THE PRESENT by Bob Gill

I am not usually a fan of books whose message is too obvious.  But even though the message in THE PRESENT is an obvious one, I LOVE LOVE LOVE the book!

The quote at the beginning of the book gives a clue about the message. It says, "Better an apple given than eaten"--Anonymous

A little boy named Arthur noticed a wrapped package on the top shelf of his parents' closet. He knew his birthday was coming and knew that it must be a gift for his birthday.  He wondered and wondered what might be in the box, thinking about so many of the things he was hoping for.  Each day he became more and more excited as he wondered about the present.

Finally, his birthday is only one day away (Spoiler coming but this is a picture book so I think it is okay!)  That day, the doorbell rings and a woman comes to collect toys for poor children.  Arthur decided to get the present down from the closet and give it to the woman.

The illustrations are all done in blacks and grays with the present being the only thing in color on each page. The author does a great job of having the feeling of excitement over a wrapped present.  And the ending is a surprise in a good way.

I am anxious to share this book with students of all ages.

COMING THIS WEEK: DAY BY DAY: REFINING WRITING WORKSHOP THROUGH 180 DAYS OF REFLECTIVE PRACTICE

Great news for any fans of Ruth Ayres' and Stacey Shubitz's fabulous blog, 2 Writing Teachers.  Their new book, DAY BY DAY: REFINING WRITING WORKSHOP THROUGH 180 DAYS OF REFLECTIVE PRACTICE is due out tomorrow, November 3!

When I visited Stenhouse a few weeks ago, I was given an advanced copy. What a treat! Being delayed in the airport with a few hours on planes, I had a good chunk of time to dig into the book immediately.

I have to admit, I didn't read the book cover to cover.  It is not really meant to be read that way, I don't think. The authors give you way too much to think about on each page to race through the whole thing at once.  It is a book we'll all want to carry around with us.  It will help us reflect and refine as often as we want.

I love the idea of this book! I remember the first year I really dug into writing workshop. My friend, Karen Szymusiak was doing the same thing.  Even though we taught at different schools, we relied on daily conversations to get us through each day and to refine our work with kids in the workshop.  These conversations were critical and they still are.

The introduction serves as an invitation. The authors say, "This book is for anyone who believes in the power of writing workshop and wants to continue to refine his or her practice.  We realize that the teaching of writing is complex, and it is not only nice to know you are not along on this journey, it is a necessity.  If you have ever wished for daily doses of encouragement, tips, challenges, advice, and understanding during the school year, this book is for you."

The authors suggest three ways to read the book. .  It is organized by chapters.  The chapter is organized into cycles--a certain aspect of teaching writing such as writers' notebooks, celebrations, and minilessons. Ruth and Stacey suggest that readers can read by chapters, by cycles  or every day all year (thus the 180 days.) I think there are many, many ways to read this book. For me, it is one I see myself going back to again and again and again.  I imagine it will be tabbed and highlighted and dog-eared as I think through various aspects of my teaching and learning.

Ruth and Stacey give us lots to think about and the book follows a perfect pattern. Each new idea is introduced with some type of story or classroom experience. Each short piece helps readers think about various components of the workshop.   At the end of the short piece, the authors offer a challenge for teachers--something to think about or try share. Then the authors give us a few questions to use for our own personal reflection.

Really, the idea of this book is so brilliant!  A way for teachers to reflect on the workshop every day of the year. Anyone who believes in writing workshop knows that as a teacher, you are always learning and refining.  This book values that teachers are learners, thinkers and professionals. It also acknowledges the fact that we need time to rethink and refine our work.  And it provides a way to do that. This would be a great book to read with colleagues. To really help us remember and rethink why we do what we do.  To think through the decisions we make each day. To help us think about our practice so we do the best we can for our students.

So Many Tools, So Little Time: Multimedia Tools

(This post has been cross-posted on Web Tools for Schools.)

From Flickr by RLHyde

I used to have a Next-Read stack of books.  These were the books I would get to when I had time. The pile grew from the space beside my nightstand to other spaces in the house.  I loved having a stack of books that I could look forward to reading in the near future.

