Webster Bible Church and Webster Christian School Library Blog

The first-grade library class is learning about the author/illustrator, Kevin Henkes.

Many authors/illustrators start to write and/or draw at a young age (as did Kevin Henkes), so I like to inspire any budding artists/writers to think big and learn from successful authors/illustrators. We like to explore how they get the ideas for their stories and/or illustrations

Kevin Henkes has two award-winning picture books–Kitten’s First  Full Moon (Caldecott Medal Book for 2005) and Owen (Caldecott Honor Book for 1994).  His middle school novel, Olive’s Ocean, also won a 2004 Newbery Honor.

Kevin Henkes starts by imagining a character in his mind. As time passes, the details of the character–what they look like, their personality quirks, objects they like to carry with them, etc.–start to take shape.  We’ve added Kevin’s example to our toolbox of ideas for how to create an original story.

We read 7 of Kevin’s books during library class then the first-grade students vote for their favorite (one vote for each student).  See the results below!

The first-grade library class is learning about the author/illustrator, Kevin Henkes.

Many authors/illustrators start to write and/or draw at a young age (as did Kevin Henkes), so I like to inspire any budding artists/writers to think big and learn from successful authors/illustrators. We like to explore how they get the ideas for their stories and/or illustrations

Kevin Henkes has two award-winning picture books–Kitten’s First  Full Moon (Caldecott Medal Book for 2005) and Owen (Caldecott Honor Book for 1994).  His middle school novel, Olive’s Ocean, also won a 2004 Newbery Honor.

Kevin Henkes starts by imagining a character in his mind. As time passes, the details of the character–what they look like, their personality quirks, objects they like to carry with them, etc.–start to take shape.  We’ve added Kevin’s example to our toolbox of ideas for how to create an original story.

We read 6 of Kevin’s books (pictured above) during library class then the first-grade students vote for their favorite (one vote for each student).  See the results below!

Learn more about Kevin Henkes at his web site.

Follett Titlewave

In true John Piper style, this book is both scholarly and practical. (John Piper might say that the whole point of this book is that scholarship is very practical!)

On the scholarly side, the author makes a case against relativism and Christian anti-intellectualism and discusses the role of thinking when a person comes to faith.

Most meaningful to me was Piper’s teaching on what it means to love God with our all our minds.

“I wrote this book to remind myself of the place of thinking in the pursuit of God.” (p. 18)

“Thinking is indispensable on the path to passion for God. Thinking is not an end in itself. Nothing but God himself is finally an end in itself. Thinking is not the goal in life. Thinking, like nonthinking, can be the ground for boasting. Thinking, without prayer, without the Holy Spirit, without obedience, without love, will puff up and destroy (1 Cor. 8:1). But thinking under the mighty hand of God, thinking soaked in prayer, thinking carried by the Holy Spirit, thinking tethered to the Bible, thinking in pursuit of more reasons to praise and proclaim the glories of God, thinking in the service of love–such thinking is indispensable in a life of fullest praise to God.” (p.27)

“. . . the mind is mainly the servant of the heart. That  is, the mind serves to know the truth that fuels the fires of the heart. The apex of glorifying God is enjoying him with the heart. But this is an empty emotionalism where that job is not awakened and sustained by true views of God for who he really is.” (p.36-37)

“Thinking and knowing are given to us by God for the purpose of loving God and loving people.” (p.160)

“Without a profound work of grace in the heart , knowledge–the fruit of thinking–puffs up. But with that grace, thinking opens the door of humble knowledge. And that knowledge is the fuel of the fire of love for God and man. If we turn away from serious thinking in our pursuit of God, that fire will eventually go out.”

Each January Mrs. Constantino, the 5th-grade teacher, and Mrs. Satta, the librarian, at Webster Christian School collaborate on a month-long unit of study about The Civil Rights Movement.

One library class time, the 5th graders use timelines found in books about the Civil Rights Movement to create their own Civil Rights Movement timeline on paper.  During the next library class, each student briefly researches one event and writes down a few short facts about it.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Satta creates a PowerPoint presentation using a template created by Christy Keeler.  Each student types in the text for their event on the corresponding PowerPoint slide.

The students spend some time exploring Wikimedia Commons and discovering pictures on their topic.

Mrs. Satta then selects and uploads a photo to coincide with each event from Wikimedia Commons and attributes the photo’s source.

Finally, the PowerPoint presentation is uploaded to www.slideshare.net so that it can be viewed online.  Enjoy!

Below is a poll asking the 5th-grade students how they feel about posting their project online:

photo © 2009 Ed Yourdon | more info (via: Wylio)

The final Teacher Challenge addresses how to promote a blog.

