Library Stew

AASL 2009 - Notes and reflections

noreply@blogger.com (Kathy) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 01:51:00 +0000

WOW.. that's all I can say about AASL - WOW...

Well, I do have some other things to say about the conference but if you are a school media specialist, start saving NOW for AASL 2011 in Minneapolis- really, I can't believe I have waited this long to attend a national conference. What I came away with was SO incredible and I will be talking about it and dissecting it more in the next few weeks as I have time to really go through conference notes and websites, but here were some highlights:

* stumbling into the Bloggers Cafe (and not realizing where we were) and meeting Joyce Valenza and Buffy Hamilton first thing on Thursday (both of whom are just MADE of awesome!) and listening to some great presentations and meeting some other FABULOUS media specialists and even a corporate librarian from GA. Here is the link to the wiki from the bloggers cafe.

* Listening to opening speaker Danah Boyd - wow - she had some great things to say, I wish I could have my staff and parents listen to her presentation!

* Attending the Smackdown (wiki here) - this was the BEST session of the whole conference - I am SO glad I went in early and got a seat!

* The exhibition hall was great too - I got some free books (including an ARC of the new John Green/ David Levithan book - SOO excited about this), some coupons from other vendors and I stumbled onto a great publisher - Sylvan Dell - their books are beautiful and they have a GREAT subscription e-book service! It will take me weeks to go through all the STUFF I came home with!

I promise more from the conference, but Book Fair starts tomorrow and I better get some sleep!

I'm off to AASL

noreply@blogger.com (Kathy) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:30:00 +0000

I am leaving for Charlotte with a good friend (and fellow media specialist) to attend my first national library convention. I have been a member of the American Library Association(ALA) and it's affiliate the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) since I was in grad school (we're talking 7 years now ) but the conventions are always SO expensive to attend. Most have been in far away places that require planes, trains or long automobile trips to get to and then require hotels and food and well you know how things add up - and my school cannot foot the bill and with 3 kids, neither can I - until now!

This convention is only 3 hours away (by car) and we are staying with my friends brother who lives in Charlotte. This might be my one and only national convention that I get to go to, so I am going to try and make the most of it! I am excited to hear the speakers and attend the sessions and also to hopefully meet up with some online friends.

I have a feeling I am going to be VERY tired on Saturday when I get back!

Happy Halloween

noreply@blogger.com (Kathy) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:20:00 +0000

Today we could dress up as a book character for school - I had a hard time deciding and finally decided at about 3pm yesterday - which explains why I could not find pink pants for my outfit.

Can you guess the book??

Just wish I had more time last night to make pink cupcakes to share at school today - maybe next year!

Today our school systems cable channel is coming here to film a segment for a series they have called the Author in You with local Atlanta author ( and my friend) Laurel Snyder - they usually put up a link to the show once it is live, so I will be sure to add it to the blog. Check out some shows that they have done in the past here.

Boo Bubbles, Ghost Stories and 40

noreply@blogger.com (Kathy) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:09:00 +0000

I love October - for many reasons - post season baseball (ok, that one not so much this year), cooler weather, leaves changing color, pumpkins, my birthday and Halloween! Last year I found a kit to make BOO bubbles on Steve Spangler Science (my favorite science shop!) and the kids loved it so much I decided to do it again this year. I forget what I read last year, but this year I am reading the book The Ghost Eye Tree by Bill Martin jr. and John Archambault. The worst thing about this story time - having to go buy dry ice every morning before school (and it gets expensive!)

My new favorite photo sharing slide program - whrrl is now blocked in my school (knew it was too good to last) so I tried slide share - here is my first attempt at a slide share presentation

Boo Bubbles

View more presentations from Kathyfs24.

oh and it was my 40th birthday on Saturday - I have never been bothered by my age, but this year I seemed to be hit with it - 40 is OLD - LOL - but I had a great weekend with friends and family and a great party on Saturday night, so it made turning 40 not so bad!

