Teen Read Week 2010

It has been ages since I posted in this blog. Is anyone still out there? All of my energies are used on our school blog and this poor blog is left all alone. Wanted to share our fun Teen Read Week opening day activities. Since the theme for Teen Read Week is Books with beat@your library, we decided to kick off the week with a dance. So much fun!!! Our students have been dancing, checking out books and taking pictures with favorite books.

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Eclipse Review

As much as I have enjoyed the last two Twilight movies, Eclipse is my favorite so far. Seems I am not alone.

Texas Library Conference

Once again I had a great time at the Texas Library Conference. The authors were all great and the sessions were very helpful. Often there are two or three sessions at the same time that sound so interesting deciding which to attend is getting more difficult every year. The only session that was very disappointing was one on Facebook and your Library. Almost everyone in the session had a facebook account and like me were interested in starting a page for our libraries. I had so many questions, and unfortunately none were answered. The presenter proceeded to show us how to set up personal pages which had nothing to do with what any of us wanted. The frustration in the room was obvious and many people walked out of the session. This was especially disappointing to me because there was another session at the same time that I could have attended and didn't so I could learn how to set up an account for my library. Oh well, I have the summer to figure it out.
Getting Suzanne Collins autograph turned out to be another adventure as we were told she would only sign 200 autographs. Wristbands were given out at the authors signing area and people, including myself, were literally running to be one of the 200. You could hear the huffing and the puffing once we all got in line. It was all fun and then we all had a chance to visit with each other and share our library stories.
Until next year, see y'all in Austin.

New Toy

Look at our new toy!!! It takes so little to make me happy and this has definitely made me happy. We have a new ceiling mounted video projector and are looking forward to trying it out. No more lugging out the cart with the laptop and the projector and trying to squeeze in between the library tables. Our hook up is easy to access and will not interfere in any way with our ceiling screen. This will truly facilitate Freshmen orientation and all the other presentations that we do with classes throughout the year. Another added bonus is the new speakers that have been installed for "surround sound". Thank you Mrs. Guajardo and Mr. Hinojosa for always thinking of the library. You guys are great.

Jelly Bean Contest

It is that time of year again! Time to guess how many jelly beans are in the jar. Every year we diligently count jelly beans and place the jar on our circulation counter and let our students have at it. Personally, I enjoy watching how everyone goes about trying to figure out the amount. On the one hand you have your guessers who come in once a day to take a guess. On the other hand you have your mathematicians who will try and calculate the mass and volume and attempt to measure the length and width of the jelly beans in the jar and apply those math formulas learned in class. No one knows how many beans are in the jar but Mrs. Reed and myself and we are not telling. Winner will be announced on Thursday, April 1st. The prize is a huge Easter basket full of goodies. Good Luck.

Library on Burros

What a great story, just had to share.

Valentine Card Contest

Our library sponsored our annual Create Your Own Valentine Card Contest. Once again we had quite a few entries. Our Art teachers, Mr. Trejo and Mr. Estrada were the judges and both commented on the variety of entries and the creativity of the cards. Thanks again to everyone who participated and congratulations to our winners. Pictures of our students with their cards and prizes will be posted here soon.

Wiki or Blog?

I had pretty much decided a while back to turn our library web page into a wiki. Have actually been working on it off and on for a couple of weeks and had planned on linking it to our school web page in the fall and start off fresh. I recently read an article in the January issue of SLJ, "Putting your best foot forward" by Carolyn Foote on how some schools are using blogs as their library page. The idea being that it is in a format the students are used to and you can keep it constantly updated and fresh. One of the examples shown was Milpitas High School Library. I must admit, I liked the format and some of the widgets the librarian is using. I noticed that when you linked on the Pathfinders the links take you to a wiki. So even if we switched over to a blog format should we still keep our Wiki? Then why even switch? Maybe we should just keep our Wiki and continue to link our blog to that. Now the dilemma, should I switch? Our wiki is coming together, still needs tweaking though. I tend to use this blog for professional blogging and Porter Reads I have linked to school. Porter Reads would be the obvious choice if we decided to use a blog instead of the wiki. Decisions, decisions.