Big Building, Lots of Books

on moving day ...

2011-09-28T21:06:00.000-07:00

Dear Reader (all one of you),

It's moving day. I've grown weary of the limits of Blogger (mostly, I don't like having all of my images stuck in the middle of the column) so I'm moving my work blog over to Wordpress. Please come over and read me there at:

http://bigbuildinglotsofbooks.wordpress.com/

See you there!

on information technology ...

2011-09-28T13:35:00.000-07:00

I had a chance to present some information technology tools and do some library PR at our first monthly faculty meeting. Thankfully, it went over much better than I had thought it would. I shared three really simple tools:

Safeshare.tv - Quickly removes advertisements, related video links, and other distracting clutter from Youtube videos. It will also allow you to create a link to send to students with just a specific section of a longer video.

Readability - Does the same thing as Safeshare.tv, with web pages and documents allowing teachers to remove clutter from content and adjust fonts, column widths, and print sizes as appropriate.

Wordle - Though Wordle has been around for a while, we haven't used it for much beyond creating decorations for bulletin boards. We demonstrated using word clouds to compare different kinds of information by taking the texts of different Presidents' States of the Union Addresses to see what the major issues concerning the nation were at different times. Teachers got pretty excited about the idea! The dance teacher hopes to use it to represent concepts and themes that come up in brainstorming sessions with her dancers and an English teacher plans to have students create word clouds with the essays to see what themes emerge. I'm pretty psyched about the response so far!

on middle school real estate ...

2011-09-16T15:13:00.000-07:00

Photo courtesy: Wired_gr

We're just finishing our first full week of school. I teach a library and technology class for seventh graders (my sevies) where one of the things we're trying to raise kids' awareness about is the size of their "digital footprints." As part my introduction to blogging, I had my sevies write their first online reflective journals on my Moodle page.

How was your first week of school? What surprised you about being a Wolverine? Has the experience been overwhelming? Underwhelming? What have you learned? Which classes are you enjoying most? What kinds of anxieties are you feeling? What's the best thing about school?

As we are a 7-12 school all of our seventh graders are new. Interestingly, the "exciting thing" that merited comment from sevies most often was ... Having a locker!!!

I would have guessed our athletic facilities or our computer labs or the recording studios in the music rooms, but ... It was all about having a locker. When you think about it, 12-year old people really don't have much real estate outside of their homes. Their lockers are really the only private spaces they have in their newly independent lives in middle school.

Even after ten years, these middle school kids still surprise me! It makes work exciting every day!

on digital tracking ...

2011-07-30T20:09:00.001-07:00

clipped from consumerist.com

How The Biggest Sites Are Stalking You And Reselling Your Info

Most websites you visit are monitoring your behavior, even after you leave.
They install little files like cookies, beacons, and flash cookies to see where
you go, what you buy, even what text you're typing. WSJ analyzed the tracking
behavior of the top 50 websites online to see how each of them is watching your
every step, and then reselling the info to the highest bidder. For instance, did
you know that Dictionary.com gives its users up to 159 cookies, 23 flash cookies
and 41 beacons for third parties?
Check out their big interactive infographic - careful, it takes a while to
load - for more info on other big sites like Verizon's, MSN.com, and
Photobucket.
What They Know [WSJ] (Thanks to Matt!)

on google+ ...

2011-07-07T21:03:00.000-07:00

It's not like anyone has sent me an invite, but after a very interesting discussion on life in a "filtering bubble" and the ubiquitous nature of Google in our tech lives, I thought this would make for some interesting reading!

clipped from photofocus.com

Google Plus – Read the Fine Print BEFORE You Sign Up

Google is the company that started out with a simple mission – don’t be evil. I think they meant it when they started. They have grown to be one of the biggest companies on the planet. I am not so sure they remember their original mission. Their image search feature allows them to profit from other people’s work without compensation. Their TOS (terms of service) allows them license to images — that I find concerning. Why am I bringing all this up now?

One of the things that has photographers excited about Google+ is their implantation of photo sharing. They seem to have done a good job of making it easy to share photos. For amateurs with no desire to turn pro or to license their work, this will be attractive.

You need to be aware of what you are giving up if you decide to use Google+ or any other Google service when it comes to your photography. Please read the information contained at this link. http://www.google.com/accounts/TOS

on the labschool@punahou ...

2011-07-06T21:29:00.000-07:00

I just completed the second day of a really amazing conference--The 2011 Technology Lab School@Punahou. The Lab School is a gathering of educators interested in integration and implementation of technology into school curriculum and incorporates large group keynote speeches, small group cohort discussions based on different themes/interests, and informal workshops and roundtable discussion groups. The themes change from year-to-year, but this year the cohort themes included:

3D Visualization and Fabrication
21st-Century Classroom Tools: Interactive Whiteboards
Mobile Technology: Using iPad, iPod Touch, iPhone and iOS in Education
Media and Digital Ethics
Games and Play

I signed on to participate in the Media and Digital Ethics cohort and my colleague Anna signed up to sit in on the Mobile Technology cohort. So far the presentations and the cohort discussions have been amazing. In our cohort discussion on digital ethics today, I got so caught up in the discussion that I, unfortunately, didn't do a very good job of sitting back and letting others jump into the fray. I'll work to get a grip on my big mouth and my very strong opinions at our session on Friday so others can get a few words in edgewise and dive into the fray as well. I forget that people in Hawaii just aren't as verbally aggressive as I've become accustomed to being. When in Rome ...

The Technology Lab School is held every summer. If you ever get the chance to participate, jump at it. It's a two week program and we're only heading into day three, but even at this point, I'm pretty comfortable saying that I'd be surprised if most educators with an interest in technology didn't find the experience supremely satisfying!

More to come!

on the anatomy of a computer virus ...

2011-07-02T16:20:00.000-07:00

Holy wow!!!

Stuxnet: Anatomy of a Computer Virus from Patrick Clair on Vimeo.

on juvenoia ...

2011-07-02T11:04:00.000-07:00

clipped from www.nytimes.com

The Ninny State

In the 1940s and ’50s, kids fell in love with a new technology, and adults
freaked out. A psychiatric researcher warned that this latest pastime was “a
distinct influencing factor in the case of every single delinquent or disturbed
child” he had studied. In 1948, Time magazine said that it would “not only
inspire evil but suggest a form for the evil to take.” As David Hajdu relates in
his insightful history of the era, “The Ten-Cent Plague,” states and cities
introduced more than a hundred laws to ban or limit its sale. Congress held
televised hearings to denounce it.

Which is all to say, the country panicked — because of the comic book.
Sixty-odd years on, of course, this seems hysterical. And yet substitute
“Internet,” “video game” or “texting,” and the sky seems to be falling again.

on endangered species ...

