Books: I Am an Emotional Creature

We know Eve Ensler.  We know what she is famous for; however, our students often are not familiar with her.  I Am an Emotional Creature is a vivid picture in poetic monologues of what it is like to become a woman in today's world.

To create the book, Eve interviewed girls all over the world.  She then wrote interior monologues to convey the variety of their experiences and emotions.

This would be great "next read" for a student who is reading Patricia McCormick's Sold, Laurie Halse Andersen's Speak, or any of Ellen Hopkins books.

Books: Junie B. Jones and the Mushy Gushy Valentine

My five-year-old twins have begun showing interest in my older daughter's collection of Junie B. Jones books.  They wanted to start with book one, but we seem to have misplaced it.  The next best place to start was, of course a book with a Valentine's Day theme.

Nora and Adele assured me that Junie B.'s behavior would get her in trouble in their kindergarten classrooms.

Junie B. is fun to read out loud.  Park has a great ear for how kids talk and a great eye for the details we sometimes miss as teachers and parents.

Junie B. kept us laughing with her search for her secret admirer.

Junie B. Jones and the Mushy Gushy Valentime shows the difficulties and joys of friendship around the sometimes awkward holiday of Valentine's Day.

Library Video--Dark Humor Helps Us Consider Library Stereotypes

The dark humor of this video helps us consider our stereotypes of librarians and makes us feel cool at the same time.

My First Screencast

Students often ask for help when they are confronted with the task of setting up a document in MLA format. Most of our computers are currently running Microsoft Office Word 2010, so I used Jing to create a narrated screencast of how to start a document in MLA format.

Cyber Safety

For the past two weeks, I have been presenting Cyber Safety lessons to the Freshmen at McLane High School. Other names for these lessons are Digital Citizenship and Cyberbullying. The web includes many resources for interactive, free lessons to help students make good choices when they are on the web. I have bookmarked some of the sites on my Diigo Cybersafety Page. Here are two very compelling videos that come from the Safe Florida Cyber Safety Project. The first is Justin's Story. He shares how cyber predators began to take advantage of him when, at 13 years old, he installed a webcam on his home computer:


The second video is Alicia's Story of how she met a man online who lured her from home then abducted and enslaved her:

Dystopian Young Adult Literature--Why Is It So Popular?

With the final installments of the Hunger Games (MockingJay by Suzanne Collins) and Chaos Walking (Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness) series coming out at about the same time, I'm wondering how to guage young adult interest in issues surrounding the future of our world (their world) specifically issues around war, what war does to people, and the price of peace. Will books like these get students involved in politics or discourage them from seeing government and democracy as an anwer to the world's problems? Both series present flawed leaders and jaded heroes--heroes who are thought to be the possible next leader but have seen too much of "leadership" to want to be part of leading their world.

Scribblar--Free White Board Collaboration Tool

At the recent Central Valley Computer Using Educators Conference, math teachers demonstrated how they hold virtual office hours with a new free web tool called Scribblar, a slick and simple tool for online collaboration that even allows participants to use their microphones to ask questions and respond to others. The teacher who demonstrated said he likes it much better when he can draw with a wireless sketchpad instead of the mouse. I could also see using this as an interactive and collaborative white board in the library.