Weekly update - storytime & readers theater

noreply@blogger.com (Kathy) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 19:26:00 +0000

It has been a crazy week here in the media center - lots of classes and my assistant was out this week, plus we had a 4-day weekend last weekend (which was SOO nice!). So here is what we have been doing this week in the media center- celebrating Eric Carle's 80th and the Caterpillar's 40th birthday (he and I are the same age!) Take a Whrrl with my Whrrl story:

I am also on week two of my readers theater project and it is going REALLY well. This week we gave out the scripts to the kids and they did their first read through. They seem really excited about doing this and with the class today, they had some GREAT comments for each other after our first read through. Next week we will work on better fluency with the text and reading with more emotion and "voices".

next up - my FAVORITE story time of the year - BOO Bubbles!! Plus I have to figure out a great book character costume for Halloween - any suggestions?? I've already been a pirate, the bus driver (from the Pigeon books) and Lilly from Lilly's purple plastic purse, the paper bag princess and Abe Lincoln - hmmm.......

Mo Willems!

noreply@blogger.com (Kathy) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 16:55:00 +0000

Yesterday my school got to be part of Mo Willems simulcast! It was SO much fun! After lots of headaches getting the technology to work in our school (thank you to my AWESOME technology guru at our school and the awesome Internet guy in our county who made it happen) it all went off with out a hitch. My only disappoint with the program, I was REALLY hoping he was going to show us his dinning room (the one with the chalk board walls) so I guess this means that I will still have to hold out for an invite to his house for dinner - I'll even bring desert Mo - really I will!

Between watching this yesterday and watching the video : Eric Carle: Picture Writer this week with my story time classes, I want to quit my job and go work in an art studio - one problem, I have NO artistic talent what so ever. But it does make me want to go out and buy new colored pencils and crisp white paper!

Thanks Hyperion & Mo for letting me be a part of this!

Readers Theater

noreply@blogger.com (Kathy) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 13:18:00 +0000

I am so excited to start my first readers theater project today. I am working with a 4th grade gifted teacher and her 2 classes (one with 15 students, the other with 11 students).

For today's first class we will be explaining to the students WHAT readers theater is. I am going to show them this video of a group of teens doing a readers theater performance at a public library so that they get a REAL sense of what they will be doing. I also have a short United Streaming video on creating your own readers that I will show them. The teacher and I have already chosen a script from the book A Bad Case of Stripes by David Shannon that we will be using as our first script, so to introduce the kids I will be reading the book. We will introduce the scripts at our next meeting next week. Our plan is to meet once a week with these kids and work with them one week on the script and then having them perform the script the next week. We will video tape the kids so they can see themselves performing and also so we can critique their performances.

This project is a perfect example of why media specialists need to TALK with each other. This idea came from a media specialist in my county that I talked to at a meeting we had a few weeks ago. She was describing what she did with a readers theater project at her school and I knew that I wanted to try something here. The hardest part in doing something like this is getting a teacher to work with you and sign on for a project that will be a few weeks in length.

I will update here on how the project is going and what we will be doing each class session that we meet.

Johnny Appleseed story time

noreply@blogger.com (Kathy) — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 15:05:00 +0000

We have dried out here in Georgia, but some of my friends have been hit HARD by the flooding, My former school had a lot of flood damage and is STILL not open yet and there are many families that still cannot go back to their flood damaged home. I have seen flooded areas on the news before but NEVER imagined that it would happen here.

On a happier note, we are celebrating apples in the media center this week. Check out my Whrrl story about our story time and art project.

"Snow" day in September and musing on Web 2.0

noreply@blogger.com (Kathy) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 13:53:00 +0000

Yes, that's right, I am writing this at home in my pj's at 10am on a Tuesday - YES, I should be at school, NO I am not sick, but we are home because of our 2nd "snow" day, which really is a rain & flood day off from school. For those not in the metro Atlanta area this sounds like another CRAZY thing us southerners do, cancel school for RAIN (my father was laughing out loud when I told him) - but really, look at this:

I have never seen this much water in my life, my neighborhood is ok and from what I could tell yesterday, my school is fine, but there are schools in our district that have parking lots and fields under water and I have heard that a few schools even have water IN the schools. It is CRAZY how much rain has fallen in our area since last week, I have heard reports that in my area, 18" of rain has fallen since Sunday - and to think we went through a severe drought last year!!

Since I am home from school, I am doing a little thinking about web 2.0 tools and the way I use them. I have posted before about my online time and how I have tried at times to "back off" being online so much (a failed attempt) but while while I have been thinking of ways to streamline my use of these tools and also thinking about ways to TEACH these tools to my staff (and maybe to other media specialists in my district) I have come to a few conclusions:

Facebook: - I will admit, I am obsessed, but I have figured out that although I have a few "work" related things on here, this is my personal time. I keep up with family & friends on here, I vent about my kids on here and share pictures of my kids doing funny things on here, to me this is personal networking and I am keeping it that way.