2011-06-25T05:59:00.001-07:00

The library shared by Public School 9 and Middle School 571 in Brooklyn was recently renovated, but has no librarian.

clipped from www.nytimes.com

In Lean Times, Schools Squeeze Out Librarians

Budget belt-tightening threatens to send school librarians the way of the card catalog.

The schools superintendent in Lancaster, Pa., said he had to eliminate 15 of the district’s 20 librarians to save full-day kindergarten classes.

In the Salem-Keizer school district in Oregon, all 48 elementary and middle school librarians would lose their jobs under a budget proposal that faces a vote next week.

And in New York City, half of the secondary schools appear to be in violation of a state regulation requiring them to have a librarian on staff, with the city currently employing 365 licensed librarians.

“The dilemma that schools will face is whether to cut a teacher who has been working with kids all day long in a classroom or cut teachers who are working in a support capacity, like librarians,” the city’s chief academic officer, Shael Polakow-Suransky, said in an interview.

“It’s the way of the future,” he said.

on a great response to young adult literature bashing ...

2011-06-06T08:55:00.000-07:00

A far better response than I could ever have mustered ...

clipped from blog.schoollibraryjournal.com

There’s Dark Things In Them There Books!

Guys, you have to read this! The Wall Street Journal has made a stunning discovery — in Darkness Too Visible, we discover books with bad, bad things like “vampires and suicide and self-mutilation,” all done by the evil publishers and librarians and booksellers and others to deliberately “bulldoze coarseness or misery into their children’s lives.”

Clearly, the way to protect the innocence of children and teens is to prevent them from learning about the darker things in life. If you don’t know about it, it won’t happen to you! (Sadly, that is my half held belief about doctors which is why I rarely go to them. You’re not truly sick until the doctor says so.)

on young adult lit bashing ...

2011-06-06T08:51:00.000-07:00

Oy!!!

clipped from online.wsj.com

Darkness Too Visible
Contemporary fiction for teens is rife with explicit abuse,
violence and depravity. Why is this considered a good idea?

Amy Freeman, a 46-year-old mother of three, stood recently in the young-adult
section of her local Barnes & Noble, in Bethesda, Md., feeling thwarted and
disheartened.
She had popped into the bookstore to pick up a welcome-home gift for her
13-year-old, who had been away. Hundreds of lurid and dramatic covers stood on
the racks before her, and there was, she felt, "nothing, not a thing, that I
could imagine giving my daughter. It was all vampires and suicide and
self-mutilation, this dark, dark stuff." She left the store empty-handed.

How dark is contemporary fiction for teens? Darker than when you were a
child, my dear: So dark that kidnapping and pederasty and incest and brutal
beatings are now just part of the run of things in novels directed, broadly
speaking, at children from the ages of 12 to 18.

on copyright ...

2011-06-01T09:34:00.000-07:00

This is a really nice article on copyright, that IMHO strikes just the right tone between compliance and not being a spineless victim of the for-profit publishing industry.

clipped from chronicle.com

What You Don't Know About Copyright, but Should

By Jennifer Howard

If Nancy Sims had to pick one word to describe how researchers, students, and librarians feel about copyright, it would probably be "confused."

A lawyer and a librarian, Ms. Sims is copyright-program librarian at the University of Minnesota Libraries. She's there to help people on campus and beyond—both users and owners of protected material—understand their rights.

"I'm not sure anybody has a very good knowledge" of copyright, she says.

For instance, in a recent informal survey she conducted at the university, only 30 percent or so of the faculty respondents knew the answers to basic questions such as how one gets a copyright and how long it lasts. (Librarians did somewhat better.)

For the multitudes out there who are copyright-confused, here are some pointers Ms. Sims shared with The Chronicle.

on the librarian infographic ...

2011-05-25T19:20:00.000-07:00

My sister-in-law sent this my way courtesy Master Degree Online.com Very interesting!!!

on bright futures and lots of hope ...

2011-05-16T11:03:00.000-07:00

photo © 2006 Will Powell | more info (via: Wylio)

Just got back from a fantastic middle school assembly with Congressman Brad Sherman. The Congressman, who has a great self-deprecating sense of humor gave some nice opening remarks, then just opened the floor for questions in a town hall meeting type of format. With an audience of 7th-9th grade students, you never REALLY know exactly what you are going to get when you invite kids to ask questions at open mikes around a room, but boy did our kids deliver today!!! Great questions all around!!!

9th grade girl: "Given the events of the past few weeks, how do you see the the future of U.S. foreign policy evolving with regard to Pakistan?"

7th grade boy: "How are committee assignments assigned in Congress?"

9th grade boy: "Can you address the change that has occurred in President Obama's foreign policies over the past two years?"

8th grade girl: "How are bills actually passed in Congress?" (Which the Congressman properly took to mean, "beyond the process we learn about in 7th grade Civics ...").

7th grade boy: "Why is it that the U.S. chose not to release photos of Osama Bin Laden's body?"

7th grade boy: "Can you speak to the U.S.'s policy toward the emerging democracies in Egypt and Syria?"

The Congressman was really great about knowing how to speak to a young audience. Like so many assemblies where our kids sing, play instruments, dance, show their films, talk about their community service projects ... I was left thinking, "What the heck was I doing when I was 13? I wasn't doing THAT!!!"

When you really get to know teenagers they can sometimes make you scratch your head and/or make you crazy, but most of the time .... They make you proud and give you hope for the future!!!

Man ... I have such a good job!!!

Addendum 1: A 7th grader just came and asked, "Hi, do we have Gone with the Wind and also ... The Communist Manifesto?" Wha??!??!? LOL!!!

on stuff that's new to me ...

2011-05-04T12:48:00.000-07:00

So, in spite of the fact that people at work think that I'm all-crazy-tech-dude, I really am not much of an early adopter. I got my first smart phone, an iPhone, on Good Friday and before that I had received text messages but never sent any. Well, I guess it is time to get with the rest of the people living in the 21st century so here are the some of the new-to-me, but-probably-old-to-everybody-else things I've been learning ...

photo © 2010 Glenn Fleishman | more info (via: Wylio)

E-Books:
How friggin' awesome are ebooks, huh? I borrowed the library iPad and downloaded Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. I LOVE reading on the iPad. I was completely blown away by the fact that I could synch my iPad and iPhone so that I could bookmark a place and pick up reading in the same place on a different device! Who knew?!?!? I never knew that I needed to be able to do that, and in reality I probably don't NEED to be able to do it, but it sure is nice to be able to do it!!!

photo © 2008 Chris Brooks | more info (via: Wylio)

Audio Books:
As I was reading Pillars of the Earth, I also listened to parts of it on CD. I LOVE being read to!!! It was my virginal audio book and I've heard that the reader is particularly good. All I know is that I LOVED listen. I sometimes even read along in my book with the reader just as I did when I was in the first grade. The only thing missing was the little bell that rung to tell me to turn the page! I've now moved on to Follet's follow-up to World Without End, but this time I loaded the CDs onto my iPhone. Amazingly, when I get into my car, my iPhone connects automatically and I can listen to my book without even connecting a cord. Crazy!!!

photo © 2011 Joe Ross | more info (via: Wylio)

Evernote:
My 7th grade students are researching a variety of Web 2.0 tools that they'll present to the class. One of the girls is researching Evernote and she insisted that I HAD to set up an account, download the app onto my phone and give it a whirl. Oh My Lord!!! Evernote is, like, the most amazing thing ever. How does it take text found in a picture and make it searchable?!?!?!? I don't get it. It is magic!!!

photo © 2010 Martin Lafrance | more info (via: Wylio)

Dropbox:
Another young man is researching Dropbox. So simple, so amazing. Download and install, then drag files onto the Dropbox icon and access it from any internet connected computer or your phone. More magic!!!

