Success

There's nothing like successfully outwitting a computer, especially on a Friday.

Well, okay, I didn't actually outwit it. I mean, computers can't actually think for themselves, although it sometimes seems that way. So it was actually more like getting it to do something that I wanted it to do that I previously wasn't sure how to do. And I've actually done it three times today - once by getting the OPAC to display a new icon next to the bib records for a Playaway, once to get a computer that was stuck in maintenance mode (DeepFreeze) OUT of maintenance mode, and once to be able to edit this blog from my Infowench account instead of my other Google account. Probably all small, unimportant things, but they made me happy (and in the case of the OPAC icon, they'll make a librarian happy).

It's a good feeling.

Podcasting booktalks

I love podcasting booktalks.

It's all my friend Jill's fault. She asked me to do one for her middle school kids as an example, and now I just love doing them. I find myself planning them and when I read a book I think about what piece of it I might use to do a booktalk on it. I even want to do booktalks on books I haven't yet read!

It's really not all that unusual, I guess - booktalking was one of my favorite things in Youth Lit class when I was in grad school. I remember doing a booktalk on "Child of the Northern Spring" (Persia Woolley - it's the King Arthur story told from Guinevere's perspective) and I did it in the first person as Guinevere. Perhaps it's the theatre in me that likes booktalking so well.

In any case, I've done three booktalks for Jill so far and have gotten my friend John to agree to do one, too - he has a GREAT voice and will be Nicholas Flamel for a booktalk on Michael Scott's "The Alchemyst."

Last Friday I went to Jill's library and worked with some of her kids on the finer points of expression and performance when creating and reading their own podcasts, as well as some of finer points of editing in Audacity. We had a fine time, and they started a few new podcasts that I'm hoping to hear soon on their site. It's so cool - not only are the kids getting into this (and Jill says that the books that they podcast are flying off the shelves), but the teachers are getting into it, too, and volunteering (or in some cases, agreeing) to read booktalks. Some of them are interested enough to pick music for the background, and some of them are happy to let the group of sixth-graders who are the "podcasters" for the school do the editing and choose the music. What a great collaboration - and how great for the kids to be seen as the experts on this!

It's good to work with librarians. It's good to BE a librarian. What other teaching job allows you to study ALL subjects instead of just focusing on one?

Hmm, does that make me indecisive?

We interrupt this day...

On my Google homepage, I have a widget called "Things to Ponder." Today I encountered this one:

Why is it when you get from here to there, you're still here and not there?

Now that's profound. It would tend to explain, too, why some days you feel like you've never gotten anywhere, even though it's 3:30 in the afternoon and you have done a lot of stuff - just not the things you intended to do.

So how DO you get "there?" In my job, the only way I can possibly imagine doing that would be to work in a void - no contact with other people - at least for periods of time. It's the constant phone calls, emails, people dropping in that prevents me from staying on task and accomplishing exactly what I set out to do this morning.

Okay, so I distract myself, too. Why else would I be writing in this blog when I haven't finished everything I set out to do today?

Oh, look...

Fun toys

My friend and fellow librarian Jill sent me a link a little while back to Big Huge Labs. It's affiliated with Flickr; if you have a Flickr account you can link to it and create really fun stuff. Actually, you can create fun stuff without the Flickr account, but if you have one there are some cool features like being able to upload pictures and find them again easily.

So far I've played with the Movie Poster creator, the Framer, the Jigsaw puzzle, and the Lolcat Generator. I used my cat Pierre as the subject for this one:

He's such a goon! And he doesn't even really LIKE pineapple.

Happy New Year

Here we are - another year! There's something really exciting about starting over again, I think. It's almost too bad that school years don't follow calendar years, but then again, maybe that's okay - it gives you two fresh starts in a year!

I don't have too much to say, just felt compelled to start the year out with a post. Guess I'm really already a day behind, actually, but I'll justify it by saying it's the first day back at work.

In any case, though, here's a pretty nifty little gadget - if you haven't seen YouTubeCatcher yet, you must! Unfortunately, our filter here at work blocks it, but you can try this at home!

http://www.youtubecatcher.com

Patience is not always a virtue

All this week the network's been getting progressively slower and slower...a real frustration when you're trying to access the Internet, answer email, answer the phone (which is voice over IP, of course), save documents to your H: drive, fix computer problems remotely, etc., etc., etc.

Now, maybe I'm too patient sometimes, because I just chalked it up to the fact that I know they've been working on the network this week and figured it would eventually get better. A few people who are less patient, however, called the Help Desk and complained, and lo! we were visited this afternoon by a member of the telcomm team. He replaced a small gadget in the switch, rebooted the switch (which didn't want to come right back up but apparently eventually saw things his way), and voila! We have a network that appears to be working at a reasonable speed.

