Rae-diant

Most Likely to Succeed: Preparing Our Kids for the Innovation Era by Tony Wagner, Ted Dintersmith

I came across this book after a long discussion with my daughter and husband about her quitting school and getting her GED.  It has been a timely read in that I have been frustrated with our education system for several years, there are concepts here that would have made a huge difference for my kids, but too late to change anything for them.  I am hopeful that enough people operate with a similar sense as the authors that we can change the course of educational policy in time for the next generation.

Wagner and Dintersmith open the book with the short history of public education.  The original purpose of public education was to create successful factory workers as the industrial age swung into full production and more immigrants and farmers moved to American cities.  The mass education was designed to create workers who had a common working knowledge in pertinent subject areas, could perform repetitive tasks for long periods of time, follow orders with little thought.  The system worked and America advanced to the economic powerhouse of the 20th century based on the tremendous workforce we had in the technological wave of manufacturing.

Technology has changed and continues to change on ever increasing trajectory.  Manufacturing is no longer the economic base of America - or the world, really.  Technology is about information now, not factory efficiency.  This means the workers needed for the new technologies must be able to make judgement calls about the information that is now available to everyone.  Our education system needs to create workers who can piece together unrelated bits of information and come up with something entirely new.  They should self starters, not order followers.  

Educators, especially librarians, are aware of this, but the system we’ve created in our nation has lagged.  We still test on retention of facts than can be googled in an instant.  Standardized tests are the only way to measure masses of students in a reasonable amount of time to provide timely feedback to schools.  But the testing itself is taking so much time, and the need to return top scores means teaching to pass the tests, that there isn’t time to really go deep into an individual students’ passions.  And it’s necessary to foster individual passions because that’s how the creativity needed to succeed in today’s job market is nurtured.

My experience with the school system has been slow and frustrating.  Especially as my own kids moved through the upper grades.  I was like most other middle class parents in my neighborhood; assuming my children would excel in public schools and move on to college.  There was never any question in my mind when I was a student, why would it be any different for my kids.  Then my kids showed me how wrong I was (as children are so good at doing).  

My son was not interested in school.  The monotonous long days spent in a chair at a desk.  Just when he finally got into the swing of one subject, it was time to move to the next.  As we approached the junior and senior years, we realized that college would be a waste of money and time for him.  Academics was not his passion.  Cars and firearms held his attention for hours.  And while our school district has a great technical school, it wasn’t until recently that it has been advertised outside of truancy court at all.  It still has a connotation of failure to it, especially in our white, middle class neighborhoods and families.  It still has that connotation in nearly any traditional high school.  Oh how I wish I hadn’t been so immersed in both my own culture and the school district’s college ready culture.  For my son’s senior year, we heard about Araphoe Campus/Boulder CTE program and he enrolled some auto shop classes.  He was so happy with them.  He felt like he was being productive and learning useful exciting things in school.  He wasn’t sitting in a chair, memorizing facts that he wasn’t interested in.  If only we’d discovered them earlier, he could have earned a certificate and been job ready upon graduation.  Luckily, he knew he wanted to join the Marines early on in his life and is happily enlisted.  He wants to do college later.

My daughter did not excel in school.  She is a very non-traditional student who began to wither in 4th grade.  After 4.5 years of torture in high schools of many philosophies, she has dropped out and earned her GED and is excited to move on with her life.  College might be an option down the road, part-time.  

It took a long time to pull my head out of the “all students college ready and college bound” paradigm.  It’s time for me to advocate for the kids who aren’t going to college.

MediaCast - A loaded treasure trove

by Rae Ciciora

IT EdTech Library Cataloging Assistant

I’ve been playing in the big box of media content called MediaCast. If I put aside my just- Google-it goggles, I found that using some patience and very basic search skills (think: digging for treasure), there are some really good video resources. It’s truly like a jumbled warehouse of media (18,848 items!). I could wander for days looking at all the cool stuff. It’s loosely organized by topic, with a search bar that allows me to look for media by title (if I know it) or a keyword in the description. I can also narrow down my search using the filters on the left side - publisher, copyright date, grade level. I suggest starting with a keyword search before using the filters.