Twitter: I had signed onto this last year and then never used it - but THEN I checked out a few "professional" contacts on Twitter, had some new people "find" me and I have been hooked ever since. Twitter is my "combo" tool.. I use it to connect to people professionally, librarians, authors, book publishers and teachers and it is also my Red Sox nation source, and who knew that I would become "twitter friends' with a librarian who is ALSO a Red Sox fan! I have gotten so many journal articles, blog posts and information from my Twitter followers. I recently sent a tweet out about wanting to find some readers theater resources and I got a few GREAT suggestions from fellow media specialists and teachers. This to me is a tool I can use for many purposes, although it is SO hard for me to express myself in 140 characters or less!

Blogs: Although I don't blog as much as I would like, I still find it a great source to share and "meet" other media specialists. This blog is (mostly) a professional blog, although I have been known to "talk" about my kids, the Red Sox and Jon Bon Jovi, I mostly talk shop here. In my Google reader, though, I do have 2 different groups set up, Mommy Blogs (which, really, I should change the title of that to personal blogs) and professional blogs, and I cannot tell you how much information I get from these people. Being a media specialist is sometimes a lonely job, you are the only person in your building who does what you do and people "just don't understand" what you do some days. Reading these blogs not only gives me ideas on how to do my job better, but also is like sitting in the teachers lounge with my "grade level".

All the other stuff: there is SO much more to Web 2.0, photo sharing, ning groups, wiki groups - it would take me 3 days to talk about it all, but I think that it is my JOB to know what there is out there, although it is also my job to figure out what will help me, personally and professionally and stick with those tools that I am comfortable with.

Here is a great article by Joyce Valenza about using these Web 2.0 tools to teach kids. Here in my school district, many of these tool are blocked, but if anything, I wold love to teach the TEACHERS about these tools. The kids are using them at home, wouldn't it be great if we could teach them that they could be doing a little learning too while using some of these! I love what Buffy Hamilton (one of my Twitter friends) is doing with social networking and high school students, I can only hope that somewhere down the line, I can incorporate these into elementary classrooms too.

Well, I am going to check out what kind of damage there is in our area, I hear the park where we play baseball and football is under water!

Happy Birthday Tomie!

noreply@blogger.com (Kathy) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 11:50:00 +0000

Today is Mr. dePaola's 75th birthday and illustrator Jarrett Krosoczka (who I hear is from my neck of the woods, central MA) has a project to wish Tomie a happy birthday - go check it out here. (Thanks to Fuse for letting us know about this cool project!)

A garden for a sunny Saturday

noreply@blogger.com (Kathy) — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 17:48:00 +0000

I can't believe I haven't heard of this before, but one of my favorite authors - Peter Reynolds (I swear he wrote his book Dot for my son and Ish for my daughter - too bad HE doesn't know that - LOL!) has a new book coming out! I read in Publishers Weekly today that he is coming out with a new book, dedicated to Rose Kennedy called Rose's Garden. The article was about the publisher (Candlewick Press) moving up the publication date to October and they also provided a link to the Telefable version of the book on the Rose Kennedy Greenway website.

It is another great story - whether you are a fan of Mrs. Kennedy and have visited the Greenway or have never stepped foot in Boston, you will love the story about a girl trying to beautify a city and of a girl trying to make her way in a new place.

Of course as I was reading the Telefable I was already planning the story time I will do with it - I can see the students making their own paper flowers and I will have to show them some pictures of the REAL Rose Kennedy Greenway (which I walked on this summer) and maybe include a picture of the famous steaming tea pot, which I used to walk past every day one summer when I was working in downtown Boston and was the inspiration for the tea pot that Rose rides on in the story.

Now off to pre-order the book!

Story time this week: Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

noreply@blogger.com (Kathy) — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 17:16:00 +0000

With 950 kids in my school (K-5) I do a different story time every two weeks. This week and next week I am reading Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett, illustrated by Ron Barrett. If you frequently tune into the Disney channel or Nickelodeon, you know that there is a movie coming out based on the book (they show the preview every 10 minutes!) so I wanted to make sure the kids knew that the book came before the movie - LOONG before the movie - when I tell the kids I was 9 when the book came out they all say "WOW" - so far nobody's called me old... but I am waiting!

After we read the book I do a little science lesson with them. I created a Whrrl photo story to show you highlights from our story time.

