Your Inner Fish

Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin, one of the members of the team that discovered the beautiful Tiktaalik transitional fossil, is just delightful. It's a short, but comprehensive whirlwind tour of evolutionary biology with a fantastic guide. We learn not only all this great freaky stuff about anatomy and fossils and geology and taxonomy and everything in between but we also learn how they know all that stuff.

And it's clearly written! It's easy to understand and entertaining. And the best part is, Shubin is a humble, smart and funny narrator. He describes going out on fossil digs with old pros early in his career and finding himself embarrassed to be walking the exact spots they are and not being able to see the fossils in the rocks the way they are, until one day they just pop out at him, like one of those 3D pictures you stare at and stare at and finally "see" right as you're about to give it up.

This would be a great book for someone thinking about going into the biological sciences, or as an undergrad course as well as a fun popular read for the rest of us. He's even loaded all the diagrams as slides onto this website and is encouraging their use in the classroom.

Speedsters

Not me, bub. I'm about as slow as they come. Today's reading question is:

What do you think of speed-reading? Is it a good way to get through a lot of books, or does the speed-reader miss depth and nuance? Do you speed-read? Is some material better suited to speed-reading than others?

I took a "study skills" class in high school in which they had these doohickeys that would push a clear bar down the page at a steady rate and it was supposed to improve your speed. I found it to be a bunch of hoo ha. I did learn in the class how to skim, scan and generally improve my efficiency at reading academic text. But as for just plain old reading, I plod along at a reasonable rate. Others may have been able to improve their own rate, but I doubt by much. I don't know anyone that has ever done it.

I would very much like to say that people that read faster than I do miss something. Sometimes that's true, but not always. I know many people that read twice as fast as I do and still get just as much, if not more, out of it. In fact, I'm not sure it's so much speed reading as just having better focus. I have ADD and while I've always been a reader, I always have more than one book going and am always stopping and coming back to them. Some books I read straight through, others end up in the mix and take weeks or months. The people I know that read faster, for the most part, just do it. They sit on their butts and read and keep reading and aren't distracted from it until they're done or come to a stopping place.

I'm not sure it matters unless your job is to read a ton of material and I assume you wouldn't take such a job if you didn't have reasonable focus and speed. Even at my plodder's rate, I ended up with a Lit. degree and a master's degree and am working on another graduate degree and have polished off quite a few books over the years. So in the end, I guess can't see that it makes much difference.

(image via NASA)

There Is Hope for the Future!

(image via lookatthisfrakkinggeekster)

Wait for it...

Carolyn Foote had a post last week about trying to figure out which ebook reader might become the standard so she could start getting them for her high school students.

Now before I go any further, I must remind you that I am not currently a librarian nor do I work in a high school. So take everything I say with a big stinging grain of salt.

I say wait it out a little longer. I know we're supposed to be agents of change and early adopters and all that, but there doesn't seem to be any "there" there yet. Despite Joyce Valenza practically running an ad on her blog for the Nook, it sounds less than promising to others.

These are probably great little gadgets for personal use, frequent travelers and those with big reading appetites and cramped living quarters. However, I'm curious about the need for them in school libraries. They seem prohibitively expensive for checkout and I wonder about the demand. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe all the high school librarians out there have a million requests to checkout ereaders. If so, let me know and I'll post the news. And if they are clamoring, then they'll tell you what they want.

But I just don't see it. To me, jumping in now is equivalent to snapping up those old Laser Disc players back in the '80s. I worked in a video rental store for a while that carried a bunch of those LP-sized discs and then watched a Blockbuster open up across the street and begin carrying DVDs. Needless to say, that little video store dried up and blew away.

I know, I know, libraries aren't commercial enterprises and don't need to "compete" in the same way but the ebooks and their readers, as shiny and new as they are, are still a minuscule fraction of a percent of the publishing world. It seems much too soon to be diverting precious resources to such a vague and amorphous proposition.

I would rather spend my energy helping students find free ebooks for their phones or laptops or whatever they're looking for. Daily Lit, Project Gutenberg, Google Books, and more.