Add Text Caption Under Photo:
Our friend Elisabeth down the street shared a Libguide that she created for her 7th graders that included some really great tools. Add Text Caption Under Photo is especially cool as it makes for easy attribution when that is what is called for.

Behold Image Search:
A clean and easy to use interface for finding very nice quality copyright friendly Creative Commons images.

on getting our undies in a bunch ...

2011-04-21T09:55:00.000-07:00

photo © 2007 Graeme Maclean | more info (via: Wylio)

I'm a rather high strung kind of guy. Being high strung is not a requirement for being a librarian, but based on a series of recent events, I'd say that it is a characteristic fairly common to many librarians.

A few weeks ago, Harper Collins announced a "loan cap" that, in effect, limits the number of times a library can circulate an ebook to 26 loans. LM_Net, a listserv of approximately 17,000 (mostly school) librarians got FLOODED with messages from librarians having virtual cows (with horns and everything!!!). People wanted to call for boycotts, wanted other to write to Congress, wanted ... You get the picture. Undies all over LM_Net were in bunches!!! When those around me (either in my immediate 3-D world or virtually) get their undies in knots, mine tend to get bunched as well. It's just the way I am ... Anyway, one brave sole individual (I forget who it was) posted the thought that, in the long run, it wasn't a big deal.

"OMG!!! NOT A BIG DEAL?!?!? A loan cap of 26 loans???? NOT A BIG DEAL?!?!? How can that be?!?!?" The poster went on to say (metaphorically at least) that, in reality, most of our paperback and hard cover print books were lost, were damaged, or fell apart long before they ever circulated 26 times so we should all relax and un-bunch the undies.

More recently 60 Minutes ran an expose about how the author and apparent philanthropist Greg Mortenson, who authored Three Cups of Tea allegedly had made up parts of the tale and how his foundation spent a significant portion of its funding doing things other than building schools in Afghanistan. Disclaimer: I didn't see the 60 Minutes piece and I haven't read much about the controversy. Anyway, LM_Net and another listserv both lit up once again and folks clearly had their undies in a bunch!!!

"Are you going to remove the books from your collections?" Kind of stuff.

Really?!?!? Even if parts of his books do turn out to be embellished or outright fiction, if they were good reads before aren't they going to still be worth reading? It isn't like they are the kind of factual inaccuracies that a student might use in a paper. It is a memoir and memoirs are about how people recall their experiences. Why are all the undies in bunches over this?

Now, I can certainly understand if people made donations to his foundation and are upset, but I also see that as a separate issue from whether the books merit inclusion in a collection.

I dunno ... Should I have my undies in a bunch over this?

on catching up or leading the way ...

2011-04-05T00:59:00.000-07:00

The Head of the Middle School campus recently shared a fantastic book called Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization by Yong Zhao. In his preface, Zhao explains that he started off writing a book about education in China and ended up writing a book about how what China wants in its educational system is what America is so eagerly looking to throw away.

Things that spoke to me:

The cost of standardized testing: High scores, but low ability.
American education is an imperfect system that others seek to emulate. It isn't that American education does a particularly good job of fostering creativity, yet it doesn't quash it as much as the educational systems of most other nations.
"Education always performs two functions--to select and to educate." (Zhao, p. 74) We obviously excel at the task of sorting, but how well are we doing with "educating?"
That which is tested is valued.
"We should acknowledge that technology is not only a tool for the teacher to use to raise test scores, but also an important tool for students to develop digital competencies, to be creative in art and music, to develop social skills in virtual worlds, and to stay engaged with school." (Zhao, p. 196)

Context:

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother--Amy Chua
Outliers--Malcolm Gladwell
Whole New Mind--Daniel Pink
Wired Magazine, "An Unconventional CEO: Larry Page Wants to Return Google to Its Start-Up Roots."

Quotes Quoted:

"The philosophy in the classroom of this generation is the philosophy of government in the next."~~Abraham Lincoln
"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted."--Albert Einstein

Thoughts:

The "middle class" may no longer refer to the "American middle class." Corporations can be profitable whether they are selling their products to the "middle class" in India, China, France, Japan, Australia, or Mexico. Economically, a middle class in America may not matter as much as it has in the past. There will still be "good middle class, upper middle class, and upper class" lives to be lead, but the days when that life was enjoyed by unionized automobile workers is probably passed. Parents of our kids intuitively know that the key to giving their kids a viable future is in getting their kids into the "creative class, " thus the pressure on the resume building student.
“You can’t understand Google,” vice president Marissa Mayer says, “unless you know that both Larry and Sergey were Montessori kids.” She’s referring to schools based on the educational philosophy of Maria Montessori, an Italian physician born in 1870 who believed that children should be allowed the freedom to pursue their interests. “In a Montessori school, you go paint because you have something to express or you just want to do it that afternoon, not because the teacher said so,” she says. “This is baked into how Larry and Sergey approach problems. They’re always asking, why should it be like that? It’s the way their brains were programmed early on.” ... I've never been a fan of the free periods that we give kids, yet, perhaps they are precisely the thing that our school is doing right. Rather than tossing those kids out of the Tech Center for playing games, we should be setting aside a set of computers for them to use as their digital sandbox. Better still, we should probably facilitate things for them to be able to hang out in the Computer Services office with the tech guys ...

on hashtag #grumpylibrarian ...

2011-03-09T09:50:00.000-08:00

photo © 2010 Aparna E. | more info (via: Wylio)

I need to change my screen name to Grumpylibrarian!

Yes people, I have a bun (metaphorically).

I WILL shushhh you!!! Inside voices, please!!!

You know where to find the tape, put it back!!!

This is not your bedroom so when you use communal supplies, put them back!!!

Seriously, I have say these things to you explicitly?!?!?!

Editor's Note: Really, I don't expect my library patrons to work in silence, but as this is a library, blowing a big blue Viking horn, "speaking" to each other in a volume appropriate to being in the fifth row at a Rolling Stones concert, or leaving your sweaty P.E. clothes on a library table while you go off to class for four periods ... all not okay!!!

on rethinking education from michael wesch ...

