Rainbow canceled.

Translate Your Google Docs

Use Google Docs? Here's a fun new feature. Open up a doc you've got and go to the "tools" pull down menu. Now there is a "translate document" choice! This will be very helpful in communicating with my ESOL parents. Of course, I'll run anything I do this with past a Spanish-speaking colleague because I'm sure it'll be far from perfect.

Because my brain works like this, I just opened up a document and translated it in to French, saved it, then translated it back into English. It was as funny as when Mark Twain did it. Then I translated something into Hindi and back into English and it was even goofier.

I'll do it to this post as written so far (English to Hindi to English):

"Use Google? Docs here is an interesting new feature. Open a doctor and you've got the Tools pull down menu to go. Now there is one 'document translation option!' Communicating with parents this is my ESOL be very helpful. Of course, anything I associate with the last one did not speak Spanish because I'm sure he does this correctly so far back.

Because my mind works this way, I just opened a document and for translation in French, saved it, it was translated back into English. When Mark Twain was strange as it did. Then I translated in Hindi and English and also in back was fun."

Tee hee!

Fluff Reading

BTT wants to know about my recent "fluffy" reading. Good timing coming right after my "how to read multiple books" post, so there's a way to squeeze in the fluff after the more serious stuff.

Not that it's really "fluff" per se, but during my summer vacation I read Douglas Adams' groundbreaking Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and coming right after Obama's Dreams From My Father, it seemed downright fluffy. Those fun 39 Clues kid books are zippy fun fluff, kind of a "24" for kids.

Now I'm back into grad. school classes so will have little time for leisure reading. My book club will be doing Pratchet and Gaiman's Good Omens soon, so that'll be a nice break from research and educational theory when I can make the time. And I've stocked up on Brian K. Vaughn's Y: The Last Man comics when I need a quick literary break. But I'm a big old nerd, so comics don't always seem like fluff to me.

(photo cc flickr)

Reading Multiple Books

I just got a great idea from Mark Forster, the idea man himself. Sometimes I'll read one book at a time, but more often then not I'll have a few going. This can cause unneeded feelings of guilt and confusion but he's got a great way of dealing with it. He reads multiple books at a time and doesn't pretend about it. He's got a little system that he claims keeps him reading books all the way through that he might normally abandon and keeps his reading interest up.

He has a shelf set aide for his current reads. He doesn't put a number on it, but let's say five is a good amount. He keeps them in order with the most recently read on the left. When he's ready to sit down with a book, he looks at the books from left to right which gives the most recently read priority. Whichever one jumps out at him he pulls down, reads for a while, then shelves to the left.

This is a simple and guilt-free way to enjoy multiple books and still keep a focus on your reading. I'd limit the number on the shelf to keep from having 150+ books with bookmarks all on a page less than 20! Somewhere between four and six sounds about right. If a new book pops into your life that is tugging you to read it I guess the thing to do would be to weigh it in your mind against the book on the furthest right of your "currently reading" shelf. That would be the way to decide if you want to abandon that book for the new one now or hold off for a while. This is where that cut off number of books to have on this shelf (or nightstand) would come in handy.

How do you handle the multiple books you're reading?

(image cc flickr)

Star Party Tickets

I just bought my ticket to the Atlanta Skeptics "A Full Moon for Cancer" Star Party, a benefit for the American Cancer Society in honor of astronomer Jeff Medkeff. It's being held at Atlanta's own Bradley Observatory on the Agnes Scott campus. Phil Plait will be there, Pamela Gay will be there, and you will too if you live near Atlanta and love science and astronomy!

Seeing Double

Bookshelves of doom noticed some book cover lookalikes.

Here's another set. Notice in both cases it's a Joyce Carol Oates novel. I have no idea which was published first in either case or if they're the same publishing houses or what, but it's just kinda weird.

Catherine, Called Birdy

BTT asks, "What's the best book you've read recently?"