Happy Friday!

Decatur Book Fest 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Kathy) — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 20:31:00 +0000

The Decatur Book Festival was this weekend, and as usual it was FABULOUS!

I only got to go on Saturday and for the first time, I spent more time in the teen area than at the children's stage, but my daughter and I got to see some GREAT authors.

First up was Kate DiCamillo - she had a standing room crowd and I had aspirations of getting my copy of Tales of Despereaux signed, but the line was SOO long that I decided that hearing her was good enough. She read from her new book, The Magician's Elephant, out on Tuesday and answered lots of questions, mostly from the kids in the audience. The thing that shocked me the most about her - she is SOO tiny, I mean the woman must wear a size - 0 - yep, so jealous of her!

Here is a video I took of Jon Scieszka introducing her:

Speaking of Jon Scieszka, we saw his presentation about "Guys Read" - he had lots of funny, inspiring things to say and told us some great stories about his family. I am telling you, my dream author dinner party would include this guy - and of course Mo Willems - and maybe take place in Mo's chalkboard dinning room... I have a feeling it would be one non-stop laugh fest! So boys, I am available anytime you are.....

My daughter got to hear one of her favorite authors, Lauren Myracle and we were introduced to Sara Shepard, the author of the pretty little liars series. She was also a teeny-tiny author - what, so do these woman not eat when they write?? - My daughter & I really enjoyed her talk and bought the first 2 books in the series.

Our last author of the day was David Levithan - he was just like I pictured him, kinda of a nerdy/hip New Yorker - he looks like some of the guys I went to college with actually! He read from Nick & Norah and also from his new book, Love is the Higher Law, a book I now MUST read! He also shared that he is writing a new book with Rachel Cohn and also writing a book with Mr. John Green - that is exciting news! He closed by giving us his current favorites he is listening to - wish I had written them down, I am always in the mood for some new music, especially when the suggestion comes from a hip New Yorker (which I am not!)

I wish I could have gone back today, but family duties interfered - can't wait until next year!

Odds & Ends

noreply@blogger.com (Kathy) — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 13:14:00 +0000

Two very different links today - one from Buffy of the blog Unquiet Librarian - she is a high school media specialist in GA and is SO inspiring. She is teaching a web 2.0 class and her students have lots of LOVE for the library - read her post here - lots of inspiration for those days when you say - WHY do I do this??

On another, sad, note this article came to me today from SLJ about a district in California closing all their school libraries. This is SOO sad to me, not just from a professional aspect (is MY job in jeopardy one of these days?) but it saddens my heart. My guess is, the kids that these schools serve are the ones that NEED access to books and NEED to be taught by a librarian how to search and how to use a library and be shown how AWESOME libraries can be. I hope that somehow they can find the money to keep these libraries open.

And one more article.. one that made me YELL "Someone else gets it!!" after I read it. It is an essay by Susan Straight on the reading program AR (Accelerated Reader.) She says what I have believed for years and have told many a parent and teacher when I have been approached and asked "When is our school going to get AR?" I of course have other issues with it, including the cost and the time it takes to manage the system, but in my heart, the issue I have with it is exactly what Ms. Straight has with it, kids read for the points and are not reading for the pleasure of reading.

I had a tough end of the week last week dealing with some issues about working in a HUGE district and feeling like the "suits" just don't get it...just don't understand what it is like for us in the trenches. I am doing my best to get through my feelings and not blast the district, but it is times like these that I miss being in a small private school (of course I do not miss the small paycheck though). But I am determined to start this week out right. I am doing my LAST orientations this week and will finally get to what I love most about my job, story times and collaborative lessons with teachers - YAY!

Senator Kennedy

noreply@blogger.com (Kathy) — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 12:41:00 +0000

I have had a bunch of things I wanted to post about, but there does not seem to be enough hours in my day (sigh). But, I wanted to remember the senator from my home state of Massachusetts, Senator Ted Kennedy who passed away on Tuesday night.

here is a great pictoral of his life on NPR

and here is what ALA has to say about him

and here is what my favorite team did for him last night

He had been Senator of Massachusetts since before I was born. His family, a large irish catholic family from Massachusetts, just like mine, was our version of royalty. Everyone I know has a Ted story, mine was seeing him in a hotel in Boston where I was waiting for my parents to show up for a college parents weekend, I was upset about something - and his son Teddy actually came over and said something to me - they were having a roast for Ted in the ballroom in the hotel that night.

