Last week, our district held it’s first annual Summer Tech Institute, a 30-hr technology camp for students all over the district to receive hands-on training in podcasting, digital photography, digital video, music, animation and gaming, and blogging. It was incredible! Were there problems? Did I mention it was the first year? That’s where the “incredible” part comes in… …The classes were taught by district teachers who, in some cases, were fairly new to the technology they were teaching. These teachers rallied and did what they do best, they inspired their students to learn. When the internet faltered, or the equipment didn’t arrive on time, or the application didn’t respond the way we thought it would, these teachers just kept adjusting and teaching. The result? Students and their parents left Friday afternoon saying they had a great time and were looking forward to next year’s Summer Tech Institute! You know what REALLY bowled me over? The teachers left saying the same thing!

I love my job. I really do… …except for the shelving part.

I hope everyone has a wonderful summer! Keep reading and keep learning.

Last week, I had the great pleasure of attending the Int’l Reading Assoc. Conference in Minneapolis.  I was so impressed!  I guess I don’t get out often enough, but I felt very much like a kid in a toy store.  Rather than go into great detail, I’ll just list some of what I loved about my trip (in no particular order):  Minneapolis’ weather, listening to authors, all those BOOKS, meeting teachers and librarians from all over the world, free stuff and BOOKS, great sessions on writing and digital literacy, the shopping cart escalator at the two-story Target, having to FedEx BOOKS home because I maxed out my luggage, Ben Carson’s keynote address, …and did I mention all the BOOKS?

I heard authors Gordon Korman and Patrick Carman speak about their recent books, One False Note (2nd book in The 39 Clues series) and Skeleton Creek, respectively. I’m planning to read both books as soon as school’s out.  Both Korman and Carman were hilarious!  I’m sure the books will be just as entertaining.  I wrote a post about the first “39 Clues” book (The Maze of Bones by Rick Riordan) back in November.  The books in this series have different authors, although some authors will pen more than one.  Korman will be writing another one later in the series.  Patrick Carman is the author of the fifth book in the series, which hasn’t been released yet.

Carman’s Skeleton Creek experiments with a new format.  The two main characters adopt different ways to tell their stories.  Ryan writes his story and his friend, Sarah, films hers.  The story is told in alternating written chapters and short video chapters (via the internet).  I’m looking forward to reading/watching this one!

NOTE:  The first two South Side Middle students who comment on this blog post will receive a copy of either One False Note or Skeleton Creek, SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR!

Keep reading and keep learning!

I’d like to share about a couple of books I’ve read recently…

All of the Above - by Shelley Pearsall

This book was enthusiastically recommended by Kim Ford, a middle school librarian who constantly motivates me to read more.  I jump at every opportunity to hear Mrs. Ford talk about the books she’s read.  (Check out the Kim’s List page on her blog!)  When she said that she’d like to have every student in her school read this book, I knew I had to read it.

This book, based on a true story, is set in a middle school in a poor, inner-city neighborhood.  Despite low expectations (The math teacher writes “I never really expected any of my students to show up - and I didn’t have a plan when they did.”), a handful of students accomplish something incredible together and learn about themselves in the process.  The book is written from each character’s point of view so the reader gains insight into each one’s life and motivations.  Although the story is not without setbacks, it is uplifting and inspirational.  If you spend your time in a middle school, as a student or a teacher, I think you’ll like it.

The Geography of Bliss - by Eric Weiner (pronounced whiner)

I think that even though people are always texting “lol” to each other, it’s rare to actually laugh out loud when reading something by yourself.  Some might even call it odd.  For that reason, I won’t recommend reading this book in a public place.  Despite efforts to control myself, I laughed right out loud while reading it in a hotel lobby, at Starbucks, and in a waiting room.

The humor isn’t even the best part of the book, in my opinion.  The author travels all around the world, looking for the happiest (and, in one case, the unhappiest) countries.  Reading it is like taking your own trip around the world.  Weiner delves into what makes different places unique: the people, the culture, the “feel” of each country.  I didn’t come away from this book with the “universal secret to happiness” (spoiler alert: there isn’t one), but it nudged me to think more about what makes me happy.  It’s a great read.  It’s also written for an adult audience so I wouldn’t recommend this for our middle schools.

Keep reading and keep learning.

Students all over our district have been researching, writing, drawing, painting, cutting, pasting, sculpting, and creating in the development of their Spring Exhibition projects. We have a few seventh grade students who have been blogging and podcasting as well. They have chosen to publish their research on Brazil via a blog and podcast.

Their blog has been a “work in progress” (as it should be) with multiple editing sessions and a number of podcast attempts. Although they have received guidance, the students have done all of the work themselves in setting up the blog, choosing the blog theme template (multiple times), selecting and importing the pictures, writing the post, writing and recording the podcast, etc.