Within the last few years, my Next-Read stack has not grown, but the list of things on my Kindle, my email Inbox, my Google Reader and my social bookmarking accounts continues to grow uncontrollably.

I began this study coming off of a weekend of learning at the School Library Journal Leadership Summit in Chicago. The theme of the conference was "The Future of Reading". I found myself doing a great deal of thinking about the bigger issues discussed at the summit.  Speaker after speaker shared insights and questions about what the future of reading holds.  As librarians, we all have questions about what this means for our libraries and for information literacy. Two ideas stuck with me this week. Deborah Ford, District Resource Librarian for San Diego Unified Schools reminded us that we must redefine reading.  And in Donald Leu's presentation on "Embracing New Literacies", a quote that stayed with many of us was, "The Internet is this generation's defining technology for reading."

Every time I discover a new tool, I realize how overwhelming this is. There are so many types of things to read and make sense of. And more and more today, none of these things stand alone. Sometimes a blog post contains a Voicethread.  A website includes videos and interactive maps.   An interactive map contains photos and summaries.  For any of us to be literate today, we have to be able to make sense of so many different types of information.

One of the things I am learning over time is the overlapping skills needed for many of these online tools. And I am beginning to realize that none of these tools stand alone. As I do more research into ebooks and online reading, I see that many of these tools are often combined into one publication. It seems that in order to be information-literate, readers will need to synthesize information in many formats.  And, as contributors, we will need to be savvy in a variety of tools if we want to be part of the global 

conversation.

I often don't think of every tool as a kind of reading so this week I focused my learning on two tools that offer a new way to gather and share information in an attempt to expand my own definitions of reading.

Voicethread

I decided to learn about Voicethread because I had seen it used by local colleagues and had looked at it in the past but I had never created a Voicethread. Since so much of my thinking has been about how to use Web 2.0 tools with students, I wanted to see if Voicethread could lend itself to professional development and conversations with colleagues.  I have seen tools like Wallwisher be used to collect thoughts but Voicethread seemed to give more opportunity for sharing thoughts over time.

So, I created a Voicethread using photos from various classroom libraries around the idea of book organization. I think invited a few educator friends from around the country to comment.

Creating a Voicthread is an easy 3-step process. Upload-Comment-Share.

When uploading, you can upload from your computer or online sources.

For commenting, I had several options.  You can type a comment, record a message with the microphone on your computer, use the telephone or videotape yourself. Creators and commenters have these same options.

Sharing was the biggest challenge for me. I chose the email link and began to create a contact list with it.

Setting this up for the first project is a bit more difficult than it will be with future projects since I now have contacts in my list.

Getting the comments took a bit of time and energy.  I invited people to comment but had some trouble figuring out how to make the project public.   I also invited people to comment that didn't know about Voicethread.  But, they all figured it out very quickly!  I have to admit that the fun of the creation started when people began to comment.  I realized how powerful it is to have the comments become part of the piece. And I hadn't realized that comments could be either voice or text, depending on the choice the responder makes.   If many people comment, I can see the potential for a true conversation around a topic.  I have seen samples of Voicethreads with comments that fill beyond the border of the project and I can now see how unique that makes this tool.

http://voicethread.com/share/1442715/

I am glad that I tried this tool in a way that helped me think about professional learning.  I can see great possibilities for this tool in terms of professional learning.  I can see groups of people talking over time and extending the conversation to a more global community. We are currently in the midst of few teacher book clubs at school and I can see this as a way to extend the conversation. I also think it would be a great tool for looking hard at student work, especially in the area of writing. Putting our heads together when thinking about a child's work with a tool like this could really bring some clarity to a student's learning.

I would also love to use this with students. I found several samples of student writing on the site. I had really never understood the power of the comments as part of the piece until I created my own. Each comment actually impacts the piece which is something that other tools don't offer.  Student writing and projects can be shared with this tool. Our board policy allows teachers to use Web 2.0 tools with students if they have permission from our administration.  Voicethread seems like a tool that would be a great option for our students as it is one that offers an Educator version of the tool that allows students to work in a safe and closed environment. This is an important consideration when working with young children and I was glad to see this option.  The price is reasonable for a one-year subscription because the tool could has great features and can be used for so many things.

