Summer Reading? Um . . . Bad Librarian

Okay, so I honestly intended to do big summer reading promos with my students . . . and today's the last official in-school day. Tomorrow, everyone's off-campus. What happened? My time management skills are lacking. I'm not very realistic about what I can accomplish. It makes me sad. I hope my colleagues and I have instilled enough passion about reading so that kids make it to the public library and read. Sigh. I disappoint myself too often.

I love my job!

I'm so glad to be a school librarian. This blog post reaffirms why I do what I do. I'm so very glad to have the career I do.

Awesome Library Display

This isn't necessarily for MILI participants, I just want to make sure I don't "lose" this . . . but maybe I already put it in delicious. Anyhow, the EP library puts up some pretty cool displays, but the one on their statistics absolutely stopped me in my tracks. They post their photos at flickr/edenprairielibrary and it's some good stuff!

Quality, Professionalism, and Tiredness

So in my last post, the image I uploaded isn't good. The perfectionist in me wants to re-do it so that it is legible and there isn't wasted white space. The exhausted educator in me has only two minutes before the first-hour bell rings and I'm done subbing for a study hall of eighth graders and can go back to the media center whirlwind. What does that say about me that I'd rather "get 'r done" than do it well?

Google Timeline

Okay, I apologize in advance if this has already been gushed over in MILI. I just stumbled across it and had some fun. The Google Timeline was promoted by a fellow media specialist on our MEMO discussion group. Here's what she said:

"You can see the news for today or any day you select. It shows general news, Wikipedia events, and the Time magazine on the day OR topic you select. For example, I searched for Franklin Roosevelt and selected to have it show by decades. It was marvelous. You can customize by using 'Add More Queries' and choose sports teams, different magazines, blogs, media like music or movies, etc. Studying something in the '60s - try Decades. Social Studies teachers will really like it but everyone can find something interesting here. Just leave plenty of time to explore. And have fun!" - Dawn Nelson

But when I searched for the Beatles, the decades view wasn't very useful. Fine. I went to "years" and took a look at the 1950s. Hmmm. The top 1955 story was about John Lennon's death. . . I wasn't alive in 1955, yet I clearly remember when he was shot . . . in the 80s. How does this tool work? It might be useful to use with students so that they can check for accuracy and errors. Or it's kind of fun to just ding around for a while. This might become a key component of future media literacy lessons for me . . .

Web 2.0 Improvements

I thought about doing a post called "Bad Blogger," but don't want to wallow in guilt for not being online much this past month.

One thing I'm really happy about is the fact that pbwiki allows you to add students as users quickly and easily! It was such a major hassle last year to create a dummy gmail account and enter each person individually. Yuk! This is an improvement that I really appreciate. It makes the tool so much easier to use. One thing I haven't figured out yet (I think it's in the upgrade version) is how to get the user name to show up in the email alert when changes in the wiki have been made. It was so nice last year to make quick notes in the gradebook based on what showed up in the email each day. Now they're "anonymous" until you actually travel to the wiki to read them there.

This student user improvement made me really happy, but every time Facebook makes an "upgrade," I just get crabby! Do they just change stuff because they're bored? Do they hate their users and yank our chains every few months just for kicks and giggles? Just when I start to figure out how to use my FB account, they change something and I'm like a babe in the woods again. I'm glad I have a 17-year-old master user in my house!

Screencasting

This took me longer than I expected and I still didn't get the timing right. It's not really hard . . . it just helps if you plan out what you want to "say" before you start capturing the "video" piece. It's kind of fun, and could be a great teaching tool.

Capture your screen in seconds