Last week, one of the providers for MediaCast, CCC!, uploaded a bunch of new material. The flyer is here. Check out all those new titles! We’ve got access now to a BBC series of Shakespeare theatre, as well as animated version of several Shakespeare plays (pages 1 and 9 of the flyer).

I am particularly interested in videos from the National Science Foundation and Inventions that Shook the World (pages 2 & 4). It was easiest to find those videos by using the title search. Many librarians have talked about using augmented reality in their libraries. The National Science Foundation has a short video about augmented reality in the operating room and combat zone. Amazing stuff! Here is a link directly to that video.

In the Inventions that Shook the World series, the flyer has the inventions organized by decade. MediaCast has it organized strictly by title of the invention. I’m partial to my Prius, so I watched The Hybrid Car video. I hadn’t realized that an American man invented the hybrid engine in the 1970’s, and that the US government wasn’t interested in pursuing the technology!

Related to these series is page 5, Greatest Human Achievements. Search for these videos using the titles in the bottom half of the page, not by the inventor names. These videos are perfect for Grades 4-12 STEM, and they are short and sweet.

Drive Thru History looks like a lot of fun as Dave Stotts drives through historic locations around the globe (page 3). Again, use the titles listed as your search term.

For students who are thinking of their future, there are two pages (pages 6 & 7) of titles for career choices called Major Decision. The copyright date is 2011, so most of the information is quite current.

What I really liked, while I was wandering through the new material, was the My Favorites feature of MediaCast. I didn’t have time to watch everything that interested me, so I clicked on a title and added it to My Favorites. When I have a moment, I’ll check out the videos and then manipulate them to fit my needs. I can snip the videos into segments that pertain to a teaching unit. Then I can add captions to those parts of the video that students need to pay attention to, to clarify something, or ask a question for the students to think about during that segment. I have been creating unique URLs for these segments, which I can then embed in emails, websites, or presentations.

I suspect MediaCast is a little-used wealth of media. I encourage you to take some time to browse what we have at our beck and call. Let me know what gem you’ve uncovered!

How to snag a segment How to create a URL

Whew!  It’s December already!  Here’s a list of what I read last month, with my reviews following.  I was a bit more wordy this month than last.

Sandra Dodd’s big book of unschooling by Sandra Dodd  (3 of 5 stars)

The teenage liberation handbook : how to quit school and get a real life and education by Grace Llewellyn (2 of 5 stars)

The year of learning dangerously : adventures in homeschooling by Quinn Cummings (5 of 5 stars)

Grain brain : the surprising truth about wheat, carbs, and sugar--your brain's silent killers by David Perlmutter, MD (3 of 5 stars)

Sandra Dodd’s big book of unschooling by Sandra Dodd

My homeschool adventure has been a paradigm shift.  It is hard enough for me to take on the teacher role in a school-at-home model.  But to do it at a high school level where the student doesn’t want to learn Algebra 2 in the first place and the teacher (me) doesn’t remember it, nor can she learn it in a way to teach said nontraditional learner, was more than I could handle.  I needed to learn more about different models of homeschool.  I needed more tools in my toolbox.

Sandra Dodd has been a vocal advocate of what’s called radical unschooling.  It is closely related to the attachment parenting movement where the child (usually infant through toddler) is kept by the parent’s side as often and as long as the child desires.  The child is the center of the family universe.  The unschooling philosophy sees the child directing his or her own learning - which includes dabbling, full on immersion, or ignoring of the traditional subjects.  Parents are encouraged to “strew” potential learning opportunities by leaving interesting items around the house, or taking field trips.  But parents are discouraged from forcing an interest in these items.

I can see this style working if the family has done this since infancy, as the family will get a certain rhythm and young children will naturally learn how to direct their curiosity to acquiring the skills they’d otherwise learn in a school, but on their own timeline.  I’m not so sure it will work with a child who has actively learned how to not learn.  In this case, the philosophy suggests a period of deschooling to get rid of the attitude.  A period of deschooling will be longer for children who have been schooled longer.  Some suggest a week for every year in school.  I am afraid that period will be too long to be advantageous for my child.