2011-02-11T10:02:00.000-08:00

I know I'm late to the party, but here it is ...

on school bullies ...

2011-02-08T14:12:00.001-08:00

clipped from www.latimes.com

Study links teenage bullying to social status

As students get more popular, they're more likely to harass their peers, finds a study that reinforces an axiom of high school life.

Scientists have confirmed an axiom of teenage life: Kids intent on climbing the social ladder at school are more likely to pick on their fellow students.

The finding, reported in Tuesday's edition of the American Sociological Review, lends an air of authenticity to TV shows like "Gossip Girl" and the 2004 movie "Mean Girls." More importantly, it may suggest that efforts to combat bullying in schools should focus more closely on social hierarchies.

Though the study reinforces popular stereotypes about social cliques in schools, it contradicts academic notions about aggression, Faris said.

"For a long time, there was emphasis on seeing aggression as a product of the home environment," he said. "Here we're getting a different picture."

on those wacky digital natives ...

2011-02-04T13:32:00.000-08:00

photo © 2009 Kirby Urner | more info (via: Wylio)

Our school will be going through our Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) accreditation in a few weeks. Accreditation is a BIG DEAL in independent schools. Our WASC report is this HUGE document, but at the very least all of us on the faculty are supposed to read and be familiar with our twelve page "action plan." Long story short, our action plan includes a statement about how our students are "digital natives" while our faculty are "digital immigrants" and how we need to explore ways to educate and reach our digital natives. Blah, blah, blah ...

All of our seventh graders take a required Library and Technology class that teaches them quite a few fundamental technology skills. You know, those kinds of "low level skills" like where your document is saving, how to copy and paste, how to insert an image, how to site or give attribution for that image, etc. Some on our faculty are critical of our course since in their minds, "kids know all that stuff already." To which I say, "HAH! B.S!!! You must not have spent much time working with kids in a tech lab."

Here's the thing, today, there is an English class using the laptops in our Reference Room. The teacher is chatting with a student while the rest of the class was doing their thing and three different new frosh (who didn't take our class) DIDN'T KNOW HOW TO COPY AND PASTE FROM THEIR EMAIL INTO WORD!!!

Seriously?!?!?!? Digital natives my behind!!!

Kids may spend a lot of time online, but that DOES NOT MEAN THAT THEY ARE TECHNOLOGY LITERATE!!!

on watching others use technology ...

2011-01-14T10:27:00.000-08:00

This came my way via the Boing Boing blog. Too funny!

just finished ...

2010-12-01T13:14:00.000-08:00

Quick, easy read that truly helps you re-evaluate your notions and ideas about organization. I am a folder organizer who likes my email in-box to be empty and have systems that currently serve my needs quite well, but the reality is that new tools make a number of other options to people who want to bring organization to their lives in different ways. While I probably won't end up adopting many of the ideas the Merrill shares in his book, it was much worth the time. I can see a number of my students, however, who might love his ideas and the organizational schemes that he shares. A highly recommended read!

Okay, it might just be me, but doesn't this guy look a lot like Roger Federer?

just finished ...

2010-11-29T10:46:00.000-08:00

Though I sometimes got bogged down and ended up skimming some of the detailed sections about the specifics of credit default swaps and CDOs, this is an amazing read that helps even folk with very little interest in finance (like me) to a basic understanding of the economic mess that we're in. Surprisingly entertaining reading!

just finished ...

2010-11-29T10:17:00.000-08:00

Great read for anyone that lives with a middle schooler or is trying to teach a middle schooler! Though slightly dated at this point in terms of the kids' use of technology, the characters and their thoughts ring very true with the middle schoolers that I know. Probably should be one of those texts that gets mailed to you with your first teaching contract that you get when you're hired to work in a middle school (or the month before your son or daughter enters the sixth or seventh grades).

just finished ...

2010-11-16T12:40:00.000-08:00

Just finished reading Cognitive Surplus, by Clay Shirky. I find Shirky's books to be accessible and thoughtful, and Cognitive Surplus is no different. It is full of great ideas and concepts, but one that stands out for me, personally, is that you cannot predict the ways users will use the tools that you make available to them. Tools are almost always designed with a specific use in mind, yet when they are released into the wild, folk seem to find all kinds of crazy and creative ways to use them and most of those uses or applications never ever crossed the minds of the tools' designers. Very worthwhile reading!

on second chances … !

2010-11-13T23:35:00.001-08:00

Bloglines lives on!!! Bloglines lives on!!! I am so very thrilled to have just learned that my favorite RSS reader which was scheduled to be put to rest on November 1st, has been given a second chance at life. This is most wonderful news. A good web-based feed reader is, apparently, not easy to find … And yes, I have tried Google Reader … And no, it was not love at first sight, or second sight, or even third …

It would seem that Bloglines is the one for me (at least for now) …

clipped from www.bloglines.com

We’re happy to announce that Ask.com has entered into an agreement with MerchantCircle to keep Bloglines up and running! That means your news feeds will remain available (with your same password) indefinitely. Ask.com will maintain the current Bloglines service as-is until at least December 1, 2010 after which the service will transition wholly to MerchantCircle.

You can read more detail about MerchantCircle and its plans for the service at the MerchantCircle blog and the Ask.com blog.

Stay tuned for an email coming soon that will provide more information. In the meantime, please continue to check back here for updates, or send an email to bloglines@merchantcircle.com.

on the big series of tubes known as the internet ...

2010-11-03T09:23:00.001-07:00

Really? Television is one-way communication that allows a few people to disproportionally set the agenda for all of the rest of humanity and the internet via social media allows unprecedented numbers of people to communicate, build relationships, and find each other. It doesn't seem like much of a contest, really ... Sure, there are some harms that come with Internet access, but IMHO the benefits outweigh the harms pretty significantly. What do you think?

clipped from blog.pcpandora.com

Pandora's Blog

What’s worse: TV or the Internet?

This very interesting article from an AP writer asked what’s worse… the all-consuming Facebook and the Internet that attract today’s youth, or the mindless sitcoms of Gilligan’s Island and The Brady Bunch that their parents imbibed?

What’s your opinion…?

on things debatable ...

2010-10-24T07:12:00.000-07:00

I help coach a team of 30 7th and 8th grade debaters. They're amazing!!! Sometimes the drama of it all is a bit much as middle school anything can be, but all-in-all they're truly amazing.

