Booyor’s BLOGgh!

We, the undersigned, call upon Arizona State Legislators, Governor Napolitano, and the members of the Arizona State Board of Education to ensure that Arizona students have full-time access to school libraries and a certified teacher librarian to provide a competitive education in information technology and literacy.

Sign the petition here.

Yeah, I actually said that in a meeting I ran today about AIMS standardized testing policy. (ADE, by the way, is the Arizona Department of Education.)

“We must follow standardized testing procedures so we don’t get jacked by ADE.”

I also was the griller today. I grilled up roughly 60+ hot dogs and 60+ hamburgers. I just smelled grease thinking about it. I also got in trouble (or at least rumors). I was drinking an IBC in one hand while flipping burgers with the other. Imagine a 6′9″ librarian wearing an apron. Many students walked by, most very encouraging (”Is there anything you don’t do?” “Those smell great. You must be a good cook.”) but I guess a couple of concerned students went to their teachers about my brown bottle. Even teachers walking in to the meeting did a double take. “This is how librarians roll.”

Another sentence probably never uttered before.

I’m totally digging my phone. I loaded up Great and Terrible Beauty by Libby Bray and I plan on loading Neil Gaiman’s Fragile Things. (The one where Sherlock Holmes tackles H.P. Lovecraft.)

I also want to take this time to point readers towards Michael Stackpole’s Talion Revenant. I was like, “Why the JPGs, man? For a Second-Lifer that’s not too tech savvy.”

Now that I have a phone that creates folders but doesn’t do PDFs, I get it.

I might even have to check out Stackpole’s Serial Fiction. I’m digging Kraka’s Holocam. I may need to do another project like this. (It’s crazy to think that the Year of Haikus is almost up. I feel like I can do them pretty fluidly. I should tackle finding where the turning point was for me…)

The Haiku
What will I type out -
a cinquain, a fluff sonnet?
The year finds a gap.

Here is a list, to date, of the school district policies created by the superintendent and his technology team because of me (no joke - I found out in a district meeting today):

1. The Incident - No one remembers why I was called that, but it involved either printing to printers at other schools or trying to unlock iDVD without permission
2. You must be on contract for the following year to teach summer school. I left the district last year for a little bit having been offered a higher paying job that was closer to home. BUT I was not angry with the district nor did I resort to usual “just quit” attitudes/setting people’s toupees on fire. They had never had anyone be nice when they resigned, especially one who still wanted to work for the district over the summer.
3. Student e-mails need to follow a specific fake e-mail domain if the student has no real e-mail of their own. This one was just created this week. The district is issuing a two page statement because of me. We were doing D-Day soldier blogs. I told the students to put “fakeemail@dday.com”. Yeah, there’s an actual dday.com and he became unwittingly subscribed to receive every single post to a two teacher forum.
   The estimate from the district mail server tech was, by the end of the World War II assignment, 40,000 e-mails from our district. When the district people told me that, the librarians in the meeting with me joined in my raucous, uncontrollable laughter.

Other e-mails were sent to people whose names sounded like Bart Simpson phone taunts.

In other library news, Devin will appreciate that a kid was so excited with the “new” book in the library, the Krytos Trap, that he wondered if there were any other books like it.

The Haiku
There are positives
and negatives - no, wait - nerd
librarians rock.

Hey. Do you remember back in 2005 when I mentioned this thing called Sudoku that was gonna be fun? Whatever happened to Sudoku? Here’s what happened, I tell you.

Author of The Looking Glass Wars Frank Beddor visited my library on Friday.
Great guy who even carts his own books:

He was very animated, jumping on tables and pumping fists in the air. The students were definitely excited to read.

When I have time next week I’ll put the photos and video on a DVD and ship them off.

The Haiku
Got to play The Cat
Top assassin for Queen Redd
Until she killed me.

Making Wonderland
A lot more fun than before
(Hatter Maddigan)

It’s so beautiful and will change the way that you think about presentations. It’s something that I wasn’t going to write about until I actually had a video of me using the method, but I don’t want to lose it.

This seriously revolutionary (because we all need that word thrown around) way of thinking is called the Lessig method, named after Lawrence Lessig. It shifts the emphasis from the slides back onto what the presenter actually says.

I think of the many testing meetings that I have gone to where they use lots of flashy graphics and graphs.

I also think of the presentations I didn’t want to prepare for and just put all the text on the screen and read from it. Don McMillan weeps.

The best use of the method that I’ve seen is Dick Hardt, talking about Identity 2.0.

The Takahashi method is pretty cool, too, considering he came up with the large letter style because he didn’t have PowerPoint or art programs.

A teacher asked me

to create a lesson for

her absence Thursday.

I decided to create a “run it yourself, sub” lesson that I think is pretty cool.

Before I review this awesome book, I wanted to share this library gem:

I will avoid the obvious “Harriet the Spy” references. But doesn’t she look like she should play opposite Keanu Reeves?

Keanu: Tubman, look out!

Blam!

Harriet: He just bought a one-way ticket.

Thought you might appreciate what comes across our scanners daily.

Genesis Alpha (almost as exciting as the Underground Railroad) is about a young boy who was created for his stem cells. His birth was sped up at month 8 to be able to save his older brother who had cancer.

Flash forward to his teen years and now his brother is on trial for murder. Should the older brother have been saved at the expense of the victim? Crazy questions arise throughout the entire book. This is suspense in the M. Night Shyamalan sense, less Clive Barker or Darren Shan. The reader constantly has to guess who’s crazy, who’s hurting, and who’s a mix.

One of the coolest parts for me is that the killer, whoever it is, left clues inside a World of Warcraft-esque MMORPG. The main character has to investigate in game (but it’s not one of those lame, “If you die in the game, you die FOR REAL” books). What’s really cool is that violence in video games is brought up but discussed quite eloquently. Yay! (for a change)

Questions of if we are more than just our DNA show up as people freak out about the genetic similarities between the two brothers.

Unlike my in-person library reviews, I can’t give too much more detail. It would be like saying, “Bruce Willis is already dead.”

D’oh.

(We’ll see what the 7th grade class thinks about it as I’m brought in for a second round of booktalks.)

Today’s Haiku:

Sharing DNA

Can it make you a killer?

Or just a big freak?

Libratorrs can read
just as well as anyone
with necklaced glasses

I think it’s pretty funny that Penny-Arcade made a strip about male librarians.

Devin, you’ll appreciate some of my decorating:

Peter and Slade - You should be excited that lolcats are going to be in Monday’s faculty handbook meeting.

I am sitting at
my library where I wait
to pick up the job

Office Max has free laminating Thursdays. I decided to take the whole school’s laminating project down. Little did I know you have to pick it up that night or wait a whole week. Lame.

I went in to the
library today to hear
the beep of the books

I am now a librarian. (Not imaginary, for real this time.) I am so stoked. I read the books, I teach the kids about the books, I buy the books, and a whole bunch of other stuff. With scanning wand in hand and a purchase order for Deathly Hallows and Ranger’s Apprentice, it was magical.