This one, by far. I mentioned it earlier, but couldn't go into it too deeply since I was taking three graduate courses at the time. I can't really get into it too deeply now because I have teaching, classes, and more to do. So I'll be brief.

This is hilarious, interesting and fun. A historical novel about the 1300s? No thanks, I thought. Who knew the main character would be one of the spunkies characters in fiction? I doubt she's all that realistic, but who cares? It's great and yes, you'll learn more than you wanted to know about the habits of people of the time. Yuck.

It's a hoot and I can't recommend it enough.

The Ax

I was going to write an insightful post reminiscing about Westlake's dark and hilarious 1998 satirical crime novel, The Ax and goading some cable network like HBO to make a film of it--it's perfect timing for our economic times.

Then I come across this over at IMDB! The French beat us to it!

That's ok, we can kill off the distributors and make our own from scratch...

Just kidding!

But check out the timeliness of this story. A fifty-something middle manager at a paper mill is downsized and it's been months and months without possibility for another job. Finally he finds out that a new mill will be opening nearby and he desperately wants the position. He knows the competition will be fierce, so he hatches a wonderfully terrible plan. He places an ad for someone with his qualifications in a trade magazine and gives a post office box address.

He lays out all the resumes on the floor of his den and begins comparing them to his own. He makes a large stack of those he could confidently beat. He makes a smaller pile of seven resumes he is pretty sure that are better than his.

Something in him clicks, and he decides that his only way out of this hole is to murder those seven men, thereby locking in his chance for the dream job.

Problem is, he's a middle-manager at a paper-mill type and he's not a very good killer. Things obviously spiral downward for this shlub.

It's dark and funny. But dark. Don't read it if you don't like the dark satire. It would be a great HBO film, with someone like Jeff Daniels, Kelsey Grammer or Robin Williams, one of those good comedy/drama actors that can be sympathetic but go either way on the crazy. Just like all of us, I suppose...

Tedd Arnold

My daughter has graduated to reading easy reading chapter books to anyone who will listen.

Her favorite subject matter is anything by Tedd Arnold, especially the Fly Guy books. They are fun, funny, gross and delightful. They're predictable, but not to "easy-readerish" if you know what I mean.

I don't know when it happened. Not long ago she was trying so hard to sound out some words in a picture book we were reading, and now she has no trouble with it. Then, she found a Fly Guy book on her own and read the whole thing, no problem. She owns a couple and I've gotten the rest from the library. There are still words she needs help with, but then there are still words I need help with in my reading too, so it's all good.

So thank you, Tedd Arnold, for Wilma and Parts and Fly Guy and all your wonderful boggly-eyed kids and creatures. While she's enjoying these, I want to kick back soon with your more "serious" book, Rat Life. It sounds great.

Clearing the Decks II

Not only did It get rid of stuff in my classroom this year, but I cut the files in my file cabinet almost in half. I'd migrated away from very many worksheets long ago, yet was still holding on to a ridonkulous amount of paper.

I hate copy machines, so had moved over to printing transparencies instead and using the overhead. I give each of my students a composition notebook at the beginning of the year and we fill them up with all of our work and writing.

Now with the ceiling-mounted projectors, I don't even need to print out transparencies. I can just bookmark things or create documents and show them on the big screen for everyone to see. There's so much online I don't see the point in keeping file folders full of "dittos" any longer.

And that's just the worksheets, which I don't even use that often anyway. Why did I have all those files of the "staff info" they dump on you at the beginning of every year? Our system is now adopting One Note as the place for everyone to pt all their files and I'm starting to get the staff involved in using delicious.com so we can all share our favorite stuff--no paper needed!

They send out an email every year with the number of copies different departments are allowed and they keep track of each person and department by copy code numbers. I suggested a prize for the person who uses the lowest number, percentage-wise. Hope it catches on.

Clearing the Decks I

My classroom is setup is the nicest it's ever been this year and the main reason is one you pack-rat teachers will not want to hear (I'm not judging, we're all pack-rats).

