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.

Birthday Song

A pleasant surprise. The Estudiantina came to sing The Maninatas song for my birthday. So many talented students on our campus.

Library Statistics

Well Porter Readers, you did it again. This second six weeks was just as busy as the first six weeks with everyone checking out books and magazines. In my last post I suggested that we should aim for 4000, well we hit 4003!!! That is just wonderful. The numbers are high once again in the 741.5 area but we had almost 1200 circulations in Fiction. New books are arriving soon so let's keep reading through the holidays.

Anime Club

Our wonderful Anime kids recently had a meeting in the library. They watched a video and our club President quizzed them afterwards. The winner received an Anime key chain. It was a hard quiz considering the video was in Japanese.

Cross Country Team

Good Luck to our Boys Cross Country Team as they get ready to compete this week-end at Regionals. All those early morning practices and ten mile runs paid off. "May the wind always be at your back".

Library Statistics

I knew it was a busy first six weeks but really I had no idea! We circulated over 3,600 items this six weeks. Most of our circulations are in the fiction area, how great is that?
Our other big area of circulation is of course 741.5, gee I wonder why. Porter Readers are great! Let's keep up the reading and try for 4,000 circulations.

Banned Books Week

Banned Books Week is celebrated the week of September 26 - October 3. The central message for Banned Books Week is that censorship violates the right of free expression. Observed annually, this ALA event celebrates the freedom to read books that may be considered inappropriate or express unpopular ideas.

We have set up our annual display showcasing some of the challenged titles. This display always generates interest and discussion among our students and faculty as they see some of their favorite titles in our display case.

While in Austin this past summer I visited my favorite store Book People and found the following bumper sticker : Everything I need to know about life I've learned by reading Banned Books.

From the Fields to the Stars

What an inspirational story. This just proves that "Si se puede". We are a high school that is predominantly Hispanic with a Migrant population. It takes hard work, sacrifice and dedication but everything is possible.

From the Fields to the Stars

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Oscar Casares

Porter High School graduate and author Oscar Casares was in town this past week. Mr. Casares did a reading of his new book, Amigoland, at the Brownsville Fine Arts Museum. He answered questions and autographed books for the hometown crowd.

His first book, Brownsville: stories, a collection of short stories about life in our very unique border town was well received. I am sure his new novel will do just as well. Mr. Casares has a unique style of writing, very descriptive and quite his own.

11.5 Thing # 11.5

A big thanks to Spring Branch ISD for letting me participate once again. This was much better than just being a lurker. Once again I have learned so much and am so anxious to share with my faculty when school starts.

My favorite discovery has been using screen capture and glogster. GoView is so easy to use, I love it. I am currently working a summer bridge program for incoming freshmen and have created a short video on how to search for books using OPAC. Super easy to do and even easier to embed in my wiki. Students pay attention to a video, especially a quick short one. Am still playing around with Glogster.

My learning goals remain the same. I consider myself a lifelong learner and this program if anything has reemphasized this. Even an old geezer like me can learn new things and have loads of fun. My favorite part is that now even some of the younger faculty members will come and ask me questions about technology.

The most unexpected thing for me is how quickly technology is changing the way we live. It took me a while to Twitter but now I really rely on it and all of the blogs I keep up with in my Google Reader. What sometimes troubles me is when I read the tweets of all of the people I follow and keep up with the blogs I follow I begin to feel really inferior. When do these people find the time to do so much online? Do they not have families? Do they not cook, shop, read books, visit with friends, walk their dog, go to the movies, sleep? I know I've said this before but I often feel like I'm playing catch-up all of the time.

Really I can't think of anything that could be done differently to make this experience a better one. There is always lots of support and encouragement and the whole atmosphere is very non-threatening. Thank you Spring Branch once again. This Valley girl is a big fan.

11.5 Thing # 11

Digital citizenship is a great topic and one I am glad is a part of 11.5 things. A few years ago at TLA I attended a session given by Alan November. He discussed how many websites are deceiving. He showed the audience a Martin Luther King web site which was really set up by the KKK and was propaganda. Site evaluation is one of our students' least favorite things to do and one that few teachers enforce. Every year during Freshmen orientation I mention the MLK website in an attempt to teach the students not to take everything on the web at its face value. Stephen Downes on Cool Cat teacher says that a person who reads a website and believes it to be true no matter what is illiterate. How true is that? Etti quite is another important lesson which I stress during orientation. This is extremely important to me. I tell my students that cyber bullying is wrong, if you won't say something directly to someone why is it okay to post it on the Internet? In this technology driven world we live in we need to learn to be good "citizens".

11.5 Thing # 10

This was way outside of my comfort zone. Unfortunately, or fortunately for me, the software crashed on my computer. I got an error message, seems my older laptop cannot handle the program. My new laptop will not be ready until late August. I did read all of the blogs and posts and was very impressed with the middle schoolers who are using second life. I can see how this would appeal to our techno savvy kids who have grown up with computers and gaming. Adding the education element would be as natural to our students as breathing. I, on the other hand, could learn how to do this if I attended a session and was walked through this. Maybe I will contact Mrs. Ovalle at Region One and ask her to offer second life as a possible topic for inservice.

11.5 Thing #9

I had come across slideshare previously. Often when I attend a conference it is easier to just watch and listen to presentations than try to take notes. Presenters are great about posting their PowerPoint on slideshare and I can then view at my leisure or download for further study.
What great tools for teachers. Many teachers use PowerPoint to teach their lessons, posting on slideshare or another of the hosting sites allow students access to lectures they might have missed due to an absence. Our students often have home computers but do not always have access to Microsoft Office which means no PowerPoint. 280 slides is FREE and a great tool for the students.

Five Social Software Sites that libraries shouldn't ignore

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