If you've never been to a middle school debate tournament, it should be on your list of one of the 1000 things you should do before you die. I mean, you show up at a tournament and kids between the ages of eleven and thirteen are all abuzz dressed in their miniature suits and ties and first high heels. About a month before a tournament, debaters are given four topics/resolutions to research. They are required to research both the proposition and opposition sides for each of the topics. Hours and hours of research is completed on topics that range from, "Facebook does more good than harm" to "The North American Free Trade Agreement has done more harm than good" to "The driving age should be lowered to 18 in the U.S." to "The Constitution should be amended to limit Congressional terms." Middle school debate is a 3-on-3 affair and pairings get posted so students know that they'll argue the proposition or opposition side and the team from another school that they'll be debating, but they do not know which of the 4 topics they'll be debating for the round. Twenty minutes before the first debate, an official announces the topic which is followed by a LOT of screaming and panic and miniature sized suits, ties, and high heels clacking along the pavement in a mad rush to get to the rooms where they'll debate. Kids have twenty minutes to transfer notes from their researched outlines to specially colored pieces of paper--a little trick is meant to insure that mommies and daddies with Harvard Law or Princeton Law degrees don't write their 7th graders' debate speeches.

Today was our first tournament of the year. Our team of quite inexperience debaters acquitted themselves extremely well going 19-9 overall and finishing second for overall wins and for winning percentage.

More importantly, nobody cried. Everyone had something to be happy and proud about. And ... Nobody cried! In the eyes of a middle school debate coach, a day when nobody cries is a successful day indeed!

on man as a rabid dog ...

2010-09-29T18:13:00.000-07:00

I serve on our school's Educational Technology Committee. The committee is charged with identifying and anticipating the school's technology needs; developing plans to address those needs; and ultimately, helping to develop the policies, procedures, and infrastructure that can help make those plans a reality in the lives of our students and faculty.

Over the years, we've had some very satisfying successes!

Our internet filtering is been greatly improved! Videos sent to students by their teachers used to be blocked on our servers ... NO MORE!!! Blogs of any kind and any service with the word "blog" in its name used to be blocked by our servers (like say crazy time wasting stuff such as ... Bloglines) ... (and the ever memorable, "What's so valuable about blogs? Do we really want our kids reading blogs?" ... seriously, dude??? You're on the Ed Tech Committee, time to actually USE some of the tech, huh?) ... NO MORE!!!
We put a course management system, Moodle, in place.
We hired a Technology Integration Specialist to work with teachers.

You get the idea.

At times, as is the typical ebb and flow of committees we got bogged down in frustrating details but all in all I think the committee has done some really good things. Well, our Head of School attended today's committee meeting and put out to the group how we thought things were going. "Is the committee working the way it needs to? Is it too big? Is it representative enough? Is it frustrating?" The discussion that ensued was very interesting. It became quite clear that over the last year, I really bugged the crap out of a number of the other members of the committee. Primarily, I was a rabid dog about one single issue over much of the last year. The wiring in one of our buildings. Let me explain.

You see, over a period of YEARS one of our buildings has had wiring issues. Drops for Internet access, power cords for teacher's computers, cables that teachers use to hook up to classroom projection systems were in horrible places. In some cases, cords ran across the carpeting at the front of the room where teachers often stood to deliver instruction. Teachers tripped on cords which, in one case, sent a laptop flying across a room. It was crazy. Requests were made through every channel possible by teacher after teacher and for YEARS nothing happened until teachers just gave up and learned to live with it. When we would bring up new technology initiatives the reaction from most of our faculty was always the same, "Don't talk to me about new technology when we can't even make the technology we have now usable!!!"

The way that I look at it, why bother talking about a "big picture" for technology when the small, solvable irritations and frustration of everyday life are closing off teachers' minds to anything new so I brought up the wiring issue at every friggin' opportunity that I had. The bottom line is that almost everybody around the table eventually was sick of me being a friggin' rabid dog ...

Anyway, after a lot of pain and one of my colleagues on the committee getting his head chopped off and his body thrown under a bus, metaphorically speaking of course, for doing exactly what the committee told him to do. Our building now has wiring that has been re-routed and while not perfect, is livable for the time being.

I may have pissed off a bunch of people, but I don't apologize and I don't regret doing it for one second. Sometimes the small stuff counts ...

on monday assembly with terry pratchett ...

2010-09-22T18:58:00.000-07:00

Our "All Community Read" book this year was the novel, Nation, by Sir Terry Pratchett. On Monday, we had an all campus assembly where the All Community Read Committee (basically three hard working co-workers) arranged for Sir Terry Pratchett to answer questions from 7th, 8th, and 9th graders, and members of the faculty and staff that had read the novel. Due to health concerns, Sir Terry, apparently no longer travels much, but he connected into our assembly via telephone and he was broadcast through the sound system as a series of images of him scrolled slowly by on a large screen on stage. As you can probably imagine, the event had the potential to be a deadly boring affair ... an author droning on and on about his writing on a phone line from the U.K. as 700+ middle school kids fidgeted for an hour, but ... IT WAS GREAT!!!

I have to say, Sir Terry is one author with enough charisma to hold the attention of an auditorium full of kids. It was amazing!

Different students came up to a microphone and posed their questions about the book to Sir Terry and, wow, their questions were quite fantastic!

Yay for our kids!!!

Yay to the Committee!!!

Yay to Sir Terry!!!

Yay for readers and reading!!!

on back to school day ...

2010-08-30T18:18:00.000-07:00

I just realized that tomorrow will be my twenty-third first day of school as a teacher and I'm still getting stomachaches. Any day now, I'm going to really figure this whole teaching thing out and I'll know what I'm doing so my stomach won't hurt on the first day of school.

To make matters worse, this year I teach first period on the first day.

on listserv ettiquette ...

2010-07-25T18:56:00.000-07:00

I'm feeling extra grumpy for no good reason today so with that in mind let me just say ...

I hate it when people do annoying things on listservs. I know there are many who feel that listservs are tremendously "old school," but what can I say other than ... Yes, I'm "old school." I've been on listservs for almost as long as I've been online. I actually found my current job (the very best job on the planet IMHO) through an LM_Net posting by my boss!!! Here's the thing though, I'm currently subscribed to three listservs.

On one, traffic is fairly light. It is a small group of folk who know each other well and sometimes the posts are things like, "Hey guys, I'm going to retire!" followed by, like, fifty messages from individuals to the whole friggin' list saying, "Congratulations Betty!!! We're going to miss your contributions to the group!!! We hope you'll enjoy watching your grandbaby!!!" Okay, so ... I knew what the list was like before I joined and the traffic on that list is fairly low so it is something I put up with simply so that I can find out what cities will be hosting future conferences and decide if I want to visit the city (and attend the "conference" of course) and plan my professional development accordingly.

The second is a geeky tech listserv and some of it is useful and some of it inane (kind of like my blogs).

The list that I'm considering quitting because it has become incredibly annoying is LM_Net. I'm thinking that it's ratio of usefulness-to-irritation factor has tipped toward more irritating than useful. I used to find a good useful nugget of content to mine every so often, but those are becoming rarer and rarer. More often than not, people will post things like,

HELP ! My boxes are missing on my Word AVERY Labels template. I can not remember how to retirieve the box. All I have is a blank page. I can tab but no box.