I got rid of lots of stuff.

Some of it was mine, but much of it was from previous teachers. As the ESOL teacher, I inherited all the previous ESOL teacher's stuff bought with department money. It's hard to get rid of those kinds of things because you never know what you might need and you also know that the next ESOL teacher might like it.

But seriously, there was too much. The real monkey on my back has been these vocabulary cards that go with some series books we have. Sometimes I use the books, but I have never used the cards. We're talking a lot of cards here. There are over a hundred units and some intrepid soul took it upon themselves to copy all of the vocabulary picture cards on different colored paper, laminate them, cut them, wrap them in rubber bands by unit and put them in plastic sandwich bags. Then they were divided up into a bunch of cardboard boxes.

I've moved those boxes around a number of times and it's always a pain to find a spot for them. Finally, this year, I had some help setting up my classroom and my wife (the best teacher I know) said, "Really? If you don't use them, toss 'em."

And I did. And it was wonderful.

I thought I'd feel guilty about it, but no, I'm happy. They really needed to go. If someone wants to do that again they can. Why they would want to, I don't know, but I realized that just because something took someone else a lot of time or cost a lot of money, doesn't mean you have to use it or keep it.

It's a liberating thought.

(image from flickr)

Prezi--Not Boring

Franki, over at A Year of Reading had an eye-opening experience with the online presentation tool, Prezi.

Prezi is awesome. I took a graduate-level educational research class this summer. We had two meetings at the beginning, were let loose with our questions for a few weeks, then came together on a Saturday at the end of the summer to present our findings. The only caveat from the instructor was to "not be boring." He also wanted us to try to fit in some on-screen references if possible.

When the day arrived, just out of curiosity he asked everyone to raise their hand if they were using a Powerpoint type show. Everyone raised their hand but a media specialist and I . She was using a movie-maker type program and I was using Prezi.

Now I've seem many crappy and boring slideshows and about half of them were plagued by technical difficulties. I was determined to have mine simple as possible--yet not boring.

I ended up with a spare image of three overlapping circles representing the three overlapping areas of my research. That way, if technical difficulties arose, I could simply draw it on the white board and be good to go.

I also had my presentation online, on my thumb drive and on my hard drive. Maybe I'm paranoid, but I've seen it all go wrong before.

It worked fine, and what's great about Prezi is that I embedded inline citations with photos of the researchers, so as we talked about them, it went zooming around and highlighted whoever we were discussing. You can plan a path for this, but are free to go back and move around as needed. Then in the end it zoomed out and all the clutter disappeared, leaving my original image as I answered questions.

If it sounds boring, I added a wrinkle. I hate big blocks of texts and bullets in slide shows, but wanted to quote some of my researchers. So I turned it into a reader's theater. I made name tags like "Dr. Richard Allington," "Dr. Stephen Krashen," and "Dr. Susan Neuman" and placed them in front of volunteers and gave them quotes to read. Then I did a think aloud of my research process, asking the "researchers" what they had found out about different aspects of their research and the volunteers read me their answers. It was fun, easy, and engaging. I think it also warmed up the class for their presentations. I also liked that I was mixing the high-tech Prezi with the low-tech, but equally engaging back and forth of the reading.

I highly recommend the Prezi tool. Like Franki points out, it's just fun to play with. I ended up making three or four versions of my presentation just to try out different ideas but ended up with the one that was the hardest one to make--the simplest most unadorned one. I think it worked.

The Berenstain Bears' Mad, Mad, Mad Toy Craze

What's the worst book you've read recently? asks BTT.

Definitely Stan and Jan Berenstain's 1999 book about toy collecting gone awry. Whenever I take my little one to the library we each split off and search the stacks for a handful of books to read. Then we plop them down and negotiate. She always hits the "character" books first (Arthur, Clifford, Dora, etc.) so I set limits on how many of each one I'll read. This last time it was all Berenstain Bears.

