Mary Lou's Book Blog

Crunch Time Approaches

2009-06-09T13:54:00.000-07:00

June is here, and traffic in the library has increased. Year-end projects, preparations for awards nights, last-minute research, and studying are keeping students focussed and our staff running. Yes, it's stressful, but it's also completely energizing. I am constantly amazed by the quality work put out by our students at North Battleford Comprehensive High School. And the creativity abounds. We've got students using our editing rooms and video cameras (reporters sporting burlap and boils coming to us "live" from the medieval streets of York), while others are searching infotrac and the net for information on the Korean War and H1N1. The book stacks are crawling with students writing papers on everything from the history of Op Art to a comparison of The Great Gatsby and The Beloved. Our craft area is kept busy with students working on visual representations of their personalities for Psych 30, and the Commercial Cooking students are putting together wonderful menus for their mock restaurants. And in the Library Science Classroom, Mr. Wyatt's History IB students are taking turns giving seminars on single-party states and modern wars.

Wow!

I am here on a temporary contract which ends June 27. My learning curve this year has been pretty much vertical, and the job has been stressful at times. But boy am I going to miss all the action, problem-solving, searching for the right information, and...above all...the contact with students whose minds are engaged. The Library is a great place to be.

The Big Read - Global Action Week

2009-04-28T08:49:00.000-07:00

April 20-24 was Global Action Week--a global campaign to raise awareness of the 75 million children and 747 million adults who do not have access to the basic human right of education. The goal of the campaign is also to remind governments of their commitments to the funding of literacy and education programs nationally and internationally.

A big part of Global Action Week is The Big Read, an event that happened world-wide on April 22, in which our school took part. The Global Campaign for Education and other partners in Global Action Week created a wonderful, life-changing on-line book of short stories about how education improves our lives and makes the world a better place. These stories are written and contributed by some pretty remarkable people, both Canadian (like Eric Walters, Frank B. Edwards and Francoise Lepage), and international (for instance, Paulo Coelho, Nelson Mandela, and Michael Morpugo).

Here at NBCHS, the Big Read was a real success. On April 22, throughout the school, over 200 students (adding to the 10 million participants world-wide) got together in small groups to listen to local actors, playwrites and education professionals read stories from The Big Read Book, discuss what literacy means in our lives, and sign a petition asking our government to do all it can to ensure that all people have the chance to go to school and learn to read. It was gratifying to hear the students' responses to the stories, and their connection to the cause. This is definitely an event that I would recommend other school librarians get involved in annually!

Pictures to follow when I get them.

That's a lot of Pi--Sorry, no Ice Cream

2009-01-14T15:02:00.000-08:00

Wow, I managed to upload that last video with very little difficulty. I think I'll try once more, just to be sure I know what I'm doing. This is a video of my daughter reciting Pi, up to 297 digits after the decimal. She has already increased this by another hundred or so.

Our Very Merry Mascot- Vigo the Viking

2009-01-04T15:28:00.000-08:00

The division's Learning Resource Consultant, Donna DesRoches, gave me an early Christmas present--a Flip video camera--with the understanding (gulp) that I learn how to use it over the holidays. I took a short video of our school mascot "entertaining the troops." Isn't he (or she) cute? My skill with the Flip certainly leaves a lot to be desired. I'll have to keep working at it.

ISITS Meeting

2008-12-03T13:02:00.000-08:00

We have been asked to reflect on the day. This is what I've come up with:

We've spent the day using collaborative technology to create a digital citizenship curriculum draft for our school division. It addresses a lot of the issues I see arising every day in the Library--plagiarism, copyright, privacy, safety...
On the lighter side, the quote of the day is "What does it smell like when things go wrong?"(Terrell Hill).
Macklin has given all their replaced computers to a Senior Citizen's group--great idea.

Getting into the Story

2008-12-02T20:27:00.001-08:00

Yep, that's me...having a bad hair (and face) day.

Having fun with Wordle

2008-11-25T13:57:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, just playing around, Barb(my Library Tech) Wordled a book description and asked me to guess the book. I thought it such fun, I've decided to make it a contest for students. I've wordled about eight book descriptions so far. Once I've got a few more, we'll post them in the library, and advertize the contest over the announcements. If you'd like to see more, visit http://www.wordle.net/

Lost in Cyberspace Part II: Finding my way

2008-10-16T13:58:00.000-07:00

It's nearing the end of the workshop and my brain feels very full. Still very anxious about how much I don't know and don't understand, but very optimistic at the same time. Why the optimism, when I'm surrounded by techies who talk another language and use their laptops like an extension of their bodies? Because I am surrounded by techies who talk another language and use their laptops like an extension of their bodies! I'm in good hands.

Lost in Cyberspace!

2008-10-16T12:40:00.000-07:00

I'm at this tech workshop and learning a bunch. Excited, but extremely anxious at the same time.