youtube -- for good or not

I've looked at YouTube for a while now. We don't have it in the district (unless you download at home), but it's certainly a popular site. I like it for movie scenes and music videos, but one of my favorites is March of the Librarians, a video from the 2007 American Library Association Conference is Seattle. It's a takeoff on March of the Penguins, and if you've ever been to a library conference, it really has us pegged! The only thing I don't like about YouTube is the quality of the comments. The anonymity allows for a lot of mean-spiritedness to come through. However, it's not so different than the slambooks we used to pass around when I was in school -- your audience is just bigger.
I think there can be a lot of uses for YouTube in school -- presentations of all sorts, demonstrations of hands-on lessons (science, sports, cooking, etc.), and so on. If there are districts that allow YouTube in school, it would be interesting to find out about their experiences with it. Do students eventually use it for schoolwork, or is it just a time-waster?

Big huge labs confused me!

I have no clue as to how I finally got to upload this. I couldn't manage to do it directly from flickr but saved it to my computer instead, and then uploaded from there. I don't think that was the right way, but it is here. I think the mash-ups would be lots of fun, but I know I need to spend more time on them to really feel comfortable with the process. I will definitely revisit this!

Flickr -- part 2

I added just a few pictures to Flickr from a trip to South Africa that I took a few years ago. I'll be interested to see if I can add photos easily when I travel this summer. There is a connection between Flickr and Snapfish, and since I already have pictures on Snapfish, I will have to check to see if I can send them to Flickr, without having to upload them from my computer. That may have to be a summer project. I will also check out the pro membership on Flickr, to see if I would use it enough to make it worthwhile.

And not to this post's ch-ch-changes segment -- I have decided that the changes in store for me as an employee in Waterford are a bit more than I care to deal with, so I have decided to retire (after 42 years!). It's bittersweet, because there are lots of things I want to do, but I will certainly miss the people I work with. Since our school is being "repurposed", we all are going in different directions. I hope that some relationships are strong enough to continue, even without daily contact. We'll see!

flickr will be fun!

Flickr is going to take me into the 21st century with online photo sharing! Do I sound a little like a commercial here? Sorry! I've kept pictures on snapfish for a while now, but I haven't really gotten into the sharing/public aspect of it. It will be great if I learn enough to upload while I'm actually traveling -- of course this year I may have to wait for the air to clear since one of my stops will be Iceland!

The picture I uploaded from flickr is of the Great Pyramid in Egypt. I've been there too, but this picture is better than any of mine. (Clouds will do that!)

Thing 3

I like to read blogs but I don't always have the time to keep up with them. I would love to blog about books for middle school, especially if kids who like to read would comment and add their own reactions and responses to their reading. But with the need to disassemble (if that's a word) a middle school library by summer, my blogs will probably be centered around that. And that might involve more whining than anyone else would want to read!
Maybe I should blog about books I find as I scour the shelves for things that should have been discarded years ago! Nothing like moving to get rid of clutter! See, it's really hard for me to blog about blogs when I keep getting distracted by this huge job ahead of me -- but I can understand that blogging as part of the everyday activites in a classroom would be beneficial for students and teachers.

Newbery winner 2010

The Newbery Award winner for this year is a book I've actually read and enjoyed! (That doesn't always happen -- still haven't opened Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village from 2008.)
When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead is this year's winner and I think it's a great middle school book. It deals with a lot of different issues -- bullying, isolation, latchkey children among them -- but with a difference. The main character's mom is preparing for an appearance on the old quiz show $10,000 Pyramid and each chapter title is based on that program; e.g. Things you lose, things that disappear, etc. It also involves alternative realities and mysterious notes, leading to a surprising but satisfying ending, at least to this reader!

What's next?

How do you leave a school where you have spent every working day of your adult life? I knew that question would arise eventually; unfortunately, because the building is being "re-purposed" and will no longer be a middle school, the decision must be made a bit sooner than I had planned.
I have to figure out what I will do next -- new position, same position in a different school, or something altogether different.
As the media specialist, I need to determine what things aren't worth keeping and what stuff will be useful to someone or some program next fall. What goes, what stays (obviously not in the building, but in the district), what to do with the stuff that goes -- maybe someone can use it somewhere or will it just end up in a landfill somewhere?