Go figure.

Anytime the network goes down it's fascinating to watch how people deal with it. We're so used to working on email, Internet, etc., and folks just generally seem to be at a loss when that's taken away. I fortunately, was working on a document that was local on my machine, so I was able to keep working, and it was kind of nice not to have email or phone interruptions for a few minutes.

I was not, however, able to watch the pandas. Bummer! The news from San Diego, though, is that their little girl is now officially named Zhen Zhen (which means "Precious"). Congratulations to the staff of SDZ & especially to mom Bai Yun & dad Gao Gao!

Who's organized?

Ah, a dreary and rainy Monday. What better way to start the week?

I need to take a break from tedious detail work, so thought I'd pop on here - it's been too long since I posted anything! Seems like I'm always catching up with something.

Well, Thanksgiving is over, and now we have the crescendo toward Christmas. Am I ready? Not even close! I was at Jo-Ann Fabrics last week waiting to have fabric cut and the woman in front of me (who was buying tulle to wrap baskets) allowed as how when the baskets were wrapped she had all her Christmas stuff done. BEFORE THANKSGIVING. That's just wrong.

Ah, how I aspire to that sort of forethought and organization! If I were that organized, my house would be clean, my desk would be clean, and I would have time to wrap baskets, too. As it is, I'm still in the "what are we going to get so-and-so for Christmas?" stage.

What's kind of funny, though, is that a lot of people look at me and think I'm organized. I guess there are all sorts of organization; I can put a catalog in order without thinking twice and I can really plan something out if I put my mind to it. For example, I'm stage managing for our next theatre production (On Golden Pond) and I've got organizing for a show down to a science. My notes are all in order and I have all the information collated, color coded, and coordinated. The director thinks I'm highly efficient (and so far in this case, I am); I think I might even scare him a little.

With all the organizational tools there are in this day and age, why is it that I can't organize gift giving for Christmas? One of my former supervisors did her shopping all year round; as she found stuff she would buy it for the various people on her list and put it away in these nice little bins she had specifically for that purpose. The thing with that is that you need a) the bins b) the place to store them and c) to remember that you had put stuff away. I tried that technique once (minus the bins, unfortunately) and ended up with multiple things for certain people. I also forgot I had put gifts away and found them the following year, which sort of worked, too, but it kind of defeated the purpose.

Oh, well, I guess I should just be grateful that I can organize some things well and leave it at that. Who wants to be totally organized? That doesn't leave any room for spontaneity - and what fun would life be without that?

In other news - they're naming the little girl panda at the San Diego Zoo today!

What drives you crazy?

So today I'm working in catalogs, and there are things I find that make me crazy:

• Records entered entirely in caps
• "Your holding symbol" (instead of the 4-character school code)
• Records without call numbers (how can you find it?)
• Misspellings

Okay, so maybe I'm obsessive-compulsive, or just way too left-brained. (Kind of funny for someone who's so involved in music & theatre, isn't it?)

But while I'm waiting for the replace to finish on editing these records, I just thought I'd get this off my chest!

Back into life

It's been forever since I've been on here; today seemed like a good day to catch up, as I just need to get some things out of me...

August flew by in a flurry of activity; getting patrons loaded into school catalogs and beginning-of-school year stuff ready. It also heralded the beginning of rehearsals for Elmira Little Theatre's show The Full Monty, in which I had the incredible good fortune to play Jeanette Burmeister.

September was no less hectic; it seemed as though I was never going to catch up. School in session means lots of email and phone calls; training sessions for new library staff, informational packets, meetings...and more time to work on Monty....

All in all, it's been an exhausting, exhilarating, emotional month and a half or so. Working with the amazing cast and crew of Monty has been an experience which I never imagined. It was a time to reconnect with former theatre friends, a time to deepen friendships which already existed, and, best of all, to make new friends. This show has claimed a piece of my soul...and that makes it that much harder to come back to work and reality.

May you all be fortunate enough to live such a dream!

Catching up

Looking at my last post, I wondered where on earth June had gone, but I could say the same about July & the first couple weeks of August. Doesn't seem possible that I last posted on July 10th, and here it's August 15th already. In the interim, I've produced a show with our kids' group, auditioned and begun rehearsals for another ("The Full Monty" with Elmira Little Theatre, come see it at Mandeville Hall end of September! More on that later, I'm sure...), rearranged my office to accommodate a roommate (Sue Canfield - yay!), and done a bunch of other stuff that I can't remember at the moment.