The book is organized loosely, with each page or two being a complete thought on topics related to homeschooling and unschooling. Dodd has tried to put in book form what her website is, which makes it a bit less organic, but easily flipped through.  I enjoyed the ease of reading this thought bubble method, and I enjoyed a lot of Sandra’s thoughts.  Some of the ideas I will take to heart.  Others are too late or too radical.   

I would recommend parents and teachers take a wander through this book as a means to provoke deeper thought about learning, parenting, and teaching.

The teenage liberation handbook : how to quit school and get a real life and education by Grace Llewellyn

I picked this up as suggested reading for my homeschool daughter.  The first half of the book was very negative toward public and private schools.  It was difficult to read the author’s disgust with the system, with me being an employee and a successful graduate of the public school system.  I understand a lot of what she feels, I just wish it wasn’t so negatively worded.  If a student is just merely ambivalent about school, this will surely enrage the student into quitting.  

The author went through public school herself, then became a teacher to try to engage the students who reminded her of herself in school.  But she felt stifled by the bureaucracy that is inherent in any large organization, she wrote a manifesto of what was wrong and how to go around the system.

The second half of the book is a great resource, albeit a bit out of date (c1998), for anyone who wants continue their own education, or for those who want to know how to get into college or apply for employment if you’ve been homeschooled.  There is a nice list of job and career potentials for nontraditional students, including interning and volunteering, which can be just as instructive as apprenticing and working.  

Quite a bit of this book is excerpts from a homeschool magazine that the author subscribes to.  These are mostly testimonials for how homeschool worked for the students that wrote them.  They can be inspiring.  They can also be tedious.  I need to know what didn’t work for students.  

I will recommend my daughter scan the second half of the book for items of interest.

The year of learning dangerously : adventures in homeschooling by Quinn Cummings

This book couldn’t have come at a more perfect moment.  My daughter had discovered 2nd and Charles store at Flatirons Crossing.  She fell in love with the store and begged me to go with her, she had to show me the books.  I think we spent more than an hour there, I lost track of time.  I pulled books and sat on the floor to skim them.  I found this treasure and had to purchase it.  

This was a delightful recounting of a mom, Quinn Cummings (actress,, author, and blogger), who decided that traditional school was not working for her 4th grade daughter.  They went from public school, to private school.  Eventually, the family decided to homeschool.  Quinn writes about her research, her paradigm shift, the trials and misdirections of trying to figure out how homeschool should work for her daughter and the family.  I think I laughed every other page.  

The opening page caught me right away.  Quinn is in the laundry room having a panic attack about whether pulling her daughter out of school was going to ruin her child’s education and future.  She was feeling too much togetherness and needed some mom time.  She was breathing into a paperback to avoid hyperventilating.  I was laughing out loud in a retail store.  My daughter, lucky for her, was nowhere near me to be embarrassed by the tears of empathy and relief rolling down my cheeks.  Someone else has experienced what I’m going through!

Quinn not only researched many of the most common models of homeschooling, such as playgroups, online schools, and mail order curriculum materials, she went “undercover” to get a real feeling for the philosophies.  

When she read about radical unschooling, she went to an unschooling convention and immersed herself in the culture of unschoolers.  Here she witnessed Attachment Parenting to the extreme, with a 5 year old nursing during a yoga session.  She determined this method might not be one she could embrace as radically as it’s practitioners.  

She tried tutoring, in French, to discover the French tutor was far cooler than she was, in her daughter’s eyes.  Tutoring for math also worked out nicely.  

She ventured to a fundamentalist Christian school at home conference, where she wore long skirts, modest, high-necKed, long-sleeved blouses, and borrowed a wedding ring.  Here, she found additional insight by reading bumper stickers in the parking lot.  Seems a lot of the attendees were hard line Republicans or Libertarians.

