Critical Thinking Sunday

From Jorge Cham's PHD Comics (via PZ).

also: Science Channel Refuses To Dumb Down Science Any Further at The Onion (via Norm).

and finally, the Smart Mudflap Sticker:

(via Jodi at Rational Moms) on sale here.

Living Sunlight

One of the treats of this comment challenge was I won a free book in a blog give away! Loree Burns got two of these and I won the drawing. I never win anything!

It's lovely. I'm always trying to get across to my students (and fellow teachers) that everything is connected. "Math" and "Science and "Art" might be separate subjects in school, but in the real world it all flows together.

With it's gorgeous impressionistic artwork by Molly Bang and informative science by Penny Chisholm, this is a perfect example of putting it all together.

I mean, this is about photosynthesis, so it's a great example how everything is connected all by itself. But far from being a dry informational exploration of this, we get the facts along with the wide-ranging implications of how, well, everything is connected, by sunlight and plants and photosynthesis and more.

My daughter has already commandeered it and plopped it on her shelf. High praise indeed. (Hope she doesn't notice when I steal it to share with my students...)

Thanks for the Comments!

MotherReader has posted about the comment challenge finish line so I thought it would be a good time to thank all of you. I can't figure out Google Analytics to save my life and Sitemeter doesn't tell me much. I pay more attention to who is "following" me ( up to 33!) and who is leaving comments. That's what really makes me feel like I'm not just babbling into the ether, but actually part of a wonderful online community.

So to all you teachers, librarians, parents, readers and fellow critical thinkers who take the time to throw in your two bits, I thank you.

Here most of you are, in no particular order. Check out each other blogs. You're all awesome. Let's keep the conversation going. (My wife calls you all my "invisible friends" by the way. She cracks me up.)

Michael

Victoria

klonghall

Podblack

Bam

toni

Doret

shannon

C.B.

Natalie

Carolyn Foote

Jenny

Terry D.

Tricia

SAH

Christine

Nancy

NatureGeek

Kim Kasch

Angela

Mary Lee & Franki

BookMoot

skeptidad

kiri8

Kathy

Cathy Nelson

S.

Kim Baise

Buffy "the Slayer" Hamilton

Doug Johnson

MotherReader

beth

Ms. Yingling

ms_teacher

lgburns

and many more!

CARE Update

I'm taking the CARE logo off the sidebar, but there's obviously still work to be done in Haiti. There will be for the foreseeable future. That's one on the reasons I chose CARE. They will be there fighting poverty long after the eyes of the world have moved on to other issues in other parts of the world.

My Lovely Bride ran the collection drive at her school and has raised nearly three thousand dollars for Haiti. We're not doing too shabby at my school either, but nothing like that!

Money for Haiti is no longer the immediate problem. Now it's a matter of international and local will and continued rebuilding and support. I hope this time Haiti can not only recover, but overcome. Remember, this is more a crisis of poverty than anything else and be sure to continue to make your donations unrestricted. Thanks.

Twisty

This week's Booking Through Thursday question comes in two parts:

1. Do you like books with complicated plots and unexpected endings?

Who doesn't? If you like only straightforward narratives and pat endings then you're not so much of a reader as a plot consumer. I love Dan Simmons and Neal Stephenson and Susanna Clarke and a whole raft of challenging and rewarding novelists. Now there are credible surprise endings an there are, um, less credible ones. When a book seems to be built around only a surprise ending, it usually fails to work for me. That's fun in short stories, but novels? Not so much. Never really did get over that stupid icicle thing in The Lovely Bones.

2. What book with a surprise ending is your favorite? Or least favorite?

Favorite surprise ending: Penguin by Polly Dunbar

Most recent least favorite trick ending was from a generally good book: Shutter Island (which I doubt will be improved by the addition of Leo D. in the flick).

Recent Bedtime Reading

In a post over at Booklights, Susan urges us to write down the books we read to our kids and even the books they're reading on their own. She thinks it'll be cool to look back on the time you had together.

Last night we read some Elephant and Piggie books by Mo Willems. My daughter has a stuffed elephant and a stuffed pig (not the same ones as in the book) and we often act out the books as a little puppet show. She's usually Piggie (Piggie's a girl if you weren't aware) and the elephant is Gerald. I think last night was Are You Ready to Play Outside? Of course these always lead to giggling fits for us all.