He was an advocate for those who did not have a voice and no matter what his personal demons were, he was a true American and I for one am glad we had someone like that on our side.

image from the American Library association

My Media Center on Whrrl

noreply@blogger.com (Kathy) — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 17:06:00 +0000

My friend Marlynn started using Whrrl on her blog/twitter/facebook to create photo stories and it seemed pretty cool so I thought I would try it out with a photo tour of my media center.

It was easy to use and I could post a link to it on twitter and facebook right after I saved my photo story. You can also send it out as an e-mail. I can see some definite uses in education and one of the best things - it is NOT BLOCKED (at least yet) on my school computer!

hope you enjoy my virtual tour

1st week wrap up

noreply@blogger.com (Kathy) — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 03:07:00 +0000

my desk after a week of craziness!

It's been a week full of.. well.. lets just say it's been a typical 1st week of school full of surprises.

This week I have:

~ Started Monday's morning announcements (which are live on our close circuit tv) with a teleprompter that was out and an audio board that did not work very well - luckily I had 2 5th graders who did an AWESOME "on the fly" job with the announcements without any script at all!

~ Helped the administration put bus tags on ALL of our students backpacks - this involved running around our building and resulted in a big ol blister for me, I need to make a note NOT to wear cute new shoes on the first day next year!

~ Helped LOTS of children on and off buses - including one yesterday that was crying when I got him off the bus in the am and was STILL crying when I put him on the bus in the afternoon (you have to feel bad for THAT teacher!)

~ Worked lunch duty with first graders three days this week (so far, I haven't made any child cry yet, a new record for me and lunch duty!)

~ Finished my media center orientation video and started doing media center orientation for 5th grade classes.

~ Shot and edited a video with our PTA and Principal for Monday's curriculum night

~ Figured out on my own how to work some new equipment our county gave to our media center and gave us no training on - including a visual presenter, a high def. professional dvd recorder and a cd/dvd duplicator. Wrote and had laminated an instruction sheet for teachers on how to use the visual presenter.

~ Had a master's degree student observe me for the day

~ Straightened out my order for the Atlanta Journal newspaper

~ Talked to two 5th grade teachers about collaborating on lessons this year!

and finally....

~ Found out I was nominated by one of my colleagues here for our local schools' Teacher of the Year - now need to fill out more paperwork for the next round of nominations.

I also spent a lot of time after school at my sons football practices this week and managed to get into my first accident, a fender bender in the public library parking lot yesterday, no one was hurt but there was some damage to the other car.

So what a week it has been! I am ready for a weekend full of football games (youth football that is). So Go Eagles (my 8 yr old's team) and Go Hawks (my 13 yr old's team).

Happy New Year!

noreply@blogger.com (Kathy) — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 12:53:00 +0000

No, No it's not January 1st, or even Rosh Hashanah, the new SCHOOL year starts tomorrow here in my little piece of Georgia and I always look at the first day of school as a new year, full of possibilities and full of potential.

Franki at Year of Reading has a great post up about her thoughts/goals for her school library this coming year, it has some great links and great ideas!

This year has started off with me feeling not quite ready and not quite connected. I think the 3-day furlough that our Governor required us to take has something to do with it. Even though I still came into school on one of the furlough days, our teachers seems to be scrambling and feeling overwhelmed and tired already - and of course those of us that live pay check to pay check are having to figure out how we will live minus the 3 days of pay. There is talk that more furlough days are coming in 2010 and that is making me nervous too.

I do have somethings planned this year that I am excited about - author visits, collaborating with a 5th grade teacher on some great research projects with her students, and a 40th birthday party for the book The Very Hungry Caterpillar (which is the same age as I will turn in October!!) I am looking forward to trying out a Skype author visit (if I can get Skype to work in our school) and also starting a workshop after school for teachers on web 2.0 (this I still have to convince some people on!) I am REALLY looking forward to going to AASL in Charlotte in November with my good friend Tina. I have never been to an ALA conference so I am very excited about this!

Tomorrow morning I also send my own kids off to a new school year. My oldest is in his last year of middle school (8th grade), my daughter is in her first year of middle school (6th grade) and is quite nervous about it and my youngest is going into 3rd grade at my school. Having grown up in Massachusetts, it does seem a bit weird to be going back to school in August, when the temps are still in the 90's here! Afternoon bus duty tomorrow is gonna be HOT!

