Applications for Media Student Assistant Due Soon!

Poor Clank can't be a Library Media Student Assistant, but you can!
We need enthusiastic and hard working students to help out in the Media Center during seminar classes. If chosen, you will check out, shelve & straighten books. You will also work on special Media events, run deliveries of books & materials to teachers, and help kids find books!

If this sounds like a job you can and WANT to do, please pick up your application in the Media Center, fill out both sides - answering ALL the questions and get two signatures (one from a parent/guardian and a recommendation from a teacher) and turn it in by this coming Tuesday.

Stay tuned to MHTV for updates to see who has been chosen! Good luck!
~Miss Jones & Mrs. Black

Did You Know 4.0 and The Future

In 2007 i blogged about the first Did You Know by Karl Fisch for my you....my kids, parents, teachers & community... because when i saw it (the first one) it rocked my world!

back then it was MySpace that could have been the 8th largest company....Facebook wasn't even invented yet...nor Twitter!...so much has changed...but sometimes i feel like we're not moving fast enough to get the right technology into the hands of our kids...then trust them enough to teach them how to ethically use it. teaching kids that they need to be ETHICAL and AWARE of what they do on the intarwebs ...what their digital footprint is and what kind of footprint they're leaving (in words and in pictures)....and how people will go back and see the doofy stuff they post 5, 10, 15 and 20 years from now.

don't get me wrong: i totally respect the 2000 FTC Children's Internet Privacy Act! heck, i quoted it on my 2000 Internet Safety for Parents & Teens webpage! but things have changed DRASTICALLY since then! i'm just saying....we can't bury our head in the sand for much longer... the internet is not going away...and though i preach the use of the Databases and i uphold my county rules...i think we're doing our kids a disservice by not teaching precise and savvy Google searches or using some of the Google products and how to be smart on the social networks....cause parents...they're there already!
and though i'm a rebel, kids in many ways.....i still maintain my Back-to-school advice for safe & ethical social networking.

Gearing Up for AASL

GoAnimate.com: The Unconference@The Blogger's Cafe by gwyneth


hey kids! Miss Jones is off to Charlotte, NC in a week or so to present at the American Association of School Librarians conference. This national conference brings together over 4,000 school librarians is held every other year and i'm honored to be presenting several times and to be named as one of the official bloggers. (no pressure there! LOL)

so anyway...just wanted to let you know that i go to these conferences to learn, share, and bring back cool ideas (like the Book Pass Reading List initiative) and new things to make our Media Center one of the best in Howard County...or heck...Maryland....wait!
why not in the US of A!

Pass the Book Website!

As mentioned in my post last week, the pass the book event is here and its site has now gone LIVE!

from the official website:

"Beginning October 19, 2009 be on the lookout for specially marked copies of The Secret Hour by Scott Westerfeld. Books are available at any Howard County Library (while supplies last) or from your friends who will Pass the Book. If you receive a specially marked copy of The Secret Hour, read it, register it, and pass it on to another reader. Return to the website throughout the year to track where your book has traveled and participate in online challenges. Howard County Library's Pass the Book is sponsored by Friends of Howard County Library.

Midnighter Lore: Monday October 19 at 7:00pm

Join us for the official launch of Pass the Book, and brush up on Midnighter Lore at Howard County Central Library. Create codes, ciphers, and secret writing, then pick up a copy of The Secret Hour to read, register, and pass to a friend. Ages 11-15. Please register online or by calling 410.313.7800.

---

The Author: Scott Westerfeld

The Midnighters series comes to you from the mind of author Scott Westerfeld, who you may know from Peeps, the Uglies series, and So Yesterday. Westerfeld’s latest novel is Leviathan, a novel that pits the Darwinists against the Clankers, and asks “Do you oil your war machines, or do you feed them?” Watch the book trailer, and come back here soon for a full review."

Neil Gaiman and Twittering the Exquisite Corpse

So, yesterday i got really excited about the Neil Gaiman Twitter writing opportunity the Exquisite Corpse..I instantly thought of our Writers Guild and how they could have really gotten involved with the writing experience. However, Twitter is now Blocked in HCPSS. (yes, thanks to the NEW Dickensian interweb policies of my county Twitter has now been blocked --we're going backwards not forwards, it seems...i guess no more Teacher Tuesdays at lunch for me sharing ideas with other tech peeps! :-( Doh! /rant)

anyway.... no, an Exquisite Corpse, is not about a pretty cadaver...

"An Exquisite Corpse is an old game in which people write a phrase on a sheet of paper, fold it over to conceal part of it and pass it on to the next player to do the same. The game ends when someone finishes the story, which is then read aloud."

we also did the same thing with drawings in the back seat of the family wagon during long road trips....sorta like before mad libs...