K-12 Educator Subscription Features and Pricing

I see tools like Voicethread giving students more opportunities to participate in a variety of conversations with peers. In Choosing Web 2.0 Tools for Learning and Teaching in a Digital World, Berger and Trexler share the experiences of middle school teacher Bill Ferriter and his use of Voicethread.  Ferriter believes "that more students participate more actively in digital discussions than in the classroom and that they feel safe doing so.  It levels the playing field for the shy or unsure student, who is often afraid to speak in front of classmates."

Mindmeister

My Own Learning

I first learned about mindmapping tools from Buffy Hamilton in a post she did on her blog, The Unquiet Librarian.  She used Mindomo to think through her library goals for the coming school year.  After reading her post, I decided to give Mindomo a try for the same purpose.    It was a quick and easy tool to use and one that I could see myself using in the future.  I loved the possibilities of this and the collaboration piece. When I discovered Mindmeister, I knew I wanted to give it a try. Mindmeister looked very similar to Mindomo with one difference that was important to me--the tool is available for the iPod and iPad. I am finding that if I have a choice between two tools, I want one that I can use on my mobile devices.  Knowing a bit about Mindomo, I decided Mindmeister was worth playing with.

I created a Mindmeister quickly as I brainstormed ideas for our new library website.  It is very similar to Mindomo with a few different bells and whistles. This is one of the easiest tools I have learned to use and it is also one that can be collaborative in real time. Just like Googledocs, more than one person can be contributing at a time for true collaboration.

A Mindmeister mind map that I created to brainstorm components of our library website

I am glad to know about mind mapping tools like these. I don't have a preference about which tool I liked better except for the fact that one is available on my mobile devices. For students, this would be a good tool to collect thinking.  And, just as Voicethread, I can see book clubs and teach committees using this to work with a topic of interest or need.  Rather than taking notes in a word document, a tool like the ones above could really help a group organize and synthesize their thinking.

What Does All of This Mean?

With the SLJ Summit fresh in my mind, I was thinking about these tools and how tools like this are redefining reading. I realized that it will be important for us, as readers, to know how to navigate as many types of reading as possible and to make sense of more types of information than we've ever had to before. I found myself quickly becoming overwhelmed with not only the tools I am learning about but also the multiple ways in which they can be used.

In this week's exploration, I stumbled upon the work of Professor Richard Beach and his work with Digital Commonplace Texts. His K-12 online conference presentation, "Constructing Digital Commonplace Texts Using Diigo, Voicethread, VideoAnt, and YouTube Annotations in the Classroom" intrigued me.   I had never heard of Digital Commonplace Texts  but as I explored, the thinking resonated for me. I found a blog post on the Digital Common Place Book at Point 7 that helped me realize why this idea resonated for me. In that post, Emlyn reflects on the Web 2.0 tools and the information overload we are facing. She writes,

"There is so much to know. I have adopted the practice in recent years of consuming as much information as possible. I subscribe to many blogs and newsfeeds. I have many social network connections. I follow links in texts and read background material, I trace out the network of informational connections. When I have a conversation and it becomes clear that myself and my fellow conversers are ignorant on something important, I look it up online.  What I decided to do was to take in more information than I could handle usefully, and damn the torpedoes. And it turns out there is a limit to what you can manage. I’m beyond it. "

This idea as well as Beach's conference presentation helped me to see these tools in new ways. Along with using tools such as Mindmeister, Voicethread and others to create more information, they can also be powerful tools for trying to make sense of the information overload we are facing. I am very excited about this idea and new ways to think about these tools for our professional lives and for our students' learning lives.

(This post has been cross-posted on A Year of Reading.)

MEM FOX and JAN THOMAS: WHAT COULD BE BETTER?