Can someone help me? what do I find to check/ click?

THanks !

Okay ... Everybody can use that kind of help every now and then. That's not the issue. It's when people follow-up that message with ones like this that really irritates me to no end!!!

Thanks to all who replied and came to my rescue. I have my solution.

Seriously??? Dude, you just asked a question to a list of 17,000 people. People took the time to give you a solution and it doesn't even occur to you to post the instructions in case even one of those 17,000 people might have the same problem??? WTF??? The thing is that this annoying guy is not alone. This seems to be becoming the list's norm rather than exception so the idea of the list being a community of mutual sharing and help is morphing into, "I need help. Help me. Thanks, I'm not going to help any of the rest of you."

That sucks!!!

on wha ... ???

2010-07-24T11:40:00.001-07:00

Really???

clipped from www.computerworld.com

News

Fake femme fatale shows social network risks

Researcher Thomas Ryan says fictitious Robin Sage character fooled many holding security, military and intelligence posts

By Jaikumar Vijayan

July 22, 2010 06:00 AM ET

Comments (24)

Recommended (42)

Facebook

Twitter

Share

Computerworld - Hundreds of people in the information security, military and intelligence fields recently found themselves with egg on their faces after sharing personal information with a fictitious Navy cyberthreat analyst named "Robin Sage," whose profile on prominent social networking sites was created by a security researcher to illustrate the risks of social networking.

The goal, said Ryan, was to determine how effective social networking sites can be in conducting covert intelligence-gathering activities.

on a tragic mess ...

2010-07-19T20:06:00.001-07:00

Oy!!! This makes my heart ache!!!

clipped from www.nytimes.com

A Popular Principal, Wounded by Government’s Good Intentions

BURLINGTON, Vt. — It’s hard to find anyone here who believes that Joyce Irvine should have been removed as principal of Wheeler Elementary School.

John Mudasigana, one of many recent African refugees whose children attend the high-poverty school, says he is grateful for how Ms. Irvine and her teachers have helped his five children. “Everything is so good about the school,” he said, before taking his daughter Evangeline, 11, into the school’s dental clinic.

Ms. Irvine’s most recent job evaluation began, “Joyce has successfully completed a phenomenal year.” Jeanne Collins, Burlington’s school superintendent, calls Ms. Irvine “a leader among her colleagues” and “a very good principal.”

Beth Evans, a Wheeler teacher, said, “Joyce has done a great job,” and United States Senator Bernie Sanders noted all the enrichment programs, including summer school, that Ms. Irvine had added since becoming principal six years ago.

on freedom to surf ...

2010-07-17T13:17:00.001-07:00

Some really thoughtful stuff from Doug Johnson (who is almost always really thoughtful) at the Blue Skunk Blog ...

clipped from doug-johnson.squarespace.com

Let kids use the Internet for non-school purposes

People who do surf the Internet for fun at work - within a reasonable limit of less than 20% of their total time in the office - are more productive by about 9% than those who don’t... Freedom to Surf (thanks to Committed Sardine for link)

Kids should be allowed to use the Internet at school for non-school purposes. Period.

Pursuing personal interests and recreational pursuits (so long as not illegal), should actually be encouraged, especially in our school libraries. Why?

1. Personal use gives teeth to the threat of suspending Internet use for disciplinary reasons. If Johnny likes accessing the world soccer scores each morning in the library, he may think twice about doing something that will suspend his Internet "privileges*." If students are only allowed "academic" use of the Internet, how many will actually find such a consequence punitive?

on crowds ...

2010-05-11T08:04:00.000-07:00

Our Tech Center is PACKED!!! We have forty-five computers available and forty of them are being used. Kids are working in groups using Movie Maker to edit together videos, images, and narrations in Spanish; writing up science labs that incorporate Excel graphs; researching current events from foreign countries for history; and word processing English and history papers.

The majority of questions I deal with are about writing citations for databases, trouble shooting Movie Maker file management issues, and how to set data up in Excel in order to be able to chart the data in a particular way. We've come a long way with use of technology, but kids still are not nearly as "technologically literate" as most people who don't work with kids in a computer lab think (including many classroom teachers). The kids I work with are quite versatile with Facebook (though I disagree with many of their privacy choices, but then I'm old ...). Some of our very "techie" kids sometimes don't know how to do very basic things in terms of productivity. Playing with technology doesn't always overlap with using technology to work.

I think that the whole digital native thing is a bunch 'o crap!

on signage ...

2010-04-17T19:13:00.000-07:00

Okay, I know that this is not exactly the most positive thing in the world, but it is what happens from time to time in a school library. In our building, I'm the guy who is into signage. Over the years I have found that middle schoolers pay attention to signage that has a bit of an edge and some humor (or sarcasm ...). Well, one of my signs made it into the Passive Aggressive Library Signs blog. Just so you know, I DO realize that some would not see this as a really positive thing, but you know ... I live a small life ... What can I say??? ... I thought that it was funny ...

on debate ...

2010-03-31T12:30:00.000-07:00

I just got back from a really nice meeting with Joey Miyamoto from Iolani School in Honolulu, Hawaii. Joey teaches English and courses on public speaking, and she serves as Iolani's high school debate coach.

My visit was spurred on by our Head of School who is piloting a Review and Renewal program for our curriculum. Our new Department of Communications was chosen to pilot the effort where we take some time to review our program offerings to see how they are serving our institution's goals and mission. As part of this effort, every member of our Department was asked to do a site visit to find out what other schools were doing in our curricular areas.

What I have learned, generally, through this process is that:

our Administration is quite (wonderfully) forward thinking in bringing communication skills to the fore--even going so far as to create a Department to be certain that students learn the skills of effective communication as they progress through the grades in the time that they are with us.
the teaching of public speaking and debate both as an official part of the curriculum AND as a co-curricular activity are quickly being eliminated from most of the public schools in the Islands (I would be surprised if the same were not true in all of Southern California as well).
very few schools, even among other independent schools, teach debate at the middle school level.

What I learned, specifically, during today's visitation is that:

debate is taught at Iolani as a component in their Frosh English curriculum which stresses oral communication. One issue that has been raised since this curricular model was developed is that teachers' backgrounds in the teaching of oral communications varies greatly.
competitive debate at the high school level is not limited to Lincoln-Douglas style debating. Students also have opportunities to debate in public policy and other styles (which I cannot remember now).
a course supporting competitive debate was considered, but it was felt that students interested in competitive debate were interested in taking other course offerings during the school day. Additionally, Joey felt that she did not want the "competitive debate" world to engulf all of her work day--she felt it important to maintain some separation between her regular work day and coaching debate.
an attorney who is a former parent and a former student who currently attends law school at the University of Hawaii nearby, assist in the coaching of the high school debate team.