Today I read some excellent posts about blog promotion:

• How to Promote Your Blog Posts
• Kick Start Activity 8 – Beginner – Building Readership and Blogrolls
• 10 Things to Build a Blog Readership*
• How to Get Traffic to Your Blog*
• How to Make a Blog That Keeps Your Readers Coming Back for More*

These posts offered a wealth of advice, but the following tips  stood out to me:

1. Pinpoint and stay focused on my purpose and intended audience.

2. Publish quality posts.

3. Involve the readers.

4. Promote strategically.

Next, I garnered tips from my Teacher Challenge blogging colleagues:

• Mrs. Lepre–When you tweet your post, shorten the URL using tinyurl or bit.ly.   Use Ping-o-Matic! and Pingoat to ping a new post.
• Britt Gow–Read these posts about promoting your blog (the ones with an asterisk after them in the list above)
• Mrs. Berry–Add your blog URL to your emails.
• Janelle–Invite guests to post on your blog.
• Lydia–Join twitter and learn to use hashtags  (#kidlit, #library)
• Glenda–Include your blog URL in your Twitter profile.

Finally, I took the plunge and joined Twitter (@Carol_Satta)!

• Read Sue Water’s excellent post, A Twitteraholics Guide to tweets, hashtags, and all things Twitter which led to Blog Tips and their series of posts called Twitter for Dummies.
• Included my blog URL on the Twitter profile.
• Started following 8 colleagues from the Teacher Challenge.
• Downloaded a browser app for Twitter–Yoono, an add-on for FireFox.
• Tweeted!

As Anne Mirtschin suggested on Twitter, let’s keep the collaboration and sharing alive by using hashtag #ksyb (keep sharing your blog)!

This week’s Teacher Challenge:  analyze and improve the selection/arrangement of widgets in your blog’s sidebar.

According to Sue Waters, “The term widget refers to any tool or content that you add, arrange or remove from the sidebar(s) of your blog — these are the blocks that make up your sidebar.”

This latest challenge came at a great time for me because I had already created a “to do” list of changes for my sidebar based on what I had seen on other blogs during the course of the month-long Teacher Challenge.

1.  Add one of those nifty RSS logos.

Thanks, Sue Waters, for explaining that.

2.  Create a friendlier first impression with a welcome message and a photo or blog avatar at the top of the sidebar.

I struggled with this because although I administer the blog and have created most of the posts so far, it is truly an organizational blog.  An avatar or photo of me would not be appropriate.

Instead I went ahead and made another change that was on my “to do” list–create a panoramic picture for the blog header that expressed it’s purpose.  I’m very pleased with the result.  This collage of four of our students is welcoming and truly reflects what the blog is all about.

Thanks to Britt Gow and Anne Mirtschin for giving me directions for using IrfanView to accomplish this.   Britt Gow’s blog header was my model.

IrfanView is a snap to download.  At first I didn’t know how to use it, but I found the “help” feature to be incredibly clear and was soon on my way to creating the panoramic image.

3. Provide directions for commenting.

Lydia Schultz’s sidebar is my inspiration for this.

4.  Remove the tag cloud.

Since it only shows your 45 most commonly-used tags, the tag cloud did not suit my purposes.

I experimented with changing my blog theme to one that had 3 columns because the sidebar is quite long.  However, all of the three-column themes that I previewed took away other features that I value.

Any suggestions or ideas for improving the sidebar would be greatly appreciated!

The Webster Christian School Library Blog was originally created as a place for the students to discuss books–to proudly publish their creative work relating to books such as movie trailers, slideshows, podcasts, etc.  So far, it’s mainly populated with my book reviews.

This is our first post showing student work!

Each year in January the 5th-grade teacher and I collaborate on a month-long Civil Rights Movement project.  Using a PowerPoint template from Christy Keeler‘s Educational Virtual Museums as a springboard, we created a Civil Rights Timeline then uploaded it into Slide.

This exercise gave me lots of practice capturing and attributing images from Wikimedia Commons.  I love the Wikimedia Commons feature that lets you email a link to the image.  I just copied and pasted the link into a text box that said “Photo credit” under each of the images.

Two problems I came across in adding this slide show were 1) Internet Explorer didn’t let me embed the code. Had to change browsers to Firefox; and 2) Uploading the PowerPoint presentation to slideshow changed the way the text appeared on the slides.  (Maybe the margins are different?)  Sometimes the text boxes overlapped in the slideshow whereas they did not do so in PowerPoint.

Also created a  photo album of our library (which serves both a school and a church)  using pictures I already had on my hard drive.