I LOVE Mem Fox. And I LOVE Jan Thomas.  Two of my very favorite authors for young children. and it is the best thing ever that Mem Fox and Jan Thomas created LET'S COUNT GOATS! together!  Really, it is like a match made in heaven!  Whoever thought of this idea is truly brilliant.

If you love WHERE IS THE GREEN SHEEP (and, really, who doesn't) and if you love WHAT WILL FAT CAT SIT ON (again, who doesn't?), you will double-love LET'S COUNT GOATS! I promise.

The pattern is similar to the one in WHERE IS THE GREEN SHEEP. The book begins, "Here we see a mountain goat frisking in the sun."  and is followed by a rhyme on the next page.  Each page gives us new goats.  There are goats terrified by thunder and goats huddled in the snow.

I like so much about this book. First of all, the rhyme and rhythm is quite fun. You want to read it again and again. Kids will love to count these goats which is fun. The illustrations are brilliant, as is always the case with Thomas.  Just as Mo Willems draws characters that his readers can draw, so does Jan Thomas. The simple line and colorful pages make for a perfect match to Mem Fox's words.

I am not a big fan of goats. But these goats, I love. From the cover illustration, I loved them.  Kids will want to be part of their fun too. They are fun goats.

A must have book for everyone.  I am sure once I put this in the library, I will never see it again. (And I am pretty sure Bill will want to add this to his "Picks for the PIT". I am sure of it.

Poetry Friday: My Fly Fishing Me

A Blessing

by Ken Hada


After three days of hard fishing
we lean against the truck
untying boots, removing waders.

We change in silence still feeling
the rhythm of cold water lapping
thankful for that last shoal of rainbows
to sooth the disappointment
of missing a trophy brown.

We'll take with us the communion
of rod and line and bead-head nymphs
sore shoulders and wrinkled feet.

(the rest of the poem is at A Writer's Almanac)

I'm not the kind of fly fisher who fishes hard for three days, and I don't fish in the winter, but there's still something in this poem that captures what I love about being on the river (or even a pond) and trying to trick the fish into believing that my lure is the kind of insect they want to eat.

I wrote in my KidLitCon recap about the strangeness of my non-overlapping selves. This fly fishing self is completely separate from my teaching self and my blogging self. (Those two do overlap somewhat.) The day I wrote my recap, Garrison Keillor had this poem on A Writer's Almanac. There was no meandering search for a poem for today; this one came to me.

I can't wait to check out the roundup -- hopefully, some of our new friends from KidLitCon will join us this week! We're gathering today at The Writer's Armchair, with Toby (well, actually her cat Kashi) rounding us up. 

100 Things About Me As A Reader

Photo from Flickr by brianjmatis http://www.flickr.com/photos/brianjmatis/3431100962/

About two weeks ago, Franki posted the beginning of her list of 100 Things about her as a reader. That post has inspired individuals to make their own lists, and it has inspired teachers to have their students start a list. The results are always surprising and revealing. Here's my list so far:

1.   I read a lot.
2.   There's always someone who reads more than I do, and I aspire to be more like them.
3.   I don't read electronic books (yet).
4.   I love audio books.
5.   I once had to drive to Burlington and back in one day (+/- 6 hours) and David Sedaris read to me all the way there and back.
6.   My current audio book is CUTTING FOR STONE.
7.   I grew up in a house full of books.
8.   We had an enormous collection of comic books, too.
9.   Everyone in my home was a reader.
10. I went to the library every week when I was a kid.
11. I now have an educator library card that allows me to check out 50 books at a time. I often do.
12. My mom tried to get me to be a mystery reader like she is.
13. I used to think that I don't like to read any mysteries.
14. I'm finding out that there is a kind of mystery that I do enjoy.
15. I found these mysteries through my adult book club.
16. I've belonged to my book club for more than 20 years.
17. My book club stretches me as a reader.
18. Being on/chairing the NCTE Notables has stretched me as a reader.
19. The Notables has taken over my reading life the past few years.
20. I'm looking forward to reading what I want again.
21. When I was in middle school, I would often spend Sunday afternoons lying on my bed re-reading sad books and letting the tears slide down my cheeks into my ears.
22. I chose to be an English major largely because it seemed like heaven to be able to do all that reading.
23. In spite of my English major, I have read woefully few classics.
24. Teaching kids to read deeply is one of the best gifts I can think of to give to the future of humanity.