She snuck into an isolationist movement called Gothardites, who home school with a strict curriculum and do not socialize with anyone outside their religious sect.  How she was brave enough to do this is beyond me. 

In the end, after a year of learning dangerously, Quinn and her daughter decided she didn’t need to attend public or private school.  Tutoring and discovery through conversation and field trips were the right approach.  

I recommend this book to anybody who is unsure of themselves as the education coordinator of their children.  Be ready to laugh and giggle and generally feel better about it all.

Grain brain : the surprising truth about wheat, carbs, and sugar--your brain's silent killers by David Perlmutter, MD

I like learning about how what we eat affects how we think and how we feel.  Dr. Perlmutter has received mixed responses to his latest book.  He suggests that the modern grains we consume have been hybridized and even genetically modified to such a degree that the proteins (glutens) in them are no longer processed appropriately in the body.  The proteins don’t digest in the same way as ancient grains, leaving toxins in the blood stream.  These toxins cross through the gut and brain causing damage in the cells and tissues fed by the blood.  The end results range from indigestion to Alzheimers to ADD.  Perlmutter goes into greater detail about symptoms and problems in the brain than other gluten/wheat free books, which deal mostly with digestive issues.

He writes in very plain language about the biology of eating.  I am intrigued by the way nutrients are absorbed, where they get absorbed, and where they are transported, how they are received.  Perlmutter does an excellent job of explaining these processes.  (Hmm, this would be a good biology book for a homeschooler who needs some science credits, I think)

Grain Brain has a gluten-free diet plan and recipes.  Gluten-free seems to be the diet du-jour.  His plan and recipes align with most gluten-free programs I’ve read.  His plan leans almost to the Atkins extreme, because his is not just wheat free, but virtually grain free.  But, there are some recipes that I’ve marked as worth trying, such as Kale Salad with Feta, roasted peppers, black olives, artichokes, and buttermilk dressing, p.275.  Doesn’t that sound divine?!

I do think there is something to the theory that modern gluten has something to do with modern health maladies.  And I definitely agree that processed foods contribute to much of the nation’s health problems.  However, I think he has swung to the extreme against all grains.  Moderation in everything, right?

Paradigm shift

That’s my new mantra.  When I go into panic about not pursuing my career this year, and pulling my daughter out of the conventional education system, I repeat “paradigm shift, paradigm shift, paradigm shift” until my mind calms and I remember why I changed gears.  

What is a paradigm shift?

In 1962, Thomas Kuhn wrote The Structure of Scientific Revolution, and fathered, defined and popularized the concept of "paradigm shift" (p.10). Kuhn argues that scientific advancement is not evolutionary, but rather is a "series of peaceful interludes punctuated by intellectually violent revolutions", and in those revolutions "one conceptual world view is replaced by another".

Think of a Paradigm Shift as a change from one way of thinking to another. It's a revolution, a transformation, a sort of metamorphosis. It just does not happen, but rather it is driven by agents of change. (http://www.taketheleap.com/define.html)

And paradigm shifts are hard.  I love Kuhn’s description of them being interludes of peace punctuated by violent revolutions.  That’s so descriptive of how I’ve been feeling.  I begin to feel comfortable with our decision, then I panic that my daughter will be disadvantaged, that I’ve failed her as a mom, that my peers and family will judge our decision and find me lacking as a parent.  I chant my mantra, try to refocus on the end goal, and remember that the conventional method of education wasn’t working for her, regardless of how other people think it should work.

It’s a journey.  It’s a change of perspective.  It’s panic inducing.

Paradigm - par·a·digm

noun \ˈper-ə-ˌdīm, ˈpa-rə- also -ˌdim\

: a model or pattern for something that may be copied

: a theory or a group of ideas about how something should be done, made, or thought about

City of Falling Angels by John Berendt

I read this for our IT book club.  

This was an okay book. It was like a walking tour of the small town politics of Venice. Lots of name dropping and a bit slow. I'm sure someone who loves Venice might find more appeal because of the deep descriptions of the palaces and art work, as well as references to Napoleon history.