Then we quieted down for the calming The Goblin and the Empty Chair, a nearly perfect bedtime book for any age. Not much happens, but it has the repetitive timelessness of an old fable and the illustrations are magical. (Which is always the case with Leo and Diane Dillon).

The text doesn't say this explicitly, but I think the "empty chair" referred to in the title may be due to someone in the family recently dying before the events of the story. So the (nice!) Goblin is coming upon a grieving family. The goblin helps them each heal and, "in spite of his care," the goblin is seen.

A moving and wonderful tale from a true master of the form, Mem Fox.

Darwin Day at UGA

If any of my readers are within driving distance of Athens, GA they may be interested to know about some of the fun and science-minded events going on at our own Darwin Day at UGA!

I doubt I'll be able to make it, but that Friday evening screening of Creation sounds intriguing. I've been waiting for a wider release of that. Maybe if the UGA screening is packed and they get a good buzz they'll fast track it here in GA. Hint-hint.

Not that You Needed MORE Reasons to Avoid AR

But here are 18 Reasons Not to Use AR (via Mark Pennington at the TeacherLibrarian Ning).

Last week I posted on some questionable practices regarding the shelving of AR books in school libraries. I didn't even say that many bad things about the program itself, other than to point out some compelling evidence that it's not really effective. Even Jim Trelease, who had a relatively balanced view of the program in his Read-Aloud Handbook now sees "more negatives than positives" and collects some damning evidence as well.

I got a lot of comments for that post, so here's some more meat to chew on.

The original article by Mr. Pennington has much more description, so do check it out, bookmark it, and share it around. Some of the arguments are stronger than others, but you can see that in these economically tight times, the expense of AR is hardly justified when the benefits are questionable, so many questions remain, and solid evidence of effectiveness is lacking.

Here's the basic list:

Book Selection

1. Using AR tends to limit reading selection to it's own books.

2. Using AR tends to limit reading selection to a narrow band of readability.

3. Using AR tends to discriminate against small publishing companies and unpopular authors.

4. Using AR tends to encourage some students to read books that most teachers and parents would consider inappropriate for certain age levels.

Reader Response

5. Using AR tends to induce a student mindset that "reading is a chore," and "a job that has to be done."

6. Using AR tends to replace the intrinsic rewards of reading with extrinsic rewards.

7. Using AR tends to foster student and/or teacher competitiveness, which can push students to read books at their frustration reading level or create problems among students.

8. Using AR tends to turn off some students to independent reading.

9. Using AR tends to turn some students into cheaters.

AR is Reductive

10. Using AR tends to supplant portions of established reading programs.

11. AR tends to train students to accumulate facts and trivia as they read in order to answer the multiple choice recall questions.

12. Using AR tends to take up significant instructional time.

13. Using AR tends to reduce the amount of time that teacher spend doing read-alouds and teaching class novels.

14. Using AR tend to make reading into an isolated academic task.

15. Using AR tends to drain resources that could certainly be used for other educational priorities.

16. Using AR tends to minimize the teaching and instructional practice in diagnostically-based reading strategies.

17. Using AR tends to limit differentiated instruction.

Research Base

18. Although a plethora of research studies involving AR are cited on the Renaissance Learning website, the research base is questionable at best.

Thanks, Mr. Pennington, for more ammo!

Flashing Lights of Death!

I'm not kidding. In this article from the Times Online (via Norm) the jokers who sell this fraudulent "bomb detector" which is molded plastic with an antenna that is connected to, um, nothing. It's basically a dowsing rod which is, in effect, a stick. So Iraqis are dying from bombs that have gone through checkpoints of uniformed men waving magic sticks at them. No, really.

But that's not the funny part. The funny part is this comment from company spokesman Jim "Out on Bail" McCormick:

"He added: 'We have been dealing with doubters for ten years. One of the problems we have is that the machine does look a little primitive. We are working on a new model that has flashing lights.'"

Oh, flashing lights! That'll look nice as the bombs drive past...

James Randi has more to say on this, of course. Funnily enough, McCormick's company hasn't taken him up on the offer of one meeelion dollars to prove that his magic sticks work.