I will leave you with a quote from one of my favorite movies of all time, You've Got Mail

"Don't you just love fall in New York it makes me want to buy school supplies"- Tom Hanks in You’ve Got Mail.

Wordle

noreply@blogger.com (Kathy) — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 20:39:00 +0000

Been meaning to try this all summer, finally getting around to playing with it -

check out my first attempt

trying to print it, but having trouble, wonder if it is one of those things that is not totally compatible with Safari?

Music & Science - Don't worry Be Happy!

noreply@blogger.com (Kathy) — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 12:23:00 +0000

I found this great video at Dr. Tim Tyson's blog, Practical Practice. I love that Bobby McFerrin - the Don't Worry Be Happy guy is at a science conference!

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

I am off to get a little work done at school - I should be sitting in a meeting right now at school, but today and tomorrow are our furlough days. I am lucky that my principal has opened our building, the bad news is, the a/c is off - so I won't be there long!!

Getting Ready..

noreply@blogger.com (Kathy) — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 03:07:00 +0000

I have spent the last few days at school, ordering supplies, moving furniture and starting to think about lessons and plans for the upcoming year. I love being at school when it is fairly quiet, I get SO much done, but I really can't wait to have the kids back!

In a follow up to last weeks post about too much technology, I had a technological encounter that made me think that all this technology IS worth it, although maybe in smaller doses.

One of my followers on Twitter gave a @ shout out to one of her followers, someone I did not know, but thought I would check her out. So I followed her (buffyjhamilton) and then when I went to her Twitter page, I noticed she had a blog - so I checked it out and - wow - I found another Georgia Media Specialist. The blog is The Unquiet Librarian , and she has a great blog post up now about how she put together back to school packets for her teachers. Of course this inspired me and although I don't have time to get free stuff from vendors like she did, I am working on getting something similar together for my teachers - so thanks Buffy for the ideas!!

So many of the teachers and librarians I am following on Twitter seem to be using Twitter in schools, even if it is just using it as a networking tool or as a notification tool for parents/students. My problem with this is, Twitter and all social networking tools are blocked on our district servers. While I am glad that Facebook is blocked (would be WAY to tempting for me during the day), I do see the benefit of using Twitter and other social networking sites (Flickr is another one that would be great to use in schools). So how do I go about preaching to the technology powers that be in my district to unblock these sites?

I am thinking of offering a Web 2.0 workshop for some of my teachers - basically just to teach them some basics of blogging, podcasting, what social networks are and how to Tweet, I just don't know how I can do this without access to most of these sites at school.

Back to school tomorrow to work on the studio and make sure all is up and running for the first day of school broadcast!

Well, I guess I should count my blessing that I still have a job...

noreply@blogger.com (Kathy) — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 16:46:00 +0000

Last week Sonny Perdue, the Governor of Georgia told school districts that they had to furlough teachers 3 days this year due to the State's money woes. Some districts are getting by without having to do this, unfortunately my district is not one of them.

So I can *technically* not go into school Aug 3 & 4th (teacher pre-planning) or on October 9th (a scheduled staff development day), because I will not be paid for those days, but as anyone who has ever worked at a school knows, it takes a lot to get everything ready for the year, and since we still have an open house for the students scheduled on Aug. 6th, I will still be going into school on those days to get things ready to go.

I know things are tight all around and I should be counting my lucky stars that I have a job, but I have seen how much money is WASTED in the public schools. Just the other day I received from the State a cardboard bookshelf and a box of books that was sent to every elementary school in the State, it was to promote nutrition in our schools, or something like that - I can just imagine how much this cost - and it is something that I will not even put in my media center (well, the bookcase, the books I will add) and don't even get me started on useless technology that has been put into the schools or how much the school districts/State would save if they eliminated some of the mandatory testing that is in place.

I am scared not only for the morale of my work environment but also the attitude of my children's teachers this year. I know I am MAD about losing money and I can't help but think how it will affect the overall school environment this year. I think if Governor Purdue had announced this in May or June teachers and school districts would have had an opportunity to process the information and maybe make some changes before we had to take the furlough days. To do it just a week before teachers come back to school is just bad planning.

I can't help but wonder what other things will be lost this year due to budget cuts and funding woes.... I have a feeling I will not be ordering too many new books this year, I just hope I can keep the author visit I have planned, because it is going to be FABULOUS!!

