What I'm Reading: Romance Books

Ah...teen romance novels. Call it listening to too much Taylor Swift, or actually having mostly positive memories of high school (boys included), but I loved this week's genre. Interestingly, I couldn't remember any romance/love stories that I loved as a teen reader but I devoured three of my picks in a matter of days this week. I started off my exploration by searching "Popular Lists" on my nook and quickly found a Contemporary YA Romance list with 53 titles to sift through. My neighboring library has a much larger YA section than my local one, and I got lucky finding two of my top picks there as well as finding another one on display. I suspect I may be checking out a few more of these once my class is over and I can get back to leisure reading!

As in previous weeks, I tried to find at least one title that (might) appeal to a teen boy, though this genre was a little more difficult. Per usual, in no particular order...

What I'm Reading: Funny Books

This week, we are focusing on funny books. This is kind of a tough one for me...it's not that I don't think I have a sense of humor, or don't enjoy laughing (though who would admit to that, I suppose!), but I am not really drawn to comedies in any of my entertainment choices (books, movies, stand up, etc.). Throw in that I am looking at books that are meant to be funny to teenage boys and girls and I'm even more out of my element. But as with anything that puts you outside of your comfort zone, it's certainly not a bad thing!

The book I was assigned to read this week was Better Nate Than Ever by Tim Federle, which I did enjoy, and had some laugh out loud moments. Others I have found in my searching this week are highlighted below, again in no particular order.

What I'm Reading: Award-Winners

It works out well that my prior "What I'm Reading" topic fits nicely into the required blogging of my Lit course. Each week, we'll be looking at a different category of YA literature, searching for titles published in the last 10 years or so, and providing annotations of some of the books we find.

This week, it's Award-Winners. For any of you non-library/education folks, the Newbery has been the "king" of the awards, dating all the way back to 1922, and has included such classics as A Wrinkle in Time (1963), Bridge to Terabithia (1978), and Sarah, Plain and Tall (1986). Another award list that I discovered this week, where I found some quality books was the Michael L. Printz Award. Perhaps it's because the list is newer, and also solely focused on YA books (vs. the Newbery which includes children's titles as well), but I jotted down a ton of books I wanted to read from this list. A 3rd list I focused on this week were the National Book Awards (Young People's Literature category, abbreviated as NBA further in this post), where I also found some excellent titles.

The genre I nearly always gravitate towards is realistic fiction, so I made a conscious effort to mix up what I read this week (though as you'll see, I couldn't resist including at least one in my list!). In one of our class discussions a few weeks ago, we talked about the difficulty in drawing in teen male readers, so I also made an effort to include at least one title that would appeal to them. In no particular order, here are my award-winning choices for the week:

And, I'm back...

I really had the best of intentions when I made my last post for my course last semester about keeping my blog going, but alas...

In sum, I wound up applying (and getting accepted) to the M. Ed program in Library Media Studies at Salem State and launched right into a Survey of Children's Literature course this summer, which explains my blogging hiatus. Lots of reading of excellent children's books (plus a killer midterm assignment, including 66 annotations, but who's counting?) took the place of my blogging. But, now we are onto the YA portion of the class and we are back to required blogging (hi, Barb). Which is a good thing, I think.

Hopefully, I can keep it going this time!

10 Things Every Teacher Should Know About Technology

As previewed in my last post...

1. It’s never too late to start!
2. You don’t need to know everything…ask for help from others (students and teachers at your school, virtually, over social networks) that you know have successfully used a new technology
3. You don’t need to do everything all at once – make a goal to try one new thing each month (or semester, or year), while tweaking/optimizing the things you are already doing
4. Don’t introduce an app or technology just for the sake of doing something “technological”– (Alternative wording found from the original blog post we read: "Use technology only when it makes rich, real and relevant curriculum richer, more real and more relevant”)
5. Share what you do with other teachers – it’s the best way to get new ideas and get input to make your lessons even better. Corollary: Find a champion, that teacher who is most open to collaboration, and work together to create a knock-out finished product. Then, promote the heck out that success to encourage other teachers to utilize the library as a resource
6. Think about what your end goal is and then find the technology solution that will accomplish your goal (vs. asking yourself “How do I use this technology?”)
7. Have a backup plan (or two)
8. Think outside the teacher box – use the experiences of friends/family in other professions to uncover technologies you might not have otherwise thought of
9. Be organized! Create a system that will work for you to stay on top of new trends, tools, technologies, and best practices
10. Have fun!

What's Old Is New...

This is my last "assigned" blog post for this course...crazy how fast time flies! Overall, it's been a really great experience having this blog to organize my thoughts about what I've learned over the course of the semester, and one that I hope to continue as I make my way through the program.

Our very first assignment back in January was to provide our own list of the "10 Things Every Teacher Need to Know About Technology." For this final blog post, we've been asked to revisit our list and add/edit/update as we see fit, based on what we've learned in this course. As I look back at my list, there's not a huge change for my v2.0, mostly just a few tweaks here and there and some reordering.

I did take exchange one tip completely, replacing "Understand how to differentiate for all skill levels..." with "Be organized..." Not that I don't think differentiating is unimportant, but I think, for today's students especially, technology is a more level playing field than other subject areas, and so much of student learning comes from simply working with and experimenting with a new tool (much as we did in this class). So while I think having an understanding of how to introduce a new tool, provide tutorials, etc. for different types of learners, I don't think it cracks my top 10. On the contrary, without having some sort of mechanism for organizing your online "world," you will never have a chance of taking advantage of all the resources out there, or remembering, weeks or months down the road, something that you wanted to use in a certain setting. Using tools like Twitter and RSS to connect/learn from other LBS professionals and Diigo or Delicious to organize the useful links you do find are paramount to staying on top of the ever-changing world of technology in education.

In the spirit of not making this blog post too long, I'll give my v2.0 it's very own post, but here's my original version with the tracked changes. 

More on OPACs

In short, the LMS I interviewed was pretty happy with her OPAC, and as I researched other options, I didn't see a compelling reason to move from one to another.

I do see the value in having the system hosted by a 3rd party, especially given the situation that transpired in my district this spring, so that was what I recommended in my presentation.

For your reading pleasure...

The Case for Keeping Destiny