In Which I Arrive Late to Meet Artemis and Percy

I have way too much grad school reading to do to have much fun reading time, but I do have a slight window during afternoon bus call where I'm standing out in the hall and between hoards of grubby children rushing to the bus, I have small stretches of time where I have to sand in an empty hall with nothing to do. So I've been grabbing some light reading to keep me out of trouble. I've never read the Artemis Fowl series, but always knew it would have been right up my alley as a kid. Somewhere along the line I got this graphic novel version of the first book and I can tell you this for sure: it makes for great hallway duty reading. Much better than the bulletin boards, anyway.

I felt guilty not having read the original, and was prepared for disappointment a la Coraline, and I'm sure had I read the first novel I'd have more quibbles but this is a great comic. The art and color are superbly done and pace is perfect. Not too choppy and not too rushed. I'm sure there is some depth of character lacking, but an amazing amount is telegraphed by the tilt of a head and the look in the eye. And better yet: I had a ton of kids rushing down the hallway stop for a moment to ask about it. The list of those that would borrow it from me next is growing...

What can one say about The Lightening Thief? I've been listening to it on my commute. It's all that and more. It's basically review-proof. It's a hit and there's little else to say. It's probably been compared to Harry Potter ad nauseum, but it stands apart. Similarities: magic, a triad of two boys and a girl fighting dark powers, a school for special kids, even the three-headed dog. Differences: Percy is not an orphan, setting is American, much better pacing, less use of annoying adverbs, but also a lack of emotional depth. Chiron is a cool mentor, but he's no Dumbledore.

Enough with the comparisons. This book (and I'm sure series) does a fantastic job of making you want to turn the pages faster and faster (or listen more intently, in my case) and also go off to brush up on your Greek mythology. I'm a Hamilton fan but if I had a young person around I'd get them Tales of the Greek Heroes (which has a much cooler cover than when I was a kid and a new intro by Mr. Riordan). I did have to laugh at some of the Greek stuff in the book. Percy or one of his companions would mention a "historical fact" about the Greek gods that I'd forgotten, but then they'd get suckered in by something as obvious as the lotus eaters. No worries, though. The book is far to entertaining to quibble about mythological accuracy.

I just hope Chris Columbus does a better job with the movie than he did with the first two Harry Potters. The pretty cool new movie trailer can be seen here if you've somehow missed it.

Dara O'Briain

For this week's Skeptical Sunday video: some NSFW language, but man oh man is it funny. I often think the funny is the best way to combat the nuttiness. Have a great week!

Favorite Unknown

This week's question is about a favorite author people are not reading. There's the old adage that a classic is a book that's still in print. These are all still in print, and have been reprinted many times, so somebody is reading them (his current bestselling book rank at Amazon is 654, 578). But Charles Willeford is one of those novelists that never made it huge and is worth checking out.

Start with Miami Blues, the first in his Hoke Mosely series (also an underrated film). No one does hard boiled and humor in quite the same way. He's in the same league as Elmore Leonard and Donald Westlake/Richard Stark. Carl Hiaasan owes his career to Charles Willeford and another great, but now often overlooked crime/social issue novelist: John D. MacDonald.

Accelerated Reading?

On my state's school librarian listserv, someone was asking about how different people arrange their AR books in their libraries. (AR is, of course, one of those book-testing-for-points-and silly-things program many schools are married to).

I have heard, but thankfully not seen, that there are school librarians who either put all the AR books in their own section or--even worse--toss Dewey and arrange the entire library by AR levels.

Some of the answers to this were great.

One said, "It is not best practice to arrange books, elementary or otherwise, by program level."

But my favorite was this one:

"This is an easy decision to make. You simply ask yourself, 'Am I running an AR program or a school library media program?'"

Oh, yeah!

There's just not even enough good evidence that AR works well enough to go re-arranging the entire program around it--not to mention that it's expensive. If I end up working in a school that has AR, I'll do my job of course, but AR will serve the students--not vice-versa.

Comment Challenge Scam Alert

There's a blog on MotherReader's fabulous Comment Challenge sign-up list that you need to avoid like the plague. There are some great blogs on the list, but this one is there just to link to the authors' other web site of woo-woo. It's number 161 on the list: the Advantage Point's blog (sorry, no link from me). It only has around a dozen posts and seems to be just to get you to go to their main website which is all this hoo-ha about "psychic sense" and "intuition" and "sixth sense." Apparently it's all very "empowering" and "guiding" and, well, gag me.