No I could go off on the Berenstain's, but I won't. They have their place and there must be something to them for such enduring popularity. I even appreciated the one where they go to the dentist when I had to take my little one the first time.

But there is only so much of this didactic stuff you can take and after reading two or three, maybe it was me, but this one barely made sense.

The cubs go crazy for the equivalent of Beanie Babies and instead of the parents teaching them a lesson, like usual, they get swept up in the nonsense as well. It's a good subject for basic financial literacy because while some collections grow in value, you should never collect something just for that reason. If it's just money you want, there are much better investments than collecting toys, books, or teapots. But if toys, books, or teapots are your thing, then by all means go crazy.

Luckily, she didn't ask to check it out and we ended up taking home some Tedd Arnold books instead.

What Are You Doing?

Well if you want to answer that question you'll have to just leave a comment. I was never really into Twitter and canceled it once before. But then I picked it up to stay in touch with other people in my graduate classes and a few of my blogging buddies.

Turns out graduate students are either too busy to do the Twitter thing (or do it too much) or are on Facebook (which I'm even less likely to do). So when I saw that Doug had dropped his account and Mary Lee was not loving her account I thought I might as well axe mine as well.

I don't get cell phone service in my school building and the site is blocked in my district. I have graduate school and a lovely family I actually enjoy spending time with, so it was rare I'd check it at home. I found myself only "tweeting" links that I enjoyed but couldn't share from my feed reader (see "Featured Links" to the right. From now on I'll either share those links here or email them to you if you're a friend of mine.

I'm not advocating a position, just stating mine. I can still search Twitter whenever I need to (which is one of the reasons I like DuckDuckGo so much with their Twitter search right there in the right hand column).

So if you were following me on Twitter, don't. I'm not there. I'm sure you'll get over the heartbreak.

Feel free to tweet all your favorite posts from Teacherninja to all of your followers, though!

(Doug added an update to his decision here.)

Best Read of the Summer

Or at least the last one, now that school is starting back. This one had everything: humor, suspense, design, and ideas for organization. It's one of those great "what-if" reads that gets the wheels turning and gives you new ideas for everything from bookshelves to photography. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll be ready for the Allen wrench.

Digital Textbooks Sound Good On Paper

I know I'm kicking it old school, but I'm still on the fence about this textbooks migrating to e-reader thing. I mean at first blush, I love the idea of less textbooks. They are heavy, expensive, hard to inventory, and quickly go out of date. What could be better than a whole stack of them stuffed into e-readers or net books?

But then I think of actually using textbooks as a student. I distinctly recall have five or six books laid out in front of me on a desk, flipping between indexes and maps; diagrams and illustrations. I know e-readers are searchable and yes, you can highlight and make notations, if not always as easily. But maps and illustrations come out less well--even on the best-designed websites.

I'm not saying it's not an option--and a very attractive option right now with all of the financial cuts we're dealing with. But I hope we think this through and do whatever is best for our students--not just easiest.

(Of course, I've never been a big fan of most of the textbooks out there, either, now that I think about it...)

(image from flickr)

Blogrolling

Once again instead of doing real work I have updated the blogroll. Let me know of any glaring omissions (or misspellings). I had trouble with the "teach" list. First it was half "education" and half "kid's lit" but the line was getting hazy so I just put them all together since I read all of them to inform my teaching practice. So for a while it evenly divided out into my stated three categories of reading, critical thinking, and teaching but there were a few fun ones left over that spilled over into "misc." It's all good stuff. Poke around for a while and let me know what you think.

And yes, there are ads on the blog now, sending you to an online bookseller. I have an "Ad Policy" link if you want to know more but rest assured if you click on those links and buy something (not necessarily anything to do with the ads, just anything) then I will get a few pennies. You will be supporting my classroom library for the low-socio-economic-status English language-learning students I teach. It's a good cause, trust me.