3 of 5 stars

Culture Clash by Jean Donaldson

This is the kind of book that should be given to every dog owner and every person who encounters dogs.  It is a great manual for understanding why dogs act like they do and how to train in a kind manner.  It debunks the wolf-pack hierarchy theory.  It explains why negative training isn’t really teaching.  The author writes in an easy to understand, light manner which makes this book digestable even for younger dog fans.  

With breed banning and the quick execution of dogs who bite that is prevalent in this country, Culture Clash reminds us that we are humans, dogs are animals, animals bite as a form of communication.  Human owners cannot project human morals and values on their dogs, expecting them to understand and operate within human culture without constant guidance from their owners.

5 of 5 stars

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke

Kind of funny that I read about Venice in City of Falling Angels, where reference to Napoleon's wars had destroyed treasures in Venice.  This story begins in England during the Napoleonic wars.  The second half takes place mainly in Venice.  Funny how books tie into each other like that.  Connections, we call it in education and literacy.  Anyway…

It was a very long book.  Told from a dispassionate narrator point of view, but with a sense of humor.  I lifted several passages and put them as facebook statuses because they made me chuckle.

In a parallel England of 1890’s, magic is a respected study.  It isn’t a practice.  Until someone asks why it isn’t practiced anymore.  Jonathan Strange is a man without an occupation.  He off-the-cuff jokes that he could be a magician, then realizes he has a natural knack for it.  Unfortunately, there is a very studious magician that does not want the practice of magic to happen.  And if it does happen, he wants to be the only one to practice it.  That would be Mr. Norrell, who spends an inordinate amount of time searching out and purchasing all the most useful books about magic.  The two men eventually meet up,  begin practicing magic as master and apprentice, and offer their magical services to the British Army fighting Napoleon.  It is amusing to see how magic helps the British eventually defeat Napoleon.

There is a love story as well, and devilish fairies.  The book also takes an interesting look into psychiatric “madness” as well.  There are so many elements in this story, it’s hard to focus on one, really.   

I would recommend reading this book in a paper form.  An e-version is available, but the author puts footnotes in the book that really must be read as the reader encounters them.  They provide background and cross-references to many of the scholarly resources that the magicians study.  

October 7, 2013  

If you lived in Detroit in 1961 and watched Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” at a drive-in, you might have caught a 30-minute trailer called “American Maker,” sponsored by Chevrolet. “Of all things Americans are, we are makers,” its narrator began, over footage of boys building sand castles. “With our strengths and our minds and spirit, we gather, we form and we fashion: makers and shapers and put-it-togetherers.”  (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/15/magazine/the-kitchen-table-industrialists.html?_r=0)

My husband recently called me to the television with great enthusiasm.  (We gave up cable last year and use a Google box to watch videos.  We receive broadcast TV on a “bow-tie” antennae made of a piece of 2x4 with blue wires sticking out of it, like a centipede)  He had been browsing his YouTube channels and found an interview with a high school English teacher who used a hands on project to give his students an authentic reason to learn language arts.  

Steve was nearly in tears, wishing he’d had an inventive, outside-the-box English teacher in high school.  He fairly sang about how much more meaningful language arts would have been had there been a reason to pay attention in class.  He was not a very engaged student in the compartmentalized classes of our traditional high school.  This video is especially meaningful at 4:20 minutes in, when the teacher talks about why we shouldn't be teaching facts, but teaching how to solve problems and be self-reliant.  Take a few moments to watch it!  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_O0d-JEgp4

Did you watch it?  The interview was conducted at a makerfaire.  It’s kinda like a craft show, kinda like a flea market, kinda like a manufacturer convention, but not really.  This weekend, my family and I wandered through the NoCo Maker Faire in Loveland.  I was so excited to see what people are excited about doing and I was excited to find out how to get involved.  I was also afraid I’d see the crap people were making out of cast-off materials and scared my family would want to get more involved.  (I have a dualistic feeling about “making” and “maker culture.”  I’ve really got to come to terms with this.  After all, I married a maker, from a family of makers.  And we begat makers.)