Although this process and this visitation did not happen to offer any specific things that I might bring back and incorporate directly to the Debate 8 course or to the coaching of the middle school debate team, I found that there is GREAT value in being reminded that the opportunity to develop and teach a course in debate is rare and is something to be treasured.

That, for me, has made the process very worthwhile in and of itself ...

On a different note, the part of the visit that was the most fun for me from a purely personal standpoint is that before my meeting with Joey, I got a campus tour from my Middle Niece who is a seventh grader at Iolani this year. She sure seems a lot more worldly and mature when she's out in her "real world!"

just finished ...

2010-03-29T10:17:00.000-07:00

Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob--Lee Siegel

I often tell my eighth graders that if they aren't reading something that truly annoys and ticks them off at least once a week, they aren't visiting sources that are offering alternative viewpoints often enough. This book is one of those pieces that annoyed and ticked me offl, but unfortunately, not is a worthwhile way. I like reading about viewpoints that represent those that I don't hold, but in my humble opinion, Siegel does not present his contrarian view honestly.

In a short review on LibraryThing a member named mcur writes, "He writes about things like 'participatory culture' as though it is intrinsically bad, without really convincing me why. Derisive tone and some questionable assumptions make it an unpleasant, unconvincing read." Mcur goes on to state that the final section of the book makes it a worthwhile read and rates it four-and-a-half stars. I, on the other hand didn't see the redemptive part.

Siegel has some thought provoking ideas, but his dishoesty in presenting his evidence was too much for me to overcome. When he writes about Gladwell's The Tipping Point for example he gives the reader the impression that all that Gladwell does is sell marketing which I don't see as an honest representation of the book. I also found his analysis when writing about culture to be questionable and unconvincing. He uses the Lonelygirl15 phenomenon to illustrate how the web brings fame and opportunity simply based on marketing, but really, hasn't that always been true? We flock, for example, to the museums of Europe to see the works of the great masters, but fail to recognizet that many of the "masters" were "made" through the shrewd marketing of the Medici's.

So ... What's new?

Basically, it was an interesting read, but I still couldn't recommend it to others interested in the topic.

on the commons ...

2010-03-24T08:31:00.000-07:00

School librarians (at least the ones that I know ... and I know many) spend a lot of our time and energy wringing our hands fretting about plagiarism, fretting about citation, fretting about fair use. If that weren't enough, much of our remaining energy goes into fretting about why students commit plagiarism, fretting about why students do all they can to avoid doing citations, and fretting about why students don't always respect fair use.

Sometimes I get so caught up in my fretting (is that a word?) that I forget to take a step back and see the forest for the trees. Why is all of this important at all?

The way that I see it, it's all about participation in and respect for THE COMMONS.

Recently, we've FINALLY had some success in this arena! We've been teaching kids how to locate and properly use images and sound files licensed for reuse. As you might have already guessed we've been talking about this stuff for years, but for the first time we're seeing kids actually DO what they've been taught is the right thing to do even when a grade doesn't hang in the balance.

The big change is that we finally keyed into the fact that middle schoolers today see themselves as content creators (or at the very least, aspiring content creators). When we create book trailers in Windows Moviemaker, for example, we teach kids how to search for images licensed for reuse and how to give proper credit to the creators of those images, but we've been going a step further in talking with them about their trailers themselves ... "Who owns the copyright to the trailer that you are creating? If I want to show your book trailer at a Monday assembly, can I do it without your permission? Why or why not?"

By making kids understand that they are content creators and that they would like others to honor their rights as creative beings, they get it. They get that creation and maintenance of a commons is a really great thing and on some level they also understand that failure to respect the commons leads to tragedy of the commons.

We also have been talking about traditional citation in papers in the same way. "Bibliographies and works cited lists aren't just about plagiarism. In the bigger picture, we're introducing you practices in the work of academia and research. Some day, you may do ground breaking research on cancer and someone may reference your publishing as part of their research and lead other researchers to your work. In a lot of ways citation is about sharing ideas for the good of everybody ..."

Kids get that. They'll amaze you sometimes ...

on more cloudiness ...

2010-03-17T09:06:00.001-07:00

Do you see cloudiness in the forecast at all?

I'm not so sure that education can make a transition to the cloud anytime soon. Seeing how schools have dealt with change for over twenty years as an educator makes me wonder how companies change so effectively. How, for example, does a company like IBM go from being largely, a producer of room sized computers; to being a producer of desktops and laptops; to being a company that produces no desktops or laptops, but one that sells a ton of services, in a period of less than thirty years?

Based on my experience I can't imagine a school changing like that.

Do you think your school could move to the cloud?

Beyond just the technical, what would it take for your teaching faculty to be ready to exploit new capability and teach in ways that they couldn't with just some paper and a few pens?

I'm really wondering!

clipped from www.readwriteweb.com

Cloud-Based, Open-Source Future For Teachers?

A computing device for every teacher and student so they can access the Internet at school or at home? That, along with an embrace of cloud computing, Creative Commons, and open-source technologies is part of a new set of recommendations from the U.S. Department of Education.

On March 5, the department released an 80-page draft of its National Educational Technology Plan entitled Transforming Education: Learning Powered by Technology. The plan lays out an ambitious agenda for transforming teaching and learning through technology.

on more cloudiness ...

2010-03-17T09:04:00.001-07:00

clipped from www.readwriteweb.com

Cloud-Based, Open-Source Future For Teachers?

A computing device for every teacher and student so they can access the Internet at school or at home? That, along with an embrace of cloud computing, Creative Commons, and open-source technologies is part of a new set of recommendations from the U.S. Department of Education.

On March 5, the department released an 80-page draft of its National Educational Technology Plan entitled Transforming Education: Learning Powered by Technology. The plan lays out an ambitious agenda for transforming teaching and learning through technology.

on broadband access ...

2010-03-15T20:13:00.000-07:00

Thank goodness!

The FCC is finally coming out with a plan to encourage development of better broadband access to poor Americans (I don't mean Americans who don't make much money, I mean all Americans who have no choice but to put up with horrible, inconsistent, and barely broad broadband access compared to just about all of the rest of the developed world ...). It's about time! Broadband access in Prague this summer, for example, absolutely blazed relative to my broadband DSL access in Honolulu and my DSL access in Los Angeles.

At my former address, I had the choice of horribly bad broadband service offered to me through Time Warner Cable that constantly turned on and off so that trying to stream a Youtube video was an exercise in s-t-a-r-t-i-n-g-and-s-t-o-p-p-i-n-g-and-s-t-a-r-t-i-n-g-and-s-t-o-p-p-i-n-g until you just gave up half the time or the barely broad broad band speed offered to me through the ATT DSL.

