Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Today's Food for Thought

While catching up on the blogs I read (I was only 380 behind because of an Easter Break without internet access), I was directed to this interesting movie. Take a few moments and watch "It's Not on the Test". I'm sure there are some good things about No Child Left Behind but I just can't think of them right now.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Getting to Know GoogleDocs

My assistant has been struggling with Thing 9 (and I want to know GoogleDocs well enough to teach it). So yesterday I started a new document with some of my favorite quotations about reading and chose her to collaborate on it with me. It was fun to sit almost side-by-side and work on the same document. I feel a little bit more familiar with it now but I'm not ready to run it out in front of a group of students yet. I'm not worried about the ones for whom technology is home ground and who will rapidly outpace me. I'm worried about the kids who aren't comfortable with technology. I want to know enough to be able to give useful assistance when they have problems.

On the home front (or at least the pleasure reading front), I just finished The Fox by Sherwood Smith which is the second in an epic fantasy series following Inda. It was excellent and now I am eagerly awaiting the third volume which is scheduled for publication on July 1. The story has lots of adventure with interesting young adult characters and has just a touch of magic. It was lots of fun to read.

Friday, March 7, 2008

Area Eccentric Reads Entire Book


Hooray for eccentrics! And hooray for The Onion.

And now to practice my own eccentricity and finish reading Inda. I even brought it with me to my tax appointment and my preparer wrote down the author and title to check out for her own reading. NOTE: I am a pusher and darn proud of it!

Saturday, March 1, 2008

Just a Saturday

L I B Pewter Lowercase Letter r A r002 Y T H i N Bead Letter G

I have spent a good part of today trying to add my books to LibraryThing. I didn't know that I was taking on such a big project when I began.

Yes, I know I have lots of books. But it seems like more when you have to handle each one. This task would never even have been begun if I hadn't purchased the CueCat Scanner from LibraryThing. At least it catches most of the books recent enough to have scanable bar codes. Of course, it missed all of my ancient Travis McGee books! Now there is a literary hero to die for!

I moved out of my family room today (having reached the letter L) and into my guest room where the letters L through S live. I just finished through the letter M and have reached a total of 2329 books.

Now I want to read some books. I started Sherwood Smith's Wren to the Rescue this morning. Since I really enjoyed Crown Duel, I wanted to see if I would enjoy the rest of her books. So far, so good.

I'd also like to give a hearty recommendation for Dragon Slippers by Jessica Day George. One of my students came in raving about it. So I took it home and read it that night. I thought it was excellent. It reminded me of Robin McKinley's Damar books and Patricia Wrede's Dragon books which shouldn't come as a surprise considering the George mentions them as inspirations.