Holiday Greetings

I am feeling a bit of holiday spirit today, having finished all grades for this term, and thus turning my mind for the first time to thoughts of Christmas. I would like to add that the sentiment expressed certainly refers to inner peace and peace with our family and friends; but especially I mean it regarding this terrible war and the threats that make me fear for another unnecessary and disastrous altercation.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Reading Year!

Last week I posted in on LM_NET and offered to compile and share the list of books that were mentioned in the recent popular thread "What I am reading now." People posted in and told what books they were currently enjoying. The resulting list is quite a mix, since some people mentioned adult titles, many shared YA books, and some may be easier than that. Topics range from parenting to philosophy with lots of good fiction in the mix. I am pasting in the list below. I hope I got everything, but if I missed your offering or if anyone wants to make additions, this would be great! You could certainly do this as comments below. And once again...Happy Holidays!

AUTHOR	TITLE
Alexis, Sherman	Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Anderson, Jodi	May Bird Warrior Princess
Anderson, Laurie Halse	Twisted
Buckhanon, Kalisha	Upstate
Buckley-Archer, Linda	Cutpurse
Chopra, Deepak	Buddha, a Story of Enlightenment
Clare, Cassandra	City of Bones Bk 1: The Mortal Instruments
Colbert, Stephen	I am American and So Can You!
Cooper, Susan	Dark is Rising
Coville, Bruce	All books by him!
Coyne, Kevin	Marching Home
Cross, Shauna	Derby Girl
Ferris	Underground
Gaiman, Neil/Charles Vess	Stardust
Gilbert	Eat, Pray, Love
Giles, Gail	Right Behind You
Green, Tim	Football Genius
Grisham, John	Playing for Pizza
Gruen, Susan	Water for Elephants
Hale, Shannon	Book of a Thousand Days
Hosseini, Khaled	Thousand Splendid Suns
Jinks, Catherine	Evil Genius
King, Laurie	The Moor
Kingsolver, Barbara	Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
Levitin, Daniel	This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of Human Obsession
Marr, Melissa	Wicked Lovely
Maurer	Beyond the Wall of Resistance
McCarthy, Cormac	The Road
Patteau, Edith	East
Paver, Michell	Chronicles of Darkness
Perotta, Tom	The Abstinence Teacher
Piccoult, Jodi	Plain Truth
Pullman	The Goldan Compass
Radish, Kris	Elegant Gathering of White Snows
Senge	The Fifth Discipline
Smith, Roland	Peak
Stephenson, Neil	Quicksilver
Thompson, Victoria	Gaslight Mysteries
Vrettos, Adrienne Marie	Skin
Westerfield	Uglies series
Zafon, Carlos Ruiz	Shadow of the Wind
	Twilight Series: Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse
	Penny from Heaven
	Black Book of Secrets
	The Alchemist: Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel
	My Swordhand is Singing
	Third and Long
	Terror on the Tide
	Peter and the Starcatchers/Peter and the Secret of Rundoon
	Spiderwick Chronicles
	Saffron
	The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy 1943-1944
	Ina May's Guide ot Childbirth
	Birthing from Within
	The Birth Partner

Wow the things you can find...

I have an assignment in my Internet for Librarians class that is designed to promote evaluation of websites. Students look for several sites on a given topic, both good, authoritative material and also BAD examples. One type they must supply is a site with bias. One student's topic was recycling. I wondered as I began to read...will she really find a site against recycling? Not a problem I realized! There are lots of sites out there trashing environmentalists (sorry about the bad pun). Anyway, this site is a great one: http://www.akdart.com/environ.html

My favorite quotation is this:
" The Bible clearly states that God has made the heavens, with all their host, and the earth, and all things that are in it, and the seas, and all that is in them, and He preserves them all. (Nehemiah 9:6) God himself preserves the earth (and the oceans and the atmosphere), not governments, not environmentalists, not anybody else."

Soooo we can do as we please! GOD IS GOING TO PRESERVE THE EARTH even if we continue along with our wasteful and damaging ways! Why don't I feel relieved after reading this news...

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On another topic, here is an interesting article about Yahoo!Answers, which I suspect may be trusted by both students and teachers. http://www.slate.com/id/2179393/pagenum/all

More New-to-me Links and Facts!

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I love teaching and I ENJOY GRADING STUDENTS' WORK! This was even true back in the old days when I taught junior high kids, mostly reading and English. The key is to craft assignments that I know ahead of time I will enjoy grading. I can remember actually being very eager to read what students would write in response to certain assignments back then. It was fun to see their creativity emerge. So here I am at the end of a semester and finishing up grading for the term. I just got started today, and already am stopping to record something new to me, a blog I had not visited before, and really really like! So here goes with my list of new info as of today:

• Blog with emphasis on librarianship and web 2.0...what's not to like about that? This blog is called LibraryCrunch ad is the work of Michael Casey, public librarian and web aficionado. If you look soon, there is a cool picture of Santa getting his caffeine fix at Starbucks. He sprinkles cool pics throughout his blog, another thing to like. And there are sound files too! Here is the address: http://www.librarycrunch.com/