I'm currently in the processing of redesigning a database that I've kept for myself for a number of years so that others can use it, too. It always amazes me when I really look at something I've done and try to analyze it to see it from someone else's viewpoint. Kind of scares me to think that my brain processes are that convoluted! It's a failing of mine; I try to make things more difficult than they really are, I think. I'm not certain I'm alone in that, though; seems like a lot of people I know do the same. But maybe that's just because I hang out with people like me! Hmm, that's kind of like a "chicken-and-egg" thing, isn't it? Reminds me of the part in "Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows" where Harry and Luna are going into Ravenclaw Tower, and we discover that Ravenclaws don't have a password system like everyone else. No, they have to answer a random question, and this particular question was "Which came first, the phoenix or the flame?" After some discussion with Harry (which has not much to do with actually answering the question) Luna comes back with "Well, then, I think that the answer is that a circle has no beginning." The door guardian opens with the remark "Well reasoned."

This post is beginning to seem like a circle with no beginning, and not well-reasoned at all. But I did want to kind of touch base, as it were, and I think I've had insufficient coffee to make total sense.

Oh, but there IS news in the U.S. panda world - Bai Yun and Gao Gao have produced a third cub (it's actually Bai's 4th, her first, Hua Mei, was sired by Shi Shi via artificial insemination) at the San Diego Zoo. The cub was born on August 3rd and is, by all accounts, a "healthy and vigorous cub" although very quiet, apparently. This is a shot of Bai & her week-old cub (courtesy of my friend Gail, who is a fellow panda fan!). You can just see the black patches starting to show where the eyes and ears are. :-)

That's it for now, I guess...

What happened to June?

I can't believe it's July already. Not only July, but 10 days into it!

It always amuses me that folks think that summer is so much quieter and relaxing for me in my job. I guess in some ways it is - I don't get as much email or as many phone calls from people who are having some kind of technological problem that needs to be fixed ASAP. However, summer is the time to catch up on things I couldn't get to during the school year, as well as a time to do the technical work on the systems that I can't really do when the librarians are actually using them!

The end of June and beginning of July is a whirlwind for me, generally speaking. Case in point - since school was out (is it nearly three weeks ago already?) I've archived, updated, indexed, and packed about 57 catalogs. Plus I've done a few other things here and there...weeding, cleaning out files on servers and my own machines, archiving email, that sort of thing. I decided that it was time to leave that for a few minutes and take a look at other things, like this blog!

What IS quiet is this building in the summer if there are no classes going on in the lab or the large conference room. Some of the folks who work here are only 10 or 11 month employees, so there's less staff, and, of course, it's the time of year when people use up their vacation time. (I'm using some of mine next week!) Right now it's so quiet that I think I'll go see if I'm the only one left it in the building...

Before I do that, though, I need to mention that yesterday was Tai Shan's 2nd birthday. Happy birthday, little guy!

This 'n' that

So it's been a busy couple of weeks, but if you asked me what I'd done, I probably wouldn't be able to tell you.

Ever have that experience?

Tonight we have our last School Librarians of the Southern Tier meeting for the year. Should be fun; tonight's session is kind of like a "show and tell" for librarians. People share projects, tips, things like that, and it's always good to see what everyone else is doing. Gives you lots of ideas for the upcoming school year!

Now, if only we could remember them over the summer...

My frustration from the last post is gone; YouTube is back. Apparently there were several people who complained to the right ears; I was not one, though, because by the time I'd cooled down enough to feel I could voice my opinion rationally and actually had time to go find our technology administrator, enough other people had beat me to the punch. I'm sure there are other things still blocked that probably shouldn't be, but for now, at least, I'm much calmer and happier.

Frustration

Okay, so this morning I went to look at a trailer for a documentary about librarians that's posted on YouTube and found that YouTube is now BLOCKED. Not only blocked, but blocked without any administrative override.

Frustrated is not really the proper word to describe what I'm feeling.

Sure, there's stuff on YouTube that's not educationally appropriate. There's stuff on the entire Web that's not educationally appropriate. But getting rid of everything just because you might run into something is just wrong. It's the old "throw the baby out with the bathwater" thing, and it doesn't do the kids any favors in the long run. Everyone's telling us we need to teach kids to think critically, but how does filtering do that? It teaches them they don't have to think; we're doing it for them. They don't have to decide if something is appropriate, valuable, or worth seeing because the filter - or those who are choosing which sites to filter - decides that.

If you don't want your kids to drown you don't fill in the pool - you teach them to swim. What's wrong with that?

Let me add "disgusted" to "frustrated."

There. I said it. In public and everything. Now maybe I'll feel better...

This is fun!