Unplugged summer

noreply@blogger.com (Kathy) — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 15:50:00 +0000

Well, that statement is not entirely true - but I was without Internet access for most of my 3 week trek through Massachusetts - but right before I left I got a new toy - a Blackberry pearl phone - through which I was able to keep up with my e-mail, Facebook obsession and Twitter, but found it too hard to type whole blog posts - but I am sure with practice I can update the blog too.

Of course while I am somewhat obsessed with this new toy, I do have to wonder if it is all too much. Do I REALLY need to be connected 24 hours a day/7 days a week, even while at the beach?? One of the strangest things I saw this vacation was at Nauset Beach on Cape Cod, the snack bar area had a picnic table set up that had a sign on it that said Free WiFi - I never saw anyone sitting there with their computer, but gee, if you can't unplug at the beach, where can you? I found that even my kids were feeling technology deprived while we were internet-less - especially my 11 year old daughter (she does not have a phone, so texting was out for her, her 13 yr old brother texted to keep up with his friends). I would love to try and go TOTALLY unplugged one weekend, but truthfully, I am really not sure if I could do it.

This got me thinking about how much technology is too much. I have found that I do tend to spend too much time checking Facebook/Twitter/chatting online at night when I used to use that time to read, but then again using my phone to keep up with e-mail and things while sitting at football practice has been a great thing.

On another note, I am scheduled to give the teachers a short talk during pre-planning (which for me starts Aug 3rd) about what is new in the media center and also give them some technology tips that they may be able to use in their classrooms this year. Not sure yet what I am going to talk about - if you have any great websites/equipment that I might want to take a look at please leave a comment!

Even with my Blackberry obsession I did manage to get some reading in over vacation and I think that we really lucked out and had the best 2 weeks that Massachusetts has seen all summer (it is raining there today - again!). Here are some pictures from our trip.

on the boat going to Martha's Vineyard

Gay Head Cliffs, Martha's Vineyard

Tall ships, Boston Harbor

Jason Varitek up at bat, Fenway Park

Technology & Schools

noreply@blogger.com (Kathy) — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 15:47:00 +0000

A podcast that I listen to - Manic Mommies - was part of an event at WGBH, the PBS affiliate station in Boston, about our digital nation. Today the Mommies posted a video link from PBS about technology in schools and the video highlights two specific schools and how technology is changing the way they teach their students. I really like what this video is saying - use technology to enhance your lessons and give kids real world skills.

I tend to think that my school district has a lot of technology, but I think the thing that my district misses the boat on is teaching the students REAL WORLD applications. I think that our kids should be in the computer lab doing typing programs/games in 1st grade. I think the kids should be learning and practicing how to use word processing programs, spreadsheets and multimedia programs. A perfect example of this is my district spends a lot of money on broadcast studios in every school, and they are great, except that instead of giving us a multimedia computer with programs like Adobe Premier (or better yet a MAC) they give us an expensive editing system. The system is hard to use and it is something that the average student (or teacher for that matter) would not have access to at home. It's a great system for a high school, not so much for an elementary school. Let me teach them how to edit simple video using Windows movie maker (which every PC running Windows comes with) and maybe get a little more advanced with something like Adobe Premier, something they could purchase easily for their home computer.

I think that schools the schools who find ways in integrate technology using real world applications and that use technology to enhance lessons instead of using technology just to use technology will be the schools that will succeed. Of course the other part to this technology puzzle is training teachers and giving the teachers time and resources to use the technology with their students.

Well that is enough thinking today... it is hot and sunny here in Atlanta and I think my neighborhood pool is calling...

Summer.. just a flying by....

noreply@blogger.com (Kathy) — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 18:31:00 +0000

I can't believe that the kids got out of school 4 WEEKS ago - between my kids activities that were still going on (dance, baseball, both of which FINALLY ended this week) and some school things I had to take care of (all day science committee planning meeting, two days of trouble shooting with the county people to get my broadcast studio back up and running etc..) I feel like summer has just barely begun and now there is really only 5 weeks left to enjoy some carefree days. On July 27th the kids activities start back up and I have to start getting into work mode again - sigh - I was once a stay at home mom for a few years and during that time I realized that I am not very good at the "staying home" part, and I do love my job, but it sure is nice to have this time off! I have read quite a few adult books this summer but I still have a large STACK of kid books to tackle, I am thinking I will get started on those this week!

This is what I was up to this weekend -

This is my daughter and I at our dance recital this weekend! Who says librarians are old and stuffy!!