Things I’ve learned from other bloggers:

• Pam Niewman:  How to create a book trailer.
• Marg:  Digital Story Telling (using Sparklee.com, Vuvox, Picture Trail, Wylio, Irfanview, Flikrcc)
• CheesyUK:  Applications for displaying images on the web.

I have a healthy fear of the copyright laws because they are important and they should be respected.

Unfortunately, I also have an unhealthy, paralyzing fear of them, too.

As a school librarian, one of my main goals is to teach our students how to use information responsibly.   I have got to  wrap my head around copyright issues as it relates to using images because images are a very important way to convey information.

That’s why I really appreciate the most recent Teacher Challenge that addresses adding images to blog posts and the whole topic of copyright and Creative Commons as it relates to images.

Here are some things I’ve learned from other bloggers:

• Even if I’m using a Creative Commons image, I must credit the original creator and provide a link back to the original image.
• It’s polite to leave a comment and the link to your post when you use an image.
• School filters block some image sites.
• Some image sources do not have built-in filters so they need to be used under adult supervision.
• Time is a prohibitive factor in helping individual students to locate and attribute images; however, you get faster with practice.
• Christy Berry taught me about visual literacy and also provided an insightful list of  “Things for students to ask themselves when adding an image to their blog” in her Scene It post.
• Thanks to Amy Alrawi for commenting on the fact that “you can set your search preferences to only show licensed material by clicking on ‘Advanced’” when using Google.  Two great posts I want to revisit later:  Mrs. T’s Reflections:  Images; The Groovy Librarian:  Using Images
• Hats off to Britt Gow for providing a link to a post entitled “Top Ten Sites for Images and Clipart.”  I used the information in that post to update a page in our school library wiki about images
• http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/ – Really liked this page that briefly states the levels of licensing and seems to sort the images by those categories so that you can just use the category that works for you rather than having to click on each image to find out what the licensing for it is.
• Amy Alrawi’s post about copyright also provides useful links to a factsheet entitled “How to Find Creative Commons Licensed Materials” and a youtube video about using creative commons licensed materials on Flikr.
• http://copyrightfriendly.wikispaces.com/ – great link provided by one of the teacher challenge bloggers loaded with info. to explore later.
• Miss W. reminded us that we need to broaden the discussion of copyright with our teachers and students to include a discussion about photocopying, music, and videos in addition to images and included a link to a child-friendly youtube video about copyright.
•  Tabitha’s post provided another kid-friendly youtube video about copyright ”Copyright, What’s Copyright?” and another youtube video entitled “Creative Commons – Get Creative.”

The wolf image above is a FunPix created in slide.    At first, I couldn’t embed it into the post, but it was an browser issue.  Switched from Internet Explorer to Firebox and it worked like a charm.

While I was trying to work out the problem, I used my newly-learned screen dumping skills (yeah!) to cut and paste the image into Paint, saved it to my computer, and uploaded it.  That worked, but the image was smaller than the FunPix one, so I deleted it.

I would like to change the header image for this blog to include a slide show or collage that reflects the variety of users for our library.  Hoping the next teacher challenge may help me with that.  Anybody have some suggestions for good tools to use that would let me upload a collage or slide show into the blog header image?

Picture Credit:  Original photograph:  http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2d/CMM_MexicanWolf.jpg/512px-CMM_MexicanWolf.jpg ;  Altered with conversation bubble:  http://www.slide.com/r/U6XB0GoQ5D_qUU7Iyh2n-RUVYLMeaGeY?previous_view=mscd_embedded_url&view=original; This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Avatar, avatar

Make me an av’

WeeWorld &  befunky

What do you have?

Avatar, avatar

Clip, dump, shop, crop

And make me a perfect mii

(with apologies to Fiddler on the Roof)

Well, after hours of painful labor, I produced this smiling, relaxed avatar.   

 The bad news:  I am neither smiling nor relaxed. 

The good news:  I learned something.  Honestly, I’ve never “screen dumped” before in my life. 

The best news:  More experienced bloggers share their wisdom about creating avatars:

• How Many Different Ways to Create an Avatar?
• Challenge Yourself to a Blog
• Creating and Uploading Your Comment Avatar
• So You Want an Avatar
• Could I Be an Avatar

Here are two avatar-making sites I found to be user-friendly for low-tech people like me:

 WeeWorld

befunky

What were the best things I learned from this  Teacher Challenge activity? 

• Be sensitive to the classroom teachers when introducing new technology.  It’s easy to get overwhelmed and to just stop trying. 
• Create a Gravatar (“A Globally Recognized Avatar”) so that your avatar shows up wherever you post on the Web.