the big house library

 
 
Picture

petaluma can be pretty hot and slow in the summertime. that's why you should check out the sonoma county library's summer reading program! :) reading books is anything but boring, and plus, they've got awesome air conditioning! :)

remember, flatlining is fine for a few days, but brain rot is a very bad thing! read books! they're good for you! :)

p.s. isn't this sock puppet so cute?! :) :) :)

 
 
Picture
 
we ♥ edward cullen @ the big house library, as you can see! :) he sort of rocks our socks! :) in fact, our nutty librarian ms. koval bought a lifesize cardboard cutout of lil eddy to live with us in our library forever! :)

casa students have, for the most part, have totally gotten into it! they take their pictures with him on their iPhones and upload them to their MySpace. take a look! it's cute! :)
  
   
there've been a couple of occasions when someone (and you know who you are!) tried to walk out of the library with him. (like we wouldn't see that a 6-foot cardboard cutout was missing!) fortunately his backside is plastered with tattle tapes, so the perps were immediately embarased when the armageddon alarm went off! the rest of us got quite a kick out of that! we laughed out loud! :)
 
and then there are those of you who are not on team edward or team jacob and are not into twilight at all. that's cool. different strokes. until the twilight mania ends, you can proudly say:
Picture
 
 
Picture

 
Yesterday 5 Casa faculty members -- math department chair Scot Wigert, math teacher Stacy Helterbran, science teacher Donna Reed, counselor Paul Koene, and librarian Anna Koval -- attended a New Frontier 21 symposium in Oakland, California.

The topic was  Creating Powerful Learning Environments, Transforming School Culture and the focus was on How to Overcome Staff Division. The presenter was the fabulous Dr. Anthony Muhammad.

We learned a ton and got totally inspired! :) But don't just take my word for it, see for youself! Read my notes on our PLC wiki and take a look at my conference photos on Flickr.

Sure, some will say we drank the Kool-Aid, but if Kool-Aid is what it takes to ensure that all Casa students are successful, then pour me a sloshing-full cup! :)  

 
BAYA 05/21/2009
 
Picture
BAYA or Bay Area Young Adult Librarians is a totally awesome organization for public and school teen services librarians in the Bay Area, and I am so proud to be a part of it! I learn SO much at every meeting I attend. I just wish there were more than 4 meetings per year! :)

In March 2009, we were at the Oakland Public Library's Main Branch, and let me just say for the record that their Teen Zone is totally and completely mind-blowingly cool! :)

This month we were at the Milpitas Library in Santa Clara County, and their Teenopolis was way fun, too! :)

Here are my flickr pics from our meetings. Just wait til you see what these awesome libraries are have got going on for the teens in their cities! :)

 
snaps :) 05/20/2009
 

Scott Eskro -- the Librarian at Elk River High School in Minnesota -- emailed me from this website. He had the following to say:

Picture

I think it is so sweet that he not only bothered to tell me personally that he digs what we do here, but he blogged about it, too! Now that's what I call giving proper props! :)

Picture

Anyway, I learned some cool stuff from his library website and his blog that I totally plan to use in my library...

Like RockYou for photosharing and slideshows...

Picture

And FedEx Kinkos for printing in online...

Picture
That's right, kids, you can upload stuff you need to print to the FedEx Kinko's website, they'll print your stuff while you party, and you can pick it up in the morning on your way to class! :) How cool is that?! :) I wish I had that option when I was in college! :)

So, in the spirit of giving credit where credit is due, I'm thanking Scott Eskro for teaching me about all this sick new stuff and for giving me snaps for the stuff I taught him! :)

 
 

Guess what, Casa?! :) Now you can read the Gaucho Gazette online! :)

Yup, I taught myself how to use Adobe InDesign CS2 yesterday and PDfed all 20 separate docs into the 1 big huge mega-file you see before you. It will probably take forever to download over our school's slow network, but still! You can now read our totally awesome school newspaper online! Yay woo! :)

Ms. Robbins, I made you this screencast so you and your journalists can see and hear how to do this all by yourselves. :)

 
 

i saw this on p. 38  of the may 2009 issue of american libraries in an article called "how the world sees us" (us meaning librarians) and loved it! it was originally posted on punditkitchen.com.

 
vocab up! :) 05/11/2009
 

with finals imminent, and summer looming, why not find some fun new ways to study the stuff you need to know! :)


like quizlet, for example. this is a site that lets you create flashcards online and share them with friends. they've also got some fun and diverting games (like space race) to help you practice your vocabs! :)


vocab grabber is another neat vocaby treat. :) it helps you analyze and visualize chunks of text you paste in. the above is an example i made using the lyrics to "It's Such a Good Feeling" by Mr. Rogers! :)
 


word sift also helps you visualize chunks of text, but it takes it one step further by ferreting out the academic vocab. (i guess those lyrics aren't very academic...) :)


wordle is the old-school original word cloud generator. see how fun and happy mr. rogers' words are when you wordle them! :)


and last but not least is tag cloud generator, which does exactly what the name of the site suggests, but beyond that, it links those words to wikipedia articles or delicious links! to illustrate the awesomeness, take a look at what it did with my all-time favorite song lyrics! :)

so the moral of this story is that you gotta study, so you might as well make it more fun and colorful! :)

and one last note to the college-bound: these sites are great ways to cram in all those chapters y