(image from flickr)

Jean Fritz

       The last two books I read for my summer Children's Lit. class were Jean Fritz's two biographies on Paul Revere and Ben Franklin.  They were a hoot!  At first I thought they seemed a bit long for read aloud, but my six year old daughter asked me to read them to her.  I thought, well, I'll indulge her but I'll stop as soon as she says she's bored.  She never was.  We read them both and she stopped and asked questions and made comments the whole time.  She loved them, so of course I did too.

The illustrations were delightful. They reminded my of the sly Edward Gorey. They completely added to the stories and helped my daughter with the context.

I liked how they were brief biographies of their subjects entire lives--not just one or two things that made them famous. It added to the whole picture of the times.

My only problem was her insistence on promoting that old Ben Franklin and the kite myth. He was very disciplined in writing up all of his scientific experiments and never wrote up such a dangerous endeavor. He was quite aware of the dangers of lightening and always wrote up the best way to insulate and protect the experimenters. If he did actually perform the experiment, he was under a covered structure, wearing insulated wrappings and simply flew the kite with the attached key into the charged clouds of thunderous weather. Then he would have pulled the kite down to see if the key had been electrically charged, which it would have been--no lightening strike necessary. Yet here's one of the more popular and well-known children's biographies with Ben Franklin on the cover with lightening striking the kite and him holding the key near his hand! That would only have been famous for the brief and dramatic death involved!

It's always fun to use this kind of myth-making history in class and then have the students look up the facts, though. It's great in history and science to prove that Franklin was no dabbler in science, but a true experimenter. In fact, it's the enormous fame as a scientist that led France to embrace him so readily and which subsequently led to his influence in getting their support for the Revolution. It was his science that saved our country!

Lewis Carroll Is Always the Better Choice

I'm just sayin'.

Deception

Erroll Morris has a wonderful talk with Ricky Jay, a master of illusion on the subjects of lies and deception. Great images and a thoughtful discussion. It's important and entertaining to realize how easily we can be deceived. Can't wait for part two!

INK has a post up about Vikki Cobb's book on the same subject for kids called Truth You Can Trust.

Update: Here's a link to Part Two.

Back to School, and Ideas for our Gov.

School started for teachers in my district yesterday and the students come on Monday. We missed the first two days of preplanning due to our governor's asking each district to give us three unpaid furlough days. There will probably be more in the second half of the year.

This of course means that we all had one day to get our rooms ready because today is registration day and all the parents are here wanting to meet teachers and visit classrooms. It's tough, but I suppose it's better than watching a bunch of teachers get fired.

Dear Governor, if you want to save money and become popular instead of save money and have us throw darts at your photo, you should eliminate all unnecessary tests. Leave only those required by the federal NCLB act. Most districts have their own benchmarks anyway and some compelling recent studies show that the high school exit exams are worthless. That would be millions of dollars saved, tons of stress relief on teachers and students alike and you would be the governor that raised graduation rates with a snap of your fingers.

It's something to think about.

Research Star

For an upcoming class I need to present about one of the following school library media research "stars." I can't decide so will leave it up to you, Internet, to vote in the comments on who you think I should sign up for. The ones I'm familiar with are awesome so I can't see going wrong with any of them. Who would you present on if it was your assignment?

Carol Kuhlthau	David Loertscher	Keith Curry Lance	Nancy Everhart	Ross J. Todd
Gary Hartzell	Marcia Mardis	Julie Tallman	Jean Donham (van Deusen)	Delia Neuman
Lesley S.J. Farmer	Gail Dickinson	Carol Simpson	Pete Hernon	Danny Callison
Blanche Woolls	Betty Morris	Anne Riedling	Kay Bishop	Doug Johnson
Dianne Hopkins	Dianne Oberg	Steven M. Baule	Violet H. Harada	Sandra Hughes-Hassell
Debbie Abilock	Alice H. Yucht	Ken Haycock	Rebecca P. Butler	Ramona Kerby
Patricia Brevik	Ruth Small	Gail Bush