2 B, or not 2 B, that is the question. OMW, LOL!

"If only the Bard were lucky enough to have had a Twitter account. Since he didn’t, we’ll just have to rely on BBC Audiobooks and fantasy writer Neil Gaiman to bring us the latest development in Twitterature. Yesterday at noon, the Coraline author tweeted the first sentence in an interactive storytelling experiment, with the hope that fellow Twitterers (Twits?) will pick up the thread and spin the rest of the story 140 characters at a time. The final product will eventually be compiled into a short story, recorded as an audiobook, and made available on iTunes for....hello....FREE! ((of course we'll give you either a link or an embed script when it's released...or you may wanna bookmark BBC Audio) - Twitter an Audio Story with Neil Gaiman!))

It’ll be interesting to see if average Twitterzens will be able to maintain a functioning narrative in this mass game of exquisite corpse, or if it will inevitably devolve into “And then a comet hit the planet and everybody died!” or “A giant POO POO-monster came out of nowhere and swallowed dear Emily whole,” as mine always did. Some hope can be gleaned from the recent success in London of the Royal Opera House’s first tweet-based opera, Twitterdammerung, which actually got some decent reviews. We lose Miley, but gain Wagner. Seems like a fair trade.

Tweets probably won’t be replacing conventional book-writing anytime soon, but it is an interesting glimpse into the possibility of open-source literary collaboration. Will BBC be able to separate the tweets from the chaff, or will we perhaps realize that all that Twitters is not gold?"
Keith Staskiewicz - EW

Finally to quote a tweeter named Smirkette: "Neil Gaiman is such a rockstar. I love how much he's embraced social media, and I can hardly wait to hear how this turns out."

& Neither can i! What do you think? Is this a promotional stunt or a best practice of Web 2.0 use of the technology craftily interwoven with interweb savvy?

GoAnimate.com: MHMS Media Adventures!

GoAnimate.com: MHMS Media Adventures! by gwyneth

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!

GoAnimate is WAY cool!..but be warned..before you use this with kids... there are areas that have some questionable content....so, for elem techie teachers & Media Specialists to use with their students there's a MORE kid friendly version of GoAnimate called Domo Animate where there are preset backgrounds, characters and where kids can't upload created backgrounds or content (that could be inappropriate or copyright grey)....check it out!

For Media Specialists making animations for special events, programs, or products i suggest using regular GoAnimate.com where you can Photoshop, iPhoto or Comic Life backdrops using your own graphics & digital pics!

PSST...PASS THAT BOOK!

PSST...PASS THAT BOOK!

Beginning October 19, be on the lookout for specially marked copies of The Secret Hour by Scott Westerfeld.

Read the book. Register the book's number at hclibrary.org. Pass the book to another friend. Return to the web site throughout the year to track where the books have traveled, and participate in online book discussions.

For more information go visit the HCL Pass that Book Website or contact Mr. John Jewitt john.jewitt@hclibrary.org

---

Miss. Jones Writes:
This reminds me of a website i've been involved with for many years called Bookcrossing.com Same idea....here's how it started from my first posting on the BX site in 2005:

Journal entry 6 by gwynethanne from columbia, Maryland USA on Monday, April 25, 2005

this book was the first MC Beaton i ever read....i picked it up in the sheraton inner harbor hotel a while ago, staying there for the MICCA technology conference and having finished the book that i had brought (what horrors! ) i was itchy for a new one. i spotted this book on a library table near the elevator....i picked it up stealthily...looking furtively up and down the hallway...should i take it? not having a book is torture!...i HUNGERED for a new read. i took the book with me and read about the bookcrossing program....grinning with relief that i had not purloined someone's tome, i kept it and read it. and this one was delightful book! i'm going back to the sheraton for the same conference soon and i'm gonna re-release the book back out into the wild! i hope the next person likes it as much as i did...AND if you haven't read MC Beaton....read the Hamish McBeth mysteries..they are cozy little books that feel as comfortable as a good warm wool sweater with a dram of whiskey! thanks keycollect and fiction!.....and the journey goes on! being a school media specialist maybe i gotta get some bookplates of my own now! ....first book? jack finney's Time and Again! ~gwynethanne

and well, that's how it started. ...since then i have purchased (for a nominal fee) the special bookplates & post-its start up kid... and have released books into the wild. i don't leave books outside..but usually in hotels when i travel for educational technology or library conferences

...here's a bit more from the website:

Read, Recycle, & Release with BookCrossing!

"Welcome back to BookCrossing, where books have adventures of their own. BookCrossing is earth-friendly, and gives you a way to share your books, clear your shelves, and conserve precious resources at the same time. Through our own unique method of recycling reads, BookCrossers give life to books. BookCrossing books are not stagnant dust collectors, but living entities travelling the world as true BookCrossing emissaries. Our books find new readers and introduce them to the wonders of BookCrossing."

from a blogger:

"BookCrossing,com is an awesome site. If you have a book and you want to share it with the world, or if you just don’t want it laying around anymore and can’t bring yourself to toss it, then you can register it on bookcrossing.com. Once it’s registered you leave the book, somewhere, ‘in the wild’. Since the book is registered on the site, you leave a specific description of where you left it, then when someone is looking for that book or genre in your country, they can track it down, notify the site that it’s been found, read it, then leave it somewhere else to be found again. Such a “make me smile” concept."

so Pass that Book in Howard County and if you like that....join Bookcrossing.com and pass books around the WORLD!