I mean they apparently"...have studied the intuitive and healing arts for over 20 years. They are certified Six Sensory TM practitioners who have trained with and received professional certification from Sonia Choquette, a world-renowned Revolutionary Psychic, Vibrational Alchemist, Healer and Teacher."

So yeah, don't click on their link because they're not part of the kidlit or any other sane community. These people either money-grubbing or delusional. Either way, best to not get sucked into that particular portal of nuttiness.

Disaster Relief Donating

The headline says Don't Give money to Haiti, but it's really about how you should give unrestricted donations.

"The last time there was a disaster on this scale was the Asian tsunami, five years ago. And for all its best efforts, the Red Cross has still only spent 83% of its $3.21 billion tsunami budget — which means that it has over half a billion dollars left to spend. Not to put too fine a point on it, but that’s money which could be spent in Haiti, if it weren’t for the fact that it was earmarked."

So do give. But make sure the organization is free to use the money in the most effective way or all this wonderful outpouring will be for naught. We need to think critically in times of crises as well.

Oh, and I saw this at someecards: "Let's figure out a way for Wall Street to text their record-breaking bonuses to Haiti."

Reading Aloud: Not Just for Elementary

Here's a great piece on reading aloud to teens by the wonderful Mary Ann Zehr of the Learning the Language blog.

There's this mistaken notion that you shouldn't read out loud to anyone past elementary school or they "won't read on their own."

Phooey on that, I say.

There are many ways and reasons to interact with texts and sometimes reading out loud is the perfect choice. You have read The Read-Aloud Handbook? Jim Trelease was great at admonishing parents to not stop reading out loud to their kids until the kids moved out.

Heck, I like being read to from time to time. Why should it be different for anyone just because they've learned how to read?

Jerry Pinkney

Man, you guys are way too understanding. Not one of you took me to task about my grump yesterday. I got all nice, encouraging comments (which I'm very thankful for, of course). The best one came this morning from MLB (My Lovely Bride):

"Suck it up Eeyore! What do you have to feel grumpy about? What kind of attitude is that from the soon-to-be-best-ever-teacher-librarian- who-might-also-dress-up-as-Captain-Underpants?!

I mean really - if you are going to go all 'Eeyore' online then it's probably time to hang up your hat before you fall

into 'Julie and Julia' egocentrist pitydom.

You rock - stop being a grump - you love books and you know it so ...

suck it up and do something BOOKY!"

Now THAT, my friends, is a comment! Is she not the best thing ever? (And full disclosure: I have indeed dressed up as Captain Underpants.)

So here you go. Among the mind-numbing list of awards yesterday and all the gushing, there was indeed one that got me. Jerry Pinkney. I didn't realize he'd never won the Caldecott. He's won the Honors numerous times and it's not like he's hurting for awards, but it's nice that he's finally gotten the gold seal for his The Lion & the Mouse.

I got to spend some time with him at the Georgia Book Awards a few years ago. He actually wasn't on the original lineup. He graciously stepped in for an ailing Julius Lester. I spent a long evening at an airport waiting to pick him up, but that flight never came. The next morning he arrived right in time to speak. In all the time I was with him, during book signings and such, he was a friendly but serious guy. It was only when he began showing slides of his artwork and talking about the art and the stories that he just softened up and had a lot to say.

He's clearly in love with the natural world and storytelling and he has an absolutely amazing body of work that he has shared with us.

He's also very up front about the learning difficulties he had as a student and is amazed that he is now a producer of books. Actually, I was struck that year that a number of well-known children's writers and illustrators had reading and writing difficulties. It's great when they share this with teachers, librarians and students so we never forget that there are different ways to learn and different ways to succeed.

Congratulations, Mr. Pinkney. Keep up the excellent work.

It's Hard to Care

About the book awards today, I mean.

There's this and this and now this burning in my brain.

And it's hard to care about blogging or education/technology when I read something like this.

Sorry for being so morose today.