They’ve done a great job! If you’d like to visit their blog and listen to their podcast, just click on the picture of their blog home page on the left.

Keep reading and keep learning!

This past weekend, I had the pleasure of attending the SMCTE Spring Mini-Conference at Wooddale Middle School. I know… I’m a librarian and have never “officially” taught English, but they were very nice and didn’t kick me out or question my credentials. …and really, shouldn’t we all be teachers of English, promoting writing and reading throughout the school?

I thoroughly enjoyed the conference. There were three breakout sessions and I chose one with a writing focus, one with a focus on reading, and one with more of a technology focus. The first session, presented by an English professor from the University of Memphis, stressed the five common grammar errors that students need to correct before they graduate: spelling, fragments, run-on sentences, pronoun/antecedent agreement, and subject/verb agreement. Strategies to help students learn these skills were provided. The second session I attended was a discussion of graphic novels and their relevance in today’s classrooms. My third session was a demonstation by two Wooddale Middle teachers about using blogs with their classes. Using blogs in teaching is still relatively new in our area and some great points were introduced and debated.

Consider attending local mini-conferences when you can. The cost is typically low and we all need to keep learning, don’t we?

Our school’s book club, which is open to all of our faculty, parents, students, and community members, recently read and discussed Teaching, Parenting, and Mentoring Successful Black Males: A Quick Guide by Mychal Wynn. This little book is based on another, more detailed Mychal Wynn book. Many of the 66 short strategies in this book are ideas we’ve all heard many times before.

The benefit we gained by reading this book as a group was in the discussion we had at our book club meeting. We heard opinions and additional suggestions from administrators, teachers, parents, community members, and even students. We appreciate all who read the book and participated in our book club meeting!

I know you think you’ve seen every possible image from the Presidential Inauguration but I just had to post one more. I think this is just the coolest! Click on the picture below and it will take you to the picture on the Gigapan website. Once there, you can zoom in and move around in the same way you would at Google Earth or Mapquest. The detail is amazing (almost creepy!).  Check out all the former presidents!  Look for celebrities!  After you’ve checked out the crowd at the inauguration, you might want to explore the other incredible scenes on Gigapan.

Our third South Side Middle School Jr. Tech Camp was a big success! My criteria for success is fairly simple. If the students enjoy what we’re doing and have fun with it, it’s a success. If excitement, laughter, and spontaneous applause are any indication, our campers definitely enjoyed themselves.

Since our theme for this six weeks is Memphis, our campers used pictures from around town to learn how to crop and edit digital photographs and create their own slideshow, using Memphis music.

Last weekend, my husband and I drove around town, taking pictures of Memphis’ major attractions, colleges, businesses, historical interests, etc. I ended up with about 100 pictures but pared it down to 50 photographs, which I loaded onto my flash drive. I also compiled a CD of 8 songs related to Memphis. It didn’t take very long, then, to upload the pictures and songs into iPhoto and iTunes on each of the laptops we were using for this camp session.

I had originally planned to use Picasa (I really like Picasa!) but later decided it’d be better to use our Mac laptop cart in the library instead of our computer lab downstairs. Our laptops have older operating systems that won’t support Picasa for Mac, so we stuck with iPhoto. It worked beautifully for our purposes. The students’ artistic flair was apparent as they adjusted the tint and slanted the pictures to create “art house” photographs. I was impressed!

I intended to export the slideshows to iDVD and burn them onto dvds for the campers to take home. I knew our laptops didn’t have dvd burners but thought that I could use an external dvd burner instead. It didn’t work. I’m still determined to get these beautiful slideshows loaded onto dvds so the kids can play them on a dvd player at home. I’ll post later and tell y’all what hoops I have to jump through to get that done.

In the meantime, here is an Animoto video of some of our campers pictures. I love what they’ve done!

We’ve all seen those little candy conversation hearts that are everywhere this time of year.  I’m not crazy about how they taste but they’re just so cute.

Since I’ve adopted a valentine’s day/candy heart theme for my upcoming RIF book distribution, I was excited to stumble on www.cryptogram.com/hearts/, a website that creates candy heart pictures that say whatever you choose to write.  I created twelve different hearts (I even used one of their anti-valentine’s day “goth” hearts just for fun), uploaded them to flickr, then used Big Huge Labs‘ mosiac maker to arrange them in one picture.  I probably didn’t really need to make the mosaic to create my poster, but it was fun anyway.  I also noticed a trading card maker on that site, too, which would be really cool for students to use for reporting on states or countries or rivers or planets… …but I digress.  I’ll try that later.

I added my RIF theme “Follow your Heart… READ!” and some clip art border and… ta da!… I have a poster for RIF that’s personalized for our school.

Candy conversation hearts are cute, but they’re even cuter when YOU get to compose the message on them.  Use them to promote whatever or whoever you want.  They’re sure to be a hit!

Keep reading and keep learning!