The missing piece

Just after my school went on Winter Break I headed off to my former school (easier to see everyone in one place!).  They, like several schools I know, are struggling with the question of going 1:1 with some device, as well as the question of if they do, what device should it be?  Since my…

Minor Musings

Now that I'm tidying up from a year-end reading binge, it's time to clear out some of my saved links on Twitter and in my RSS feed.  Lucky you! Books, Reading, Etc. Thinking about your collection?  Ponder Why YA Lit Matters to Everyone and What's New About New Adult If last year's summer reading list…

Minor Musings

For those about to go on Break, some things to explore and/or ponder. Books, Reading, Etc.. Maybe some of Sarah's ideas will help create the culture of reading I'm hoping for! Breaking up (with books) is hard to do... Very glad I have a break, so I can seriously peruse these Best Of lists and…

Minor Musings

Sorry I missed September - here's two month's worth! Books, Reading, Etc.. Who doesn't love a good fairy-tale update? In case you missed it, my old friend Jandy links to Neil Gaiman's defense of libraries. School Life A recent project about the Republican Party's ideas about debt and fiscal planning led me to give my…

LOTS or HOTS?

Over the past year I've taken classes towards a certificate in eLearning and Online Teaching.  The most interesting thing has been seeing  different approaches to being an online teacher - each of my teachers has had different interaction techniques, different ways of posting and making the material available, different rubrics for in-class discussion and (obviously)…

Progressive Education

My cousin's son has just started his high school career at BHSEC, following a year of testing and interviews and worry about the next phase of his academic career. In learning more about what he'd be experiencing there, I started thinking about schools and progressive pedagogy and "flipping classrooms" and all the things that we're…

Minor Musings

Books, Reading, Etc. More on E-Reading: A Midterm Progress Report  (I don't annotate, but I can see the appeal for many readers... and the loss.  What will we do when marginalia is completely lost? It's a great insight into the reader's mind.) Why social media isn't the magic bullet for self-epublished authors (and this article…

Don’t blame the students

I've mentioned before that I'm on this year's YALSA Excellence in Non-Fiction for Young Adults award committee and will be spending eight hours over this next weekend discussing the over 40 books we've read (ok, not all of them - we'll concentrate on the ones that have been nominated).  In other news, I've been asked…

Nothing new under the sun

I'm sure everyone's been reading about the recent plagiarism issue over on Story Siren (thanks to Liz Burns for the great round-up).  My friend Chuck talks about the "kitchen sinking" that often happens when something like this occurs. It's beyond the question of citation, though.  There's the question of consequences. When I was at Hamilton…

It’s not just about the awards

Perusing my twitter feed today, I saw this from @TheDaringLibrarian: My response was that J.K. Rowling isn't American, thus her work is excluded as per the Newbery rules, and that it was too bad that some parents see award-winning books as automatically being better reads than those that haven't won awards. @Sophiebiblio then added: And…