I spent an hour or more clicking on Motherreader's list of links for the comment challenge but so many blogs are blogging about the same exact things and they seem so into these book awards that it all becomes a blur. Too many exclamation points, silly "book challenges," blog "bling," requests for ARCs and too many Amazon affiliations all in a row.

So I deleted my Amazon link. (I wasn't making anything off of it anyway.) And I love the "Kidlitoshpere" and will keep a link on my blog but I'm deleting the tag.* I don't feel like I blog enough about kid's book right now to deserve it. I'll keep up with the comment challenge because I actually do enjoy some of these blogs and like the habit of trying to comment on other blogs. And maybe I'll get more involved when I become a school librarian.

But, yeah. I'm not in the right place right now to be too excited about much.

I'll try to look for something silly and fun to post about soon to get me out of my Eeyore-like mope.

___________________________________

*update: Kidlitosphere banner back, with plans for some more frequent kid lit. posts. Thank you all for your positive comments!

(image cc flickr)

Haiti Is a Crisis of Poverty

Yes, the earthquake was bad, but we had a similar size quake hit L.A. more 16 years ago and only 72 people died. That's because we have the money and expertise to build right. I'll never complain about a boring zoning meeting again.

The cure for Haiti, after the immediate disaster relief, is to begin to alleviate their poverty and to somehow help them to strengthen their own government. They need building codes and zoning laws and infrastructure. Maybe they can't; I don't know.

But right now they need help. Desperately. CARE was already on the ground in Haiti and has continuing updates on their blog. They're a strong organization based here out of Atlanta. My wife is spearheading the collection efforts hat her school with the proceeds going to CARE as well.

Other organizations are great for different reasons--particularly immediate catastrophe relief. But who will be there 6 weeks, 6 months, 6 years from now? Care.

Critical Thinking

It's great if for nothing other than the lovely British accent, eh? (Although I do wish they would learn to spell sKepticism. Just kidding.)

Is Not Public Education and Too Big and Too Important to Fail?

I usually avoid the "HuffPo," but Stephen Krashen forwarded this in his newsletter this morning and it's a good analysis of this "Race to the Top" nonsense by Chris Prevatt:

"The RTTT initiative provides $4.5 billion nationally for qualifying states. California may be eligible for up to $700 million. Based on projected estimates, for many districts this would mean eligibility to receive one-time funds equaling about 1-2% of the average operating budget over the next two to four years. So while the RTTT has been 'sold' as a major game-changing investment or "bailout" of public schools, local school districts know better.

So while Wall Street was given hundreds of billions of dollars with little to no conditions, schools are offered a fraction of the Wall Street monies with restrictive and costly mandates. Is not public education too big and too important to fail?"

There's much more so go over and give it a look-see.

Oh, and to get rid of all the nonsense, you should really install Readability. It has made my online browsing life much easier on the eyes.

Open Book Test, Mind You...

Question: Why was the House of Burgesses important?

Answer: "It is where they ate. It was before House of Pancakes."

Some Mayors Get It

Read the letter "Wrong Way Race" by Richmond mayor Gayle McLaughlin commending Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums.

The absolute last thing we need right now is more standards and tests.

Parental Comments

Apparently it's National De-Lurking Week as well as the time for the comment challenge, and it made me want to give a shout out to an interesting turn of events here at teacherninja central.

So you may or not be aware that My Lovely Bride is a 4th grade teacher. Turns out one of the parents of a student has been reading Teacherninja for a while not realizing that I was her husband. Small world, I know.

And this parent of a student. AND this parent! That last one was even at some of the same Dragon*Con events as I was. How cool is that? They've turned out to be some of my most loyal commentors of late.

Check them out and keep spreading the comments.

Baloney Detection Kit

This is about 13 minutes of Dr. Shermer summarizing some of the main points Carl Sagan made in his essential Demon-Haunted World. Have a great week!

Bad Kitty

I don't really have a review of this. It's one of those recent kid series that are popular and funny, so there's not much else to say. But like Fly Guy before it, my daughter has taken a shine to it and was deeply engrossed and chuckling all the way to to Little Gym and back.

Movie moguls take note: She said on the drive back, "If there's a movie of Bad Kitty, I'd totally go see it."

Convergence

Will Blio Change the Game for E-Readers? by Jonathan Strickland at Discovery News.