I've always wanted an avatar, and this morning one of my RSS feeds sent me to Meez.com, where I created the avatar at right. Very fun! Not that I really look like that, but I do have blue eyes and and a cat. (Actually, make that THREE cats. )

This particular image links directly to the web, but you can export your avatar to a file and use it in other ways. Might be a fun thing for kids to do and put in one of those "all about me" PowerPoints, perhaps?

Hmm. Something to think about.

Catching up again

Some weeks just seem to fly right by, don't they? Having finally managed to be in the office for more than an hour, I've almost caught up with the email and checked my RSS feeds. Thursday being the day the Librarian's Internet Index posts their picks for the week, I've added a bunch of interesting sites for Mandarin Study Group next week. I think the list of web sites for the month will be pretty large!

Loved this one that Sue Canfield forwarded to me:

http://www.visuwords.com/

It's a graphical dictionary. How fun is that?

More later, I think...

Getting My Thoughts Together

Haven't posted all week; I'm slipping! But it's been a busy week - after getting back from the SLMS conference last week it took a bit to catch up. Today is a little calmer, so time for a few words, I guess!

First, to recount the rest of the conference - after session 3, we adjourned back to our rooms to check email & all that (I managed to post a number of titles to the book blog), then we got dressed to go to the Knickerbocker Award banquet. We had a good group at our table, but alas, the setup of the hall was such that we couldn't see the speakers at all and we couldn't hear very well, either. It was a bit frustrating.

Saturday I went to see a presentation by Robin Pulver & Tedd Arnold, which was highly entertaining. I recommend them both as speakers! It was very interesting to hear how they approach their writing, and how they collaborated on the Axle Annie books. It's apparently unusual for an author and illustrator to even talk to each other; an author doesn't even usually have a choice as to who illustrates his/her picture book (unless he/she is also an illustrator!). That's determined by the publisher. Who knew?

Tedd showed some of his early sketches for several of his books; among them, The Twin Princes. It was fascinating to see how his original idea changed from having human princes to having chickens as the princes. It was also quite startling when he showed a picture of his real model for the original concept, because it turned out to be someone I knew! Not all that surprising, actually, as Tedd & I live in the same town...

So that's that for the SLMS conference. It was enjoyable and I learned some good things!

This week has gone by quickly; as I said earlier, I had lots to do to catch up, plus I had a couple of meetings, and had to prepare for a class (for administrators) on Intellectual Property and Copyright. Not the most inspiring of topics, particularly at 7:30 a.m. on a Friday, but I found some REALLY good resources in the process of preparing for it:

An article on Education World - actually, a five-part series. I highly recommend it to all educators!

A great copyright chart from Hall Davidson of the Discovery Educator Network. Love this chart. It's concise and clear, and really spells out what you can and can't do as an educator under Fair Use.

Speaking of Fair Use, I really like the Stanford site on this topic. Everything you ever wanted to know about copyright - or links to them, at least!

Guess that's it for now. It's almost time for lunch!

Session Three

Information Ethics, Rights & Responsibilities and the Unintended Consequences of Technological Change presented by Ed Nizolowski

Ed gave us some very nice handouts on topics of study for this subject, as well as a rubric and a lesson plan.

Term from Australia: Teacher-Librarian

(Brrr...it's cold in here!)

Well, mostly you'd have to see the handouts, I guess!

Lunch & session two

The technology luncheon was not only delicious, it was also both informative and entertaining. Alice Yucht, whom I saw in session one, was the speaker, and she was discussing digital literacy in the 21st century. I wish I had brought the laptop to take notes, but figured it would be in the way at lunch. It was just as well - Sue & I decided to walk to the Embassy Suites, where the luncheon was held (what a GORGEOUS hotel), and we got somewhat lost on the way, so it would've been kind of heavy to carry!

I've added Alice to my Bloglines feeds. I definitely want to continue to hear what she has to say!
Check out her website.

So here I am in the second session. This one is Impact of School Library Programs on Student Motivation and Achievement, conducted by Dr. Ruth Small from the Center for Digital Literacy at Syracuse University.

This project first looked at other studies to see what they did and how they did it, and found that many of the others were based on surveys. They opted to do not only surveys, which focus almost exclusively on student achievement, but also several other research methods:
1) general and in-depth surveys
2) focus groups
3) case studies

Collected data from SLMSs, principals, teachers, students and parents

Studied both student achievement AND motivation

Also looked at technology use, services for students with disabilities and impact on families/communities

The goal is to provide a model for LMS to collect research of their own in schools and districts and improve their programs

Research questions:

1) What factors, related to school library programs, services, and resources, impact NYS students' learning achievement

(State is looking very closely at this study and the data they collect)

2) How do NY school library services and programs affect student motivation for learning

3) What and how are school library services provided to students with disabilities?

