Cool TL videos!

Elementary librarian Doug Valentine, a.k.a. Dr. Loopy, a member of our TeacherLibrarianNing, recently posted three very clever, tongue-in-cheek videos about our profession.  I later discovered that these are but three of his many funny efforts posted on TeacherTube.

He’s given me (us all?) some great ideas for new productions this fall and some cool material for inservices.

• Agent Codee Books fights an evil Lexile character who prevents children from reading books they themselves choose
• Blind Date explores classroom teacher/librarian collaboration in reality television, pop-up video format.
• Bionic Librarian shares the updated librarian image, as well as the potential super powers of collaboration.

Great fun. Thanks, Doug!

Note:  After writing this post I explored a little more of how school librarians and teacher librarians are represented in the world of teacher and student-produced video. Check out the longer post at my SLJ Blog.

Image sites that rock for the classroom

A heads-up.  I just posted a list of my very favorite image tools for the classroom on my School Library Journal blog.   Please take a little visual field trip there!

End-year happiness

You can tell it’s the end of the year. Their exam over, our AP US History students are a little more relaxed as they attack their final debate. You can tell the pressure is off. When I shared our new books on the environment, the girls grabbed them and broke into a spontaneous book dance.  We had to capture the joy!

Geek envy–mousepad on steroids

A few weeks ago, Martin, one of my students, told me about a couple of his latest purchases from a web tech catalog in China. It took a while, but his package arrived.  Today he showed me his new Dick Tracy-style MP4 watch.  It’s very Martin; it’s not very Joyce.  I hope he doesn’t trip.

But that other purchase.  It’s the mousepad for the girl who has everything and I want one. It functions as both speakers and headphones. It has four USB ports.  When I travel, I can leave my Radio Shack speakers and my mic at home.  I can Skype and play music and project sound from my videos with my mousepad.  I can plug even more stuff in.  I’ll keep you posted on actual quality when my own package arrives.

And the winners are . . .

SEOmoz’s new Web 2.0 Awards were announced today. Last year’s list led me to tools that became a regular part of my life online. There’s lots to explore. Some are already favorites.  Some look like great fodder for pathfinders.  Others present some cool potential for incorporating in learning activities.

Among the categories:

• Blog Guides
• Bookmarking
• Books
• Collaborative Writing and Word Processing
• Communication
• Content Aggregation and Management
• Digital Storage and Remote Access
• Events
• Feed Management
• Games
• Health
• Hosted Wikis
• Lists and Polls
• Mapping
• Mashups
• Mobile Technology
• Music
• Online Desktop
• Organization
• Photos and Digital Images
• Podcast Services
• Professional Networking
• Questions and Advice
• Search
• Social Networking
• Social News
• Social Tagging
• Video
• Visual Arts
• Web Development and Design
• Widgets

2-minute seder

While browsing around for a few new holiday ideas, I discovered a surprising number of online haggadahs. One of them brought me way back to those neverending meals at the crowded family table back in Brooklyn. So, if you are celebrating in a hurry, or if you have a bunch of tired children at your seder, try this:
Michael Rubiner’s “Two-Minute Haggadah: A Passover service for the impatient.” From Slate, April 11, 2006

Tagged: Five things you don’t know about me

I just discovered I was “tagged” by David Warlick and Alice Yucht. This cool meme reveals new sides of the bloggers I thought I had a bit of a handle on–Chris Lehmann, Terry Freedman, Andy Carvin, Kathy Schrock, Doug Johnson, and others. Judging by the pics and the nostalgic revelations, many (well some) of us would have gotten along famously in the 70s.

(Back in the day in my batik-filled room.)

Five things you don’t know about me:

1. I was the only one in Brooklyn to get 100% on the New York State Geometry Regents the year I took the test. That event marked both the pinnacle and the end of my math brilliance. I see isosceles triangles too, Alice. But for me, they are sweet, fleeting memories.

2. I lost each of my little brothers in terribly crowded places—once at a Grateful Dead concert, once at Shea Stadium. Fortunately I was able to mobilize both audiences to help me find them. Mom never found out.

3. In my first professional library job as the Readers’ Services Librarian at the Franklin Institute, I was incredibly helpful to every user. I was so helpful, in fact, I didn’t realize that I was helping the biggest metamphetamine ring in Philadelphia research how to enhance their manufacturing potential till agents from the State Department arrived with badges and weapons. And they knew me. They were holding a record I didn’t know existed listing my moratorium events from high school and college. Anyway, I was well trained in my pre-service program. I shakily resisted revealing personal borrowing records till the appropriate paperwork was produced.   I afraid I still often help too much.

4. I can’t name names, but I dated two folks who are now pretty famous alternative-type “captains” of industry.

5. I spent nearly 25 years hating my hair. These days, we co-exist in relative peace.

(with Mom and hair circa 1956)

Bonus: (If I don’t number it,  can I get away with six?)  I can imitate unicellular organisms.

So which five bloggers am I tagging?

Let’s try Michael Stephens, Sara Johns, Stephen Abram, Judy O’Connell, and Emily Valenza, who starts her new art position in Boston this week. Please read her new blog and join me in wishing her good luck!

Just for fun

My student, Martin, who is also busy helping me get podcasts (coming soon!) ready for our Virtual Library, wrote to share some stuff he thought I’d enjoy over the break.

On its About page, Uncyclopedia calls itself:

“an encyclopedia full of misinformation and utter lies. You might say it puts the “psych!” in “encyclopedia”. It’s sort of like Congress or Parliament, but unlike Congress or Parliament, we do have a sense of humor. Nonetheless, this is one of the only factual pages, before everything turns into a puddle of utter confusion and disarray.”

Martin’s description:

“This is a parody of Wikipedia where none of the information, where there is
any, is correct in iny way, shape or form. It’s quite funny in large places. A sample: Where the Wikipedia logo would be, there is a parody of it; a hollow potato named Sophie. Thought you would like something funny.”

I am thinking about how we might use this with learners. Perhaps publishing some creative parody writing?

Martin also shared a Flickr game, Fastr. The game generates a group of ten Flickr images. Your challenge is to guess the common tag. I wonder if we might use this to introduce the concept of tagging as a searching tool. (Warning, some images may not play well for third graders.)

Librarian in posterland

              

It may be that the most popular purchase we made in the past year was the poster printer.  Our PhotoShop-savvy volunteers are going a little crazy organizing our teams and clubs into READ poster creations.  Here are a few of our latest team creations.  The clubs are coming.  The cast of Grease was just in to borrow biographies of James Dean and Dwight Eisenhower and On the Road.

       

Flagrant Disregard

I find myself taking little breaks while I play with and wait for dissertation data.  On my latest trip to Flagrant Disregard’s Flickr Toys, it occurred to me that I could actually USE those toys.  I am going to go crazy with student photos this fall.  Here are two of my early morning prototypes designed to reinforce information literacy skills, to promote reading, to engage the kids.  I can’t wait to get back to my poster printer!  (The actual posters will not have PhotoShop filters.)