I don't know why, since I have no great desire to own one and the market share is still a sliver of published books, but I keep running across articles like the above for e-readers and keep wondering how they'll play out. I wrote about this a little while back and it got picked up by Scrub-a-Dub-Tub, so it got plenty of wonderful comments. But no one said they were a teacher-librarian who was buying them for their library and had good reasons why. That's what I'm still curious about.

There's definitely "steam in the e-reader engine" as Strickland says, but I think he's right about convergence. I'm seeing those little Flip-type video cameras and small digital cameras and mp3 being merged into super-phones. There's already plenty of apps for e-readers on these phones. I know they don't have the pleasing "e-ink" look to them (and subsequent plentiful battery life) but when they're telling you to put the charger for these phones next to your bed and "toss out that alarm clock" you know they're becoming more and more ubiquitous. But how much will this have to do with libraries? Makes me wonder.

Of course I still have a bare bones phone, a massive classic ipod and a PowerShot bulging in my pockets right now. So what do I know?

(image cc flickr)

Comment Challenge

If you like book blogs, particularly Kid Lit stuff, then head on over to MotherReader and sign up for the newest Comment Challenge. You promise to comment on five blogs a day (easy peasy) and you make bloggers happy, find friends, learn about books, and even qualify for prizes. There's already a growing list of signees, so finding 5 blogs a day to comment on should be a snap.

Come out, lurkers, and let us know what you like, what needs work, what you'd like to see, or just say o say Hi.

Book Gifts

This week's BTT asks what books you got for the holidays. I asked for the Dawkins and the Buffys. The Krakauer was a pleasant surprise. I got another one I asked for which didn't turn out to be what I'd hoped, so I'll be exchanging it. Exchanging books is just as easy and fun, so you can't really go wrong gifting books (as long as you don't write in them). I also got a gift card from My Lovely Bride: "Because I love you and you love books." She knows me too well.

The Thrill of Science

In my last post I gave a brief review of Neil Shubin's Your Inner Fish and it got me thinking about a few more things I wanted to mention. Even if you don't read the whole book, pick it up at a bookstore and thumb to the epilogue. It a great little essay on his love of science. He mentions a visit he and his son went on to the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. They made their way to the Henry Crown Space Center and he realized he was looking at the actual Apollo 8 Command Module (see it in the link). It knocked him out. He remembered watching this same mission on TV as a kid and it was a big moment for him. It was "a symbol for the power of science to explain and make our universe knowable."

Did you see the 1995 movie Apollo 13 with Tom Hanks? Of course you did because it was awesome. One of my favorite bits is when we see a bunch of engineers put into a room and a box of stuff is dumped on a table in front of them. Socks, duct tape, instruction books, etc. This is everything that the astronauts have and these guys need to use it to design a new air filter so the men can make it back to Earth alive in their damaged ship. And they do it!

Later, Tom Hanks went on to produce the mini-series From the Earth to the Moon. It's pretty great, but two episodes in particular capture that same sense of science and engineering as cool and dramatic. In "Spider" we follow the New Jersey engineers contracted to design and build the lunar lander. It may sound dry, but it could make you cry it's so beautiful. Remember, no one had any idea how to do this or what they would end up with. They were basically like those guys with the socks and duct tape and just really good brains.

Then there's the episode entitled "Galileo Was Right" in which the mission of Apollo 15 was dramatized. You remember the 1971 Apollo 15 mission, right? Of course you don't. Even at the time people were a bit jaded about the whole men-to-the moon thing. Sure, we'd been to the moon and it was a fantastic bit of engineering and all but what about the science? Geologist Jack Schmitt made it onto the mission and convinced his former professor, Lee Silver, to teach his fellow astronauts geology. Again, what could be more boring than guys learning about rocks for crying out loud? I tell you, it's an amazing episode that shows off all the best things about teaching and learning and science all in one.

Just as the moon missions changed how we look up, Neil Shubin and the fields of biology and palentology change how we look at life in general. It really is quite a thrill, if you ask me.

"I can imagine few things more beautiful or intellectually profound than finding the basis for our humanity, and the remedies for many of the ills we suffer, nestled inside some of the most humble creatures that have ever lived on our planet."

--Neil Shubin

(I refreshed my memory with EpisodeGuides.com)