When there's a standard, we'll know. I imagine it will be phones. Cameras, flip video, netbooks, tablets, mp3 players and phones all seem to be shrinking and morphing into each other. Everyone loves their phones. I'm guessing in within ten years or so they'll all be one thing and it'll be in our phone. People like their books and cameras and all, but they feel like they practically need their phones. When the Apple/Google/Whatever super-mega ebook reading phone comes out, you'll know you have a standard. Until then, I'd either wait or be guided by your population of readers.

Can't wait to hear your views on this one. Fire away in the comments!

(image via babygotbooks.com)

Manifestos!

It must be the time of year for reflection and resolution or something, because my feed reader is full of inspiring discussion of reading and libraries for kids.

Jon Scieszka's reading for kids manifesto in the HuffPo.

Kristin Fonticharo's Media for Children and Young Adults manifesto.

Beth Friese on What Makes a Library a Library.

Twitter responses to @buffyhamilton on What Makes a Library a Library.

Thanks all, I needed that.

We Are the Thin Geeky Line

"The internet is not a noun. It's a verb."

Dear Diary...

From my six-year-old daughter's notebook (no, it's not a secret one):

"Dear Diury wi cant we got out to eat evryday."

Love that kid! A girl after my own heart.

Oh, and an update on the phantom fire alarm puller: whoever it was, they did it again yesterday (during lunches) and was finally caught. The administration has wisely kept his/her identity a secret due to some very angry people that may cause the unthinking weasel serious physical harm. A few parents nearly lost their jobs being late to work. Middle school kids on the route after ours got home as late as 6pm to frantic parents. I know it won't stay a secret forever, but until blood pressures lower, keeping mum is a good move.

Let's just say I'm sure glad it's Friday. Have a great weekend. Looks like I'll be going out for at least one meal...

Bookmarking

BTT asks: "What items have you ever used as a bookmark? What is the most unusual item you've ever used?"

I hate dog-earing so I've used just about everything. Money, photos, sticky notes, index cards, business cards, booklights, even the receipts for the books themselves. Oh, and even actual bookmarks. I have a pile of bookmarks from most of the bookstores I've shopped or worked in. I used to like the thick, satisfying dark blue ribbon-shaped bookmarks we gave out at Scribner's.

I think bookmarks are also fun to discover in used books. I've found all kinds of things including other people's family photos in used books. I tend to just keep them in there and use them myself.

But most unusual? I don't know. I can't wait to hear other answers on that one. I did get some of those stretchy wrap around bungee things from Levenger as a gift once, but they get stretched out after awhile and can be a bit cumbersome, but they can be good for travelling to help you keep your book from getting too beat up in your bag.

I guess index cards are the best. You can make notes on them and they're cheap if you lose one. They're also stiff enough to jam in there so they don't fall out.

I Give Up

So do all of America's experts, according to The Onion (NSFW). That is an awesome article.

I needed cheering up after a fire alarm being pulled right as the kids were coming in, ensuring mass chaos, and right as we were beginning bus call in the afternoon, ensuring more mass chaos.

Actually, I must say, it wasn't really that chaotic. Everyone was great. It was just generally sucky. It could turn out to be a problem with the alarm, but I'm betting on some goofball kid who I will continue to make up imaginary punishments for. Suspension won't be good enough. I was thinking having him (or her) call all the parents one at a time and profusely apologize. With around 1400 students that would take a while but I'm not sure it's draconian enough.

Leave your ideas in the comments. This should be fun. At least we don't have to worry about what all those pesky experts think.

A Passion For Reading

Steven L. Layne has a new book coming out that looks good. Igniting a Passion for Reading (via Practically Paradise). On the Stenhouse site you can look at a Flash version of the book and read as much of it as your eyeballs can take in that format.