KidLitCon -- Real or Imagined?

It's not like the people in my everyday world don't know I'm a blogger. It's just that the ones who don't blog (ie: most of them) don't understand what it's like to belong to an online community. Oh, they have their FaceBook, but that's where they keep track of people they mostly know or have known in person. The whole idea of being friends online with people you've never met in real life still seems a little creepy to most of them -- their Stranger Danger shields go up.

So, lots of the people in my real live everyday world have no idea I went to KidLitCon. They weren't aware that when I first emailed a big group of Poetry Friday regulars, back in June, to see if they would be interested in presenting about Poetry Friday at KidLitCon, a DOZEN bloggers said yes. (The final panel wound up being myself, along with Laura Purdie Salas, Mary Ann Scheuer, Toby Speed, and Amy Van Derwater.)

They weren't aware that for the two weeks prior to KidLitCon, I was tucking collaborative work on a GoogleDocs presentation between grading papers, designing lessons and digging through data.

And how do I explain the giddy joy of meeting a good friend in person for the first time? How do I explain what it's like in that instant when a good friend goes from being two-dimensional, to three-dimensional? (...and then four-dimensional -- the fourth dimension being the POETRY dimension!!) How do I explain the joy and ease of meeting someone who looks like a stranger, but who comes front-loaded with glimpses of personality through blog posts and comments, and hours of conversation and collaborative work around a common project?

On the other side of the coin, my new/old friends at KidLitCon (some of whom I've "known" since we started blogging in 2006 -- Jen Robinson, Pam Coughlan, Melissa Wiley, Kelly Herold, Liz Burns, Sarah Stevenson) don't know what an island of calm the weekend provided from the raging river that is my teaching life right now.

Said raging river is what has delayed this recap/reflection, and made it linkless and photoless. It's all I can manage right now.

But...

This is just to say

I have traveled
to Minneapolis
and met blogger friends
new and old

and who
you were probably
unaware even
existed.

Forgive me
for keeping these
sweet friendships to
myself.




Okay, two links: Our Poetry Friday presentation is here: http://tinyurl.com/27qzgf5, and a recap of recaps is here.

SLJ Leadership Summit 2010

Beth and Bill on the train on our way to
SLJ Summit

On Friday and Saturday, I attended SLJ's Leadership Summit in Chicago with colleagues Bill and Beth. The theme of the conference was "The Future of Reading" and I came back with lots of new thinking.

The conference was packed with speakers who each had a different area of expertise when it comes to the future of reading.  I wasn't able to stay until the very end (I had to get to KSRA which was another fun day!) but I did hear several thought-provoking speakers while I was there.  Some of the highlights from the conference:

-I enjoyed Stephen Abrams opening talk setting up the conference.  I read his blog and follow him on Twitter and have learned so much from him. It was nice to hear him as the opening speaker. He shared the slides from his keynote on his blog which I am anxious to revisit soon.

-Donald Leu discussed some research surrounding new literacies. I would like to go back to his work and dig a bit deeper as there was quite a bit to digest. One of my favorite quotes from Leu was, "The Internet is this generation's defining technology for reading."  A summary of his talk can be found on SLJ's website. His slides can be found on Slideshare.

-Francey Harris brought a group of 4 high school students who were part of a panel discussing teens as readers and what they want/need from libraries. They were amazing students and their thoughtfulness and honestly will help us all think through our own work.

-Joyce Valenza shared her own questions about ereaders and ebooks and what they mean for libraries today.  She is so skilled at sharing so much great thinking in such a short time. I was able to hear her for the first time this summer at November Learning and was thrilled to be able to hear her speak again this week.

-Peter Gutierrez, a member of NCTE's Commission on Media, spoke on the role of pop culture and fan behaviors.  This is the first time I was able to hear him but I am hoping to attend his sessions next month at NCTE in Orlando.

