This is just a quick post to announce the winners for the 2009 SC Book Award Winners.

Picture Book Award – Hero Cat by Eileen Spinelli.  There were 243 schools participating with 54,971 students who voted.  Hero Cat won by 8,291 votes.

Children’s Book Award – How to Steal a Dog by Barbara O’Connor.  There were 184 participating schools with 10,495 students who voted.  How to Steal a Dog won by 1,330 votes.

Junior Book Award – Cracker!: the Best Dog in Vietnam by Cynthia Kadohata.  There were 98 schools participating with 6,210 students who voted.  Cracker! won by 850 votes.

Young Adult Book Award – New Moon by Stephenie Meyer.  There were 73 participating schools with 2,024 students who voted.  New Moon won by 487 votes.

Updated 3/12/08 to add additional links and photo credits that I forgot.  Forgive me, it was late and I was in a hurry to get something posted! – Heather

Today marked the beginning of the 2009 SCASL annual conference in Greenville.  I am fortunate enough to have been allowed by my principal to attend,   Many of my fellow colleagues in the library world haven’t been as lucky.

Once again, I’ll be sharing my notes and thoughts from my experiences at conference.

I drove up to Greenville yesterday – after a side trip to Charlotte, NC.  I had to stop by the Apple Store to get a replacement battery for my Macbook.  Thankfully, it was covered under my warranty!  I couldn’t attend conference without my laptop!  But it sure made for a LONG trip – a little over 4 hours in total.  Anyway, here are the sessions I attended today:

Storytelling Through Pictures – Take a Walk on the Wild Side

Presented by Donna Goldsmith, Tim Van Heule, and Cathy Arnold – This pre-conference session was an all day experience beginning with a morning ride on the trolley to the Greenville Zoo.  We were met by a zoo guide who provided a very enjoyable and informational explanation of the animals: how they came to the zoo; their care and feeding; endangered species renewal plans; mated pare matching, etc.  Throughout the tour we were given the task of taking photographs to be used in our digital storytelling session in the afternoon.  In addition to my taking photos for the session, I also agreed to be a Roving Reporter for the SCASL IT Committee – I agreed to take photos and video interviews from our group to be shared with the folks who couldn’t make it to conference this year.  We are using the SCASL Ning to share information and live streaming of some sessions from conference.

After returning to the convention center and a boxed lunch, we met back up and were introduced to various storytelling tools.  See the presenters website for the tools they discussed: Flickr, Glogster, Photostory, etc.  After uploading our photos to Flickr, we were to use one of the tools they covered and create our own digital story of out trip.  Sorry, I don’t have one to share as I didn’t get to that part – I was too busy talking and going through others photos!  I kinda got sidetracked by all of the giraffe photos everyone took.  I love the giraffe.  I don’t know if you can see it in this photo, but the female giraffe is resting her head on the male giraffe’s back.  How sweet is that?  Another highlight of the giraffe segment of our trip was watching the little kids try to throw crackers to the giraffes – not an easy feat.  We learned that a zoo worker would go out later in the day and collect all of the crackers that didn’t make it to the giraffes and then feed them to the pair.  It was interesting, if someone sad, to see how the giraffes had to contort to reach the crackers on the ground.  

Can We Work Together?  Using Collaborative Tools

Presented by Cathy Nelson and Fran Bullington – As a member of the IT Committee, I assisted Cathy, Fran and Anne Lemieux with streaming the session using UstreamTV.  This was one of our efforts to include folks who couldn’t make it to conference this year.  I was in charge of the camera and chat room (once we figured it out!)  I am by no means an expert and I apologize for the poor camera work.

The session focused on using Wikis and Google Documents to collaborate with teachers and/or students to collaborate on group projects.  If/When I get the links to the session, I’ll update this post with them.

Reflections

While I truly enjoyed both sessions – the Zoo and the picture perfect, beautiful day were wonderful and I had fun working the camera for Cathy and Fran’s session – I must say the highlight of the day was having dinner with Cathy, Fran, Anne, and Doug Johnson! Fran took us to Flat Rock where I had a tasty meal and we shared fabulous conversations and laughs together.  I bet we were the highlight of our waiter’s evening!  Doug is a HOOT and a witty fellow!  I’m looking forward to attending one or two of his sessions, as well as his keynote, tomorrow.

Well, its getting late and the first session starts at 7:45 tomorrow morning and I want to make it there on time, so gonna hit the sack.

Photo Credit:

Greetings from SCASL 2.0: Experience the Journey @ your library.

DSC01317 by Greenville Instructional Technology – FlickrCC

DSC01315 by Greenville Instructional Technology – FlickrCC

The 2009-2010 South Carolina Young Adult Book Award Nominees have been announced.