I've scanned some of it and can't wait to read the whole thing. It's about bringing much-needed balance to the teaching of reading, something I'm all for. The NCTE has recently drunk the Kool-Aid and according to Krashen and Ohanian, is promoting the LEARN Act which calls for explicit, systematic teaching of literacy as the only way, even more testing, and pays little attention to access of actual books. This is not balance, my friends.

Layne has a diagram on page seven that has a bisected circle. On the left half are all the things the LEARN Act promotes (along with every teacher, administrator, and stakeholder): Phonetics, Fluency, Comprehension, Semantics, Syntax. We're doing a pretty good job of all that and I am not arguing that any of these skills should be sacrificed. Either is Layne. But there's another half of the circle that we are totally leaving by the wayside and you need that half if you want to be a whole reader:

Interest

Attitude

Motivation

Engagement

But how will we test those things, you ask? I don't really care. I just know it is something that is sorely lacking and if we don't do something about it we might as well give up the whole game. The entire point of having mandatory public schooling is to improve our democracy. It's not to have better test scores, Dolores Umbridge. If we don't have curious, teachable, engaged readers and thinkers (no matter their level or ability) then we're not really doing our job. (And as a byproduct of real engageent, the test scores go up!)

It's like baseball or ballet. Yes, you need to practice skills. But you also need to just play games and dance or what are you learning all those skills for?

"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts."

(This quotation is said to be from a sign hanging in Albert Einstein's Princeton office and is often attributed to him. Anyone done more research on it?)

Gifts for the Ninjas In Your Life

I'm not endorsing or making any money off of these. Just noticing. Can't have enough teacher and/or librarians with ninja gear.

Teacher/Ninja shirts and buttons. And more here.

Ninja Librarian stuff. And even more stuff.

And this is is a great mug for any ninja to have:

"Good morning. I see the assassins have failed."

Critical Thinking Sunday

I love this kind of brain candy. I think I'll try to find and post something like this on Sundays just...because. Enjoy.

Ninja Librarians!

Some entertainment to help you celebrate The Day of the Ninja!

Sick Day Roundup

50 Best Books for Boys and Young Men
Here's a pretty great list. I hadn't heard of this site before and will definitely keep it on mind. Is it up there with Guys Read? Only further investigation will tell...

Like online tools? You gotta check out some of the amazing upgrades from Acrobat.com. I've already mentioned my love for the clean look and design of their Buzzword word processor. Now, along with their document storage and meeting site, they've added a presentation tool, and a pretty great spreadsheet creator called Adobe Tables. Give it a look.

Inspired
from Doug Noon's Boderland blog. He's always keeping me inspired. My daughter sat on my lap and we were both shouting with fear and delight at that kid's amazing bike tricks. Inspiring indeed!

New Agers and Creationists Should Not Be President
from the ever more wonderful Roger Ebert. Hear, hear I say! Critical thinking in the mainstream media? Let's hope...

Booking Through Thursday

What’s your favorite part of Booking Through Thursday? Why do you participate (or not)?

I think my favorite part is the weekly prod to think about my blog. With a family, work and graduate school, it's easy to skip the blogging. It's also hard to read for pleasure, but many of the questions are general enough to allow me to cast back to some of the many books I've read in the past and comment on those. The blog is only about three years old, but I've been reading for nearly forty, so I have one or two things I've picked up along the way.

I don't participate every single week; only when an answer to the question pops into my head. Thursday mornings I'm usually at school. (Not today. Today I'm home with my antibiotic-taking daughter.) So it has to be something that strikes me right away and I can post before the kids show up. At most I can steal a few more minutes at lunchtime. So I doubt any of my Booking Through Thursday responses will every be philosophical tomes or anything, but that's not what most people are looking for in their feed readers I imagine. So it's all good.

It's also fun to find new reading bloggers out there and overlapping interests. Reading is a solitary pursuit, but I've been in literature classes or book clubs most of my adult life because it's fun to cross my reading interests with social interaction. To talk and write about common interests, likes and dislikes and hopefully, learn something new.

So thanks BTTers for the thoughtful questions and comments. I'll keep on reading and inflicting my opinions on you for as long as you're around.