-Chuck Follet shared ways in which several libraries are changing and growing.

-Catherine Snow shared great insights on why our students are not ready to deal with the sophistication of the text presented to them.

-The information that was shared by the Carnegie Corporation was incredible and I need to go back to their thinking sometime soon also.

Although Bill was not invited to the Red Carpet
at the Trailee Awards, he did enjoy his chocolate milk
and warm cookie!

One of the highlights of the conference was the evening event announcing SLJ's Trailee Awards.  If you have not had a chance to look at the 24 nominees in various categories, they are worth your time.  24 amazing book trailers created by students, adults and publishers.  I was very impressed with the student-created book trailers. Honestly, there was very little difference in the student-created book trailers and the publisher created book trailers. Just a reminder at how technology is allowing our students to create amazing projects.

It was great to meet Joanne and Jennifer
face-to-face at the Summit!

Talking to colleagues and networking was also a nice part of the conference. Having time to think through some things with local colleagues was nice.  We never get that kind of time at home and we need to figure out how to find more time to meet and talk.  I met and chatted with Mary Burkey of Audiobooker blog.  I learned so much about audiobooks in the short time I talked to her. I have never been much of an audiobook reader but am ready to give them another try now that I have her blog as a resource.  I was also able to meet two of the professors from my University of Alberta Teacher-Librarianship program-Dr. Jennifer Branch and Dr. Joanne de Groot. We had time to chat after the conference and it was so nice to visit face-to-face after having spent so much time in online classes, etc.  I also met a student who has been  in both of my classes and who I am anxious to learn from in terms of books for older readers.

I feel like I was introduced to many people's work at this event. I am hoping to take time in the next few weeks to look for more work by several of the speakers and to really dig into the ideas they shared.  It was definitely a worthwhile event for me and I am anxious to sort through my new learning.

I love how the conference was archived in so many places.  Revisiting the hashtag on Twitter (#sljsummit10) will help remind me of some of the learning I am forgetting. SLJ is doing a wonderful job of compiling things on their site and the SLJ Summit 2010 Flickr group is a fun way to revisit the conference. I think this is one of those conferences I'll be revisiting often over the next few months.

Thank you to SLJ for an amazing oppotrunity!

A MILLION SHADES OF GRAY by Cynthia Kadohata

I finished A MILLION SHADES OF GRAY today on the plane. This book has been talked about a lot since its publication and I've seen it on several Mock Newbery lists. I can so see why. It is a great read. Y'Tin lives in a village in Vietnam and is in the midst of the Vietnam War.  Y'Tin is an elephant trainer--one of the best at such a young age.  He has a special relationship with his elephant, Lady.  But war comes to their village and Y'Tin's life is changed instantly. Y'Tin and many other villagers have to go into the jungle and Y'Tin also must save his elephant and make important decisions about what is best for them.

This is a sad story. A bit hopeful at times, but an honest look at what war does to communities.  It was not one that I could read from cover to cover.  It was definitely a story of war with the horrors being made clear--not the blood and battles, but the emotions that go with war. Y'Tin is a great character, one that you love almost immediately.  Y'Tin is a character who has courage in different ways throughout the story. No decision is easy in a time of war and Y'Tin must make many decisions.

Because of the setting and the sophistication of the book, I think this would be a great book for grades 5 and up. I can think of one class I had years ago who would have loved it as a read aloud. For readers who want a deeper read, It is a great animal story, a great war story, and a great coming of age story all in one.

Poetry Friday: The Fabric of Life

The Fabric of Life
by Kay Ryan

It is very stretchy.
We know that, even if
many details remain
sketchy. It is complexly
woven. That much too
has pretty well been
proven.

(the rest of the poem is at The Writer's Almanac)

My head-shaking admiration of the fabric of life is not (today at least) about the shock waves of hurt caused by life's roughly taught lessons, but rather the complex and stretchy connections that hold us all together. Or bring us together, in Minneapolis, stretched and pulled from across the country to talk about blogging and Poetry Friday. 

Thank you, Andi, for doing the Poetry Friday roundup today at a wrung sponge!