Since moving to my new neighborhood, I have access to the fantastically consistent, wonderfully blazing speed offered by my newfangled ATT U-verse connection. What a difference it can make in a computing experience!

More here from PBS News Hour!

on new ideas with michael king ...

2010-03-15T18:54:00.000-07:00

I had the nice fortune to get invited to a talk given by Mr. Michael King who serves as "...worldwide leader for the IBM Education Industry with responsibility for strategy, marketing and sales across schools and higher education." Mr. King's presentation raised a number of interesting ideas about technology in schools, but what what captured my interest most of all were two questions that were raised at the very end of the session.

What does IBM look for in smart graduates?
What does IBM do in order to foster creativity in it's workforce?

I think two books I've been reading of late were most influential in bringing me down this line of questioning. I recently finished Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky and I'm currently about half way through Drive by Daniel Pink. Both books deal, each in their own way, with what motivates people.

I guess what I find interesting in all of this is how does an institution (like my school) foster an environment where teachers can be enabled to think and behave creatively and in turn how do we as educators enable students to think and behave creatively?

Any ideas out there?

on the prime catch ...

2010-03-15T08:06:00.000-07:00

I wish I was an optimist, but unfortunately if you were to ask a sampling of ten people who know me well to come up with a word to describe me "optimistic" is HIGHLY UNLIKELY to be a frequently uttered term. Seeing the world through a positve lens is not my default nature and as an educator this is a really bad quality. As a young teacher, I had a mentor who always reminded me that as a teacher my pessimistic tendancies made it vital that I make it my mission as a teacher to, "catch them being good." It's a mission that I forget easily. I focus on the loudest kid in the library, I focus on the pink lemonade spill on the table and floor, and I focus on the eighth grade boy playing video games in the overly crowded Tech Center. These things can really get you down. Being a prison gaurd is exhausting work!

It's time to reboot and it's time to remember to catch them being good. Our library is packed right now. I've got tables of kids writing on laptops. I've got frosh boys diligently working on locating primary sources for history term papers. I've got two girls sitting on the comfy (looking, but not truly) chairs reading copies of the book Haters.

There really is a lot to be optimistic about when you actually look for it ...

on smarter and smarter phones ...

2010-03-13T18:08:00.001-08:00

I guess an imperative upgrade from my ancient Motorola Razr is over the horizon ... JUST over the horizon. My old, old Cingular plan is so crazy cheap that I haven't wanted to touch it in order to be able to text more easily and browse the web on the fly, but it gets harder and harder to hold out.

clipped from consumerist.com

the digital age

United Airlines Begins Offering Digital Boarding Passes

By Chris Morran on March 12, 2010 5:08 PM

0 views

In a move to cut down on paper and ID fraud, United Airlines has announced passengers can now opt out of paper boarding passes and have digital boarding passes sent to their Internet-ready phones.

Much like the paper passes, the digital ones will have a barcode that can be scanned at the gate. Passengers will still be required to show their ID, along with the digital pass, when passing through security.

In addition to saving a bunch of trees, United believes that the digital option will make it more difficult to fake a boarding pass. They also hope that it will decrease the amount of time spent in line at both security and at the gate.

What do you think? Will digital barcodes do anything to reduce the amount of time you spend in line?

Paperless Boarding Pass Coming For United Flyers [The Denver Channel]

on reading ...

2010-03-12T14:07:00.000-08:00

This is fun!

on spam ...

2010-03-11T08:01:00.000-08:00

No, not the delicious canned meat that is close to reaching the status as its own food group in Hawaii where I grew up, but the flood of email messages that I do not want to receive from the American Library Association. I get message after message from the ALA. I login to my account and change my mail settings. I get more mail from the ALA. I scroll to the bottom of the mail message and I unsubscribe. I get a confirmation screen letting me know that I have been unsubscribed. The I get yet more mail messages.

Bah! I want to be a member of ALA, but now they're just bugging me.

on wolverines ...

2010-03-10T20:45:00.001-08:00

Oh my ... The wolverine is our school mascot. First we find out that it eats dead animals, now this ... Oy! LOL

clipped from www.sfgate.com

Lone, lovelorn wolverine baffles scientists

A lone wolverine discovered in California almost 90 years after the species supposedly went extinct here is apparently searching for a mate that he might never find.

The muscular carnivore with dark fur and a telltale almond-colored stripe was first photographed in 2008 roaming the Tahoe National Forest.

The finding caused a sensation among wildlife experts, but nobody has yet figured out how the wolverine found its way to the Sierra - his nearest relative is thought to be two states away.

Big Building, Lots of Books

on moving day ...

on information technology ...

on middle school real estate ...

on digital tracking ...

How The Biggest Sites Are Stalking You And Reselling Your Info

on google+ ...

Google Plus – Read the Fine Print BEFORE You Sign Up

on the labschool@punahou ...

on the anatomy of a computer virus ...

on juvenoia ...

The Ninny State

on endangered species ...

In Lean Times, Schools Squeeze Out Librarians

on a great response to young adult literature bashing ...

There’s Dark Things In Them There Books!

on young adult lit bashing ...

Darkness Too Visible

Contemporary fiction for teens is rife with explicit abuse, violence and depravity. Why is this considered a good idea?

on copyright ...

What You Don't Know About Copyright, but Should

on the librarian infographic ...

on bright futures and lots of hope ...

on stuff that's new to me ...

on getting our undies in a bunch ...

on catching up or leading the way ...

on hashtag #grumpylibrarian ...

on rethinking education from michael wesch ...

on school bullies ...

Study links teenage bullying to social status

As students get more popular, they're more likely to harass their peers, finds a study that reinforces an axiom of high school life.

on those wacky digital natives ...

on watching others use technology ...

just finished ...

just finished ...

just finished ...

just finished ...

on second chances … !

on the big series of tubes known as the internet ...

Pandora's Blog

What’s worse: TV or the Internet?

on things debatable ...

on man as a rabid dog ...

on monday assembly with terry pratchett ...

on back to school day ...

on listserv ettiquette ...

on wha ... ???

Fake femme fatale shows social network risks

Researcher Thomas Ryan says fictitious Robin Sage character fooled many holding security, military and intelligence posts

on a tragic mess ...

on freedom to surf ...

Let kids use the Internet for non-school purposes

on crowds ...

on signage ...

on debate ...

just finished ...

on the commons ...

on more cloudiness ...

Cloud-Based, Open-Source Future For Teachers?

on more cloudiness ...

Cloud-Based, Open-Source Future For Teachers?

on broadband access ...

on new ideas with michael king ...

on the prime catch ...

on smarter and smarter phones ...

United Airlines Begins Offering Digital Boarding Passes

on reading ...

on spam ...

on wolverines ...

Lone, lovelorn wolverine baffles scientists

Contemporary fiction for teens is rife with explicit abuse,
violence and depravity. Why is this considered a good idea?