For those of you unfamiliar with the program, each year the SC Young Adult Book Award committee chooses 20 titles from books published within the last three years.  Teens are encouraged to read as many of the titles as possible; however, they must read at least three title to be eligible to vote.  In February, students vote for which book they feel should win the award.  The winning nominee is announced each year at the annual SC Association of School Librarians Conference.  The ‘09-’10 nominees are:

• The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
• The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary Pearson
• Beanball by Gene Fehler
• Big Fat Manifesto by Susan Vaught
• Blood Brothers by S.A. Harazin
• The Circle of Blood: A Forensic Mystery by Alane Ferguson
• City of Bones by Cassandra Clare
• Enter Three Witches: a Story of Macbeth by Caroline B. Cooney
• Evolution, Me, & Other Freaks of Nature by Robin Brande
• Game by Walter Dean Myers
• Good Enough by Paula Yoo
• Gym Candy by Carl Deuker
• In the Name of God by Paula Jolin
• Mad Kestrel by Misty Massey
• Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin
• The Silenced by James DeVita
• Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher
• Twisted by Laurie Halse Anderson
• Wake by Lisa McMann
• Yellow Flag by Robert Lipsyte

Having served on the YA committee in the past, I know how difficult is is to choose among the many great titles submitted each year.  I am looking forward to reading this years nominees, many of which were already on my to be read list.

The 2008-09 SCYABA winner will be announced on Friday, March 13th and I will post it to the blog.

Thing #20: YouTube

While I’ve been familiar with YouTube and TeacherTube for a while now, I have to admit that I’ve never actually sat down and browsed or searched them before now.  In the past I’ve always had a link someone else has provided or searched for a specific video that someone needed or that I knew was already in YouTube.

I have to also admit that the whole YouTube thing scares me a bit – not the how to use/access it, but because of the content.  Yes, it has a lot of great original and educational content, but it also has a lot of copyrighted content that I’m sure was never given permission to be uploaded.  Which leads me to question if I use those uploaded items in the classroom, am I modeling good behavior?  Am I inadvertently giving my kids the notion that it’s okay to violate copyright?  Or have I taught them well enough to be responsible users and producers of materials?

Despite these questions, I can’t help but appreciate and get a guilty pleasure out of finding bits of nostalgia from my past such as “One RingyDingy“  I’m going to try to embed the clip, but since YouTube is blocked by my district, teachers, you’re going to have to take a look at it from home.  Sorry!

Of course, I wasn’t born when Laugh-In aired, but my Mom (who worked for the phone company) had the album.

Another example of the benefit of YouTube is using it to bridge the generation gap, especially with cultural references.  I was talking with some students the other day and we were talking about baseball and for some reason I mentioned Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s on First” sketch.  The kids didn’t know who or what I was talking about, so I pulled up YouTube and, sure enough, I found a bunch of clips of “Who’s On First.”  Of couse, I had to play it a few times for some of them to get the humor, and I don’t think they really found it as funny as I do, they were probably humoring me, but at least they know who Abbott and Costello are now!

Once again, playing catch up.  Most of the items being covered I’m familiar with – and while I may not have used them all, I think I’ve got a pretty good handle on how they work.

#16: Wikis – Task, explore some and write about your thoughts and experiences.  I love the concept of Wikis and would love to use them with teachers and/or students.  I especially like all that Joyce Valenza is doing with wikis and the TeacherLibrarian Wiki.  Unfortunately, or fortunately depending upon your viewpoint, this requires a level of collaboration between teacher and librarian that requires pre-planning.  This may be an activity for us to develop for next year (or semester) and would hinge on the district allowing access to a wiki.

#17: Add an entry to the SCASL Wiki – I’ve already updated the SCASL librarians who twitter, blog, and podcast (although our podcast page hasn’t been updated in quite some time!)  Will have to think of something to add to the “Your Favorites!” section o.

#18: Zoho Writer – great thing about Zoho is that I can use my GoogleID instead of having to create a whole new account.  Zoho seems to do the same and more than Google Docs and I like the Notebook feature.  Can see using this to take notes at a conference and exporting them to my blog.

I’m already a Google Docs user and have advised some of my students to use them as well.  We have a huge problem with floppy discs and thumb drives not working in our school computers.  By using Google Docs (and as long as we have an internet connection), students have a way of retrieving their work.  Unfortunately, I haven’t gotten teachers to try it out, yet!

#19: LibraryThing: Kinda neat.  I’ve created a LibraryThing catalog to share on my blog (see the widget below the blogroll & links) to list the books that I’m reading now.  I’ve entered the six that I’m currently trying to finish.  All are available in the school library.  As I finish them I’ll write a review.  I’d be interested to see what others think of the books.

That’s all for now.  This week we’re to look at YouTube and other video sharing sites.  Should be fun!