The maker culture is a contemporary culture or subculture representing a technology-based extension of DIY culture. Typical interests enjoyed by the maker culture include engineering-oriented pursuits such as electronics, robotics, 3-D printing, and the use of CNC tools, as well as more traditional activities such as metalworking, woodworking, and traditional arts and crafts. The subculture stresses new and unique applications of technologies, and encourages invention and prototyping.[1] There is a strong focus on using and learning practical skills and applying them creatively. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maker_culture, October 8, 2013)

Some people would label makers as geeks, nerds, quirky people really obsessed with their interests.  They come in so many forms, you might be surprised to realize makers live in your neighborhood.  They might even reside in your own home.  They knit, crochet, cook, build birdhouses, sew clothes, build LEGO creations, program those LEGO creations, play Mine Craft, program computers, manipulate photos (using darkrooms and film, or Adobe Photoshop), tinker with their cars, grow gardens.  Shoot, we are all makers of a fashion, really.  We can’t help it.

I have been dabbling in maker concepts the last few months.  Children are all innately makers until they hit school age.  For some children, it gets hammered out of them.  Some children can balance compartmentalized classes in school with “making” outside of school.  And for some, like my honey, “making” is their world.  Traditional classes un-make the world and the parts seem unrelated when they are pried apart like that.  What’s English class got to do with science?!  I feel for those kids.  They need a place to thrive.

My sometime fantasy is to have a maker space in a school library.  Kids need a space to just try things, without being graded.  Without having to have a pre-writing plan.  Without needing to have a well thought out hypothesis.  Without being required to measure and mark.  I’m talking about letting kids make.  Which means take apart.  Which means experiment.  Which means thinking outside the box.  Which also means liability waivers.  And coaches.  And time.  And, probably, a budget.  And space.

I’m beginning the journey of checking out maker spaces (also called hacker spaces) to see how they really work.  How can one space accommodate so many interests?  How would learning to solder work with elementary aged kids?  How do parents react to their children building things with no plan?  How do communities feel about having these spaces in their midst?  How would I make a space like this safe, yet dangerous enough to encourage the experimentation and failure that is necessary to grow?

It gets messy.  It doesn’t always follow a clean path, or a plan for that matter.  Sometimes, it’s never truly finished.  In our house, it usually isn’t orderly.  Or timely, really.  But that isn’t necessarily the point.  Which is where I get prickly.  Sometimes I just want things tied up and neat, wires tucked into shiny boxes.  I just want things to work when I press the button.  The first time.  (Get over it, Rae!)

http://makezine.com/2013/08/28/a-librarians-guide-to-boosting-the-maker-movement/

I picked up Henry the VIII for a couple of reasons.  One being that the Herman's Hermits song runs through my head every time I think of Henry the VIII, and the other being that I've had a fun run reading Phillippa Gregory books over the last year or so.  I thought I'd read a non-fiction to triangulate the facts in her historical fiction.

I enjoyed Fraser's writing style.  It had enough emotion in it to allow me to really feel like I knew each woman in her own, not as an asterisk on Henry's own timeline.  Using love letters, diplomatic corresondence and diaries, these women became strong characters in their own right.  The politics and religios changes occuring during Henry's reign have been a blur, but reading about them through the queens has helped coalesce some of the trickier things.  I understand better how marriage was so influential in war and peace;  how high born women were pawns, but could wield power from within marriage;  and even how the experience of religion depended on education and social caste.  This book is a great way to make history become human, especially such a remote and busy time period (for our students, I feel ancient already!).

I passed this book on to my mother, who has a true crush on Philippa, as well as a fascination for the European royals of this era.

I had heard rave reviews of The Power of Habit.  I bought this as an audiobook and listened to it early in the summer, when I thought I'd make a habit of gardening.  Travel crushed any attempt to garden with regularity, but the book was good.