• Here is another great blog (obviously I am grading an assignment where students must locate and explore a blog): http://www.techsavvyed.net/ by Ben Rimes. Today's posting has a cool site where you can create virtual dice to study probability at which, for the heck of it, I created an imaginary Magic 8 Ball with choices like no, yes, never, maybe, etc.: http://www.bgfl.org/bgfl/custom/resources_ftp/client_ftp/ks1/maths/dice/

• Here is the tinyurl for the dice: http://tinyurl.com/nvoy5

Potpourri of Links--Again Learning from Students

Again I am grading...grading...and will be for the coming two weeks as the fall term (already???) comes to an end. Yesterday I started a posting with a GREAT link that I found while going over student work. I could have sworn I saved the entry but now cannot find it. Wonder where it went? I now cannot remember a thing about the link except that I wanted to be sure and share it. Anyway, I will STILL share things I glean from students' work starting with one so far today and then building from there.

• Alan Lew--I somehow missed this leader in Web 2.0 instruction, but just added him to my Twitter list. His page for that venue is: http://twitter.com/alew and from there you can find his other pages.

• TwitterLit! Wow I love this site and, while I had heard of it, had not visited until it was mentioned today by a student. Twice a day you get literary teasers, first lines from books plus links to Amazon if you are intrigued by the lines. There is also a site for kids! You can subscribe via RSS or have the teasers sent to your twitter. Fun site! http://www.twitterlit.com/

• And guess what? While I was typing, I remembered the site I wanted to share from yesterday. It is a site for teaching kids about phishing, and I think will be helpful for users of any age who need to learn about this somewhat confusing term. The site is Anti-Phishing Phil, where Phil the fish teaches the term in a game format: http://cups.cs.cmu.edu/antiphishing_phil/

• I had not visited this blog before, and it is a great resource for YA books and librarians who work with teens: http://www.teenlibrarian.com/blog.html

• Excellent educational use of a wiki is demonstrated at this site, which has received a good deal of attention for its presence. It is maintained by a computer science teacher at Westwood Schools, GA: http://westwood.wikispaces.com/#tochome5
  

Congratulations to DR. HOLLY WEIMAR!

I am happy to share the good news that friend and colleague, Holly Weimar, is officially past the dreaded dissertation ordeal, having successfully defended today. I am not sure whether she still has formatting to be done, and that can be onerous, but the uncertainty and pressure are gone. I am especially happy since she is the newest tenure track member of our Department of Library Science at Sam Houston State University. Not only that, she was a student in the very first class I taught at SHSU, an introductory technology class, back in fall 2000. It was evident from the first day of that first class that she would be an outstanding student. She finished her studies, always excelling in her classes, and after a short break continued with her doctoral studies in Curriculum and Instruction at University of Houston. Of course I knew she would be fine today, but I remember all too well the anxiety that goes along with getting ready for the defense and then having the day finally come. To make her news even better, her committee at University of Houston likes her work so much that they want to submit it to IRA (International Reading Association). I am not sure if this is for a compilation or competition, but in any case it is clearly a wonderful honor. Her topic is professional reading, and what a great subject. She did qualitative research, interviewing teachers, librarians and administrators about their professional reading habits. I really do not know much more, but she will be sharing her findings via presentations and publications, so stay tuned! We will be presenting on this topic in April at TLA (Texas Library Association) Conference in Dallas. She and I have been presenting in the last year or so, addressing a number of topics related to technology, Internet use, Web 2.0, and ethics. I am looking forward to many more great shared presentations with her. If you would like to contact us about her topic or any others that we offer do let me know! The place to find all my Internet presences is at my wiki where I have a page of links just for that. The address is: http://forwhomthebelltold.pbwiki.com/

But this day is really all about Holly. She will continue to distinguish herself as a writer, presenter and scholar, and most of all as an inspiring professor. I am proud and lucky to with with her! KUDOS AND CONGRATULATIONS HOLLY!

Learning from my students again!

One of the best things about my job is grading papers. Yep, that's right, I enjoy it! Many times I get to know students better through their work, and I don't think I ever spend some time grading without learning something new. Today, with the weather gray and drippy outside, and sitting in the den with my dozing Dad and drowsy dog, I am happy to be occupied with grading. One of the best things I have read is that on student, after spending time exploring the ALA website, came to a better understanding of her role in matching readers with books. A first-year librarian, she is just beginning to enjoy this special part of her job, and she related a relationship she has formed with one particular student who started out by asking her the question we all get, "Where are the GOOD books." She was able to interest the girl in a book she had just finished, and now they are reading buddies. This is, of course, one of the greatest rewards of being a librarian.

Also, I picked up some new websites:

• ELGG (http://elgg.org/) is an open source social networking environment that I did not know until today. Doug Johnson shared it in his blog, and evidently it is a good one for school use.
• Truth or Fiction? (http://www.truthorfiction.com/) Like Hoaxbusters or Snopes, this site will help squelch rumors and expose hoaxes.
  
• The Loch (http://www.theloch.com/index.html) There is a whole website devoted to Paul Zindel's book The Loch and, it appears, an upcoming movie.
• The New York Times offers a treasure trove of lesson plans! Take a look: http://www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/lessons/archive.html
• One of my students had Holocaust survivor/author Inge Aeurbacher as a guest. Here is her website: http://www.ingeauerbacher.com/default.htm