4) In what ways do SLMS influence the use of technology by student & teachers & what is subsequent impact on teaching and learning?

5) What, if any, effects do school library services, programs, and resources have on families and communities?

Got lots of comments on the surveys, which they didn't expect!

Preliminary findings:

(presented by Jamie Snyder, doctoral student at Syracuse)

- First went through NYSED data
- Went to SLSA to get representation from SLMS in all areas

38.7% response rate!

Based on 30% response rate for each county. Average is 24% from everywhere except NYC, which has an average 31%.

Principal survey - 11% response rate

K-5 considered Elem., 6-up secondary. Schools which span both are in other

811 Elementary
703 Secondary
131 Other

Based then on Needs resource categories

Initial findings: survey successfully measures librarians' perceptions of:

• work climate
• student motivation to learn
• leadership within school community
• information literacy
• learning environment
• collaboration within school community
• diversity of collection

Strongest relationships are:

• Motivation & Information Literacy
• leadership & information literacy
• collaboration & leadership
• Motivation & Learning Environment
• Collaboration & Information literacy

• motivation & leadership

Measures & grade levels

Grade level & motivation - elementary schools have higher motivation scores than secondary schools

Grade level & collaboration

• Secondary schools have higher collaboration scores than elementary schools

Needs Resource & leadership

• Low-need schools have higher leadership scores than most high-need schools
• Highest collaboration scores came from low-need schools
• In general NYC schools collaborate more than most other high-needs schools

Certified LMS scored higher than uncertified on selecting materials for schools library collection representing different points of view, but not on representing cultural diversity

• 40% respondents provide guidance to students in use of digital resources at least once a day
• 74% at least once a week
• 57% assist students in using information in a variety of media formats at least once a week
• 65% assist staff in using information in a variety of media at least once a week
• 79% make a point of selecting materials in a variety of formats
• About half provide access to the catalog at home
• 9% do not have automated circulation system

In-depth interviews, case studies, and focus groups will take place next year.

Results will be available on the SU digital literacy website

Future analyses:

• What is the relationship between student achievement and the measures provided by the general survey?
• Additional factors to be considered:
• NYS LMS certification
• Control of Needs/Resource Categories

Also...

• Do school library media specialist & principals perceive work climate differently?
• Is there a relationship between technology in the school LMC & student achievement?
• Is there a relationship between technology in the school LMC and student motivation?

Next steps:

• Select 48 schools for focused, in-depth surveys (LMS, teachers, students, principals)
• Select 24 schools for focus groups and interviews (LMS, teachers, students, parents, principals)
• Select two schools for comparative case study

Session One!

Alice Yucht, (Itinerate Curmudgeon and Teacher-Librarian) -
Webfeeds 101: How Blog Reading can make you Look Brilliant

"As school librarians, we are and should be the CIOs of our building."

Note to self: check out Jott - Directory of Open Access Journals (you can set up RSS feeds by subject!)
Transl8it - translates IM txt lingo

Infoblog - check it out for a description of what a blog is.

Professional blogs - essential professional development and reading for us

Three types:
Personal/Point-of-View - reports of events & impressions
Partical/Purposeful - links to useful info and new resources
Philosophical/Polemical - Explorations/disccussions of Big Ideas

Blogs are instant - hot topics - lifelong learning - conversation>collaboration

Very cool - children's book series wiki!!! Check it out: http://seriesbinder.lishost.org/index.php/Main_Page

Cyber-learning in the classroom: Current Issues in Education

Periodic Table of Visualization Methods

Blogging & RSS is "Like having TIVO for your mind."

http://blip.tv/file/205570/ - really simple explanation of how RSS feeds work.

Why read blogs? You have choice of topics, sources, formats, as well as when where and how much to read. You can "gather useful online resources while you sleep."

Hmmm, note to self: check out Google Reader. Like the star feature.

RSS feeds by subject in EBSCOHost - investigate!

Caveat - RSS feed reading can be addicting! Alice suggests setting a time limit for yourself.

http://aliceyucht.pbwiki.com/WebfeedsWorkshop

Blog recommendations at http://aliceyucht.pbwiki.com/YouthServicesBlogList

and http://www.bloglines.com/blog/aliceinfoshow2rss

Here we are in Syracuse...

...for the annual SLMS Conference! So far today we've visited the vendors, which is the most productive thing we've done, but there really hasn't been much more than that. Sessions start tomorrow, so there will be more to say then! But the rooms are beautiful, the weather is gorgeous, and I have a BALCONY! How cool is that?