It was surprising to find how corporations tap into our psychology to create cravings and needs so they can sell their products.  This book had more to do with unveiling how powerful our habits are than with self-help.  I loved the story of Febreze.  It was a fabulous discovery, but doomed to failure because the very people Febreze could help (think cat hoarders) didn't think they needed it.  So the marketers found a way to market to a different segment of society.  They created a need by suggesting Febreze as a reward for the habit cycle.  Cleaning house is a chore/habit.  What if, the reward for a clean house is the smell?  What if we (Febreze, the company) could substitute Febreze as a better smell than disinfectant?  Voila!  They had a marketing success, with house cleaners craving and needing the Febreze scent, even between cleaning days.

Duhigg also explains why Alcoholics Anonymous works, how the military uses habits to strengthen their unity, and why food vendors in Kufa perpetuated riots.  This is a great read.  I highly recommend this one.

I have been on a long weight-loss, healthy-eating journey the last several years, voraciously reading about food and food related health issues.  I have a friend whose passion is anti-corporate farming and consuming.  She gave this book to me for my birthday.  Now, we all know that eating junk food is bad for us.  We've probably all gone on a few fad diets - Atkins, Pritikin, Paleo seems to be the current fad.  This book will make you rethink it all.  I wasn't really interested in a bash-fest on the American food culture, and and so was pleasantly surprised that the author remains objective and thorough in his research on Big Food.  In the end, though, it's pretty convicting.  

Salt, Sugar, Fat is an analysis of how capitalism has overshadowed public health, or rather how corporate interest in public health is not conducive to a successful Wall Street owned food corporation.  It just simply cannot work.  In order for Coke to keep it's slim lead on Pepsi, they must find ways to increase consumer desire for their products.  Which means more consumption of the very things that are making our population ill.  Food manufacturers use cutting edge neuropsychology and biology to create addictive qualities in their products to get that edge over their competitors.  This is an eye opening book on becoming better consumers.  I can see this being used in a social studies class, or maybe Home Ec if anybody still teaches that.  (You'll see that Betty Crocker actively campaigned to do away with the "home made is healthy" home economics curriculum to replace it with "convenience is better" curriculum in order to boost sales.)

I did a lot of road tripping this summer.  My daughter and her dog compete in USDAA dog agility and she's been working toward the national competition in Tennessee this October.  Sometimes, I could just sit and read during the wait times.  Awesomeness!

Among the titles I read:

        I'm still reading

   I guess this is plenty to talk about in my first post.  I hope to talk about homeschool/supplemental web resources next time.  I plan to include my latest reads in my posts as well.  I'll get to more school level books this month.

I'm going to give this blog thing a try.  Constructive feedback is always welcome.

I've had a change of plans this year.  Rather than take on a school library or substitute teach, I am homeschooling my 16 year old daughter.  I'll still work my part-time hours in the cataloging department.  I'm only taking a detour, not a complete change of course.

What I did this summer:

I created a list of the top 500 circulating titles in Insignia (using all the titles checked out at BVSD).  I then looked at every title and cleaned it up.  This meant touching over 12,000 MARC records.  Doing a search based on a title could potentially bring up 100 records because we combined 65 library catalogs into the union catalog.  Sometimes, each school had multiple copies of each title, stored as separate MARC records on their own database.  Sometimes the titles were entered slightly differently or, may or may not have had an ISBN attached.  Insignia did not merge records that were not a match on the ISBN field or title field when we migrated over to the union catalog model.  

I would search for a title from the report, review each record in the resulting list, determine if there were duplicates, then merge the duplicate records.  Once I felt there was a cleaned-up list of titles, I added reading program data to the titles.  I'd say about 80% of the titles had at least one type of reading program:  Accelerated Reader, Reading Counts!, Lexile, Book Adventure, or Fountas and Pinnell/GRL.  Your patrons should be able to get a decent list of leveled books from the top circulating titles.

A few of the classics I couldn't clean up.  They've been published in so many permutations and revisions, and the records are often so scanty, that I just couldn't bring myself to merge them into one record.  The forwards and afterwords, the dedications, sometimes the illustrator all varied from copy to copy.  

I'm sure there are mistakes in the clean up.  If you catch one, please let me know so I can correct it.