Picture Book Month Smackdown Tuesday, Nov. 18th

Visit the Picture Book Month website

I am a Picture Book Month Ambassador. Which means I get to read lots and lots of wonderful picture books and read some aloud to kids and in general have free license to shoot my mouth off about how much I love picture books and how they are great lesson starters.

When my principal put me in charge of morning announcements this year she did not realize that I had been wishing for this very thing to come true. I seize my chance to start morning book talks along with the weather report and daily reminders. The great thing is...no one got upset about my little book commercials, in fact the reverse was true. Teachers and students begin to ask me "Do you know that book you talked about this morning about counting monkeys?" or "May I borrow that book about that biography, Black Elk that you talked about this morning?" I am so glad teachers and students are getting these micro book reviews each morning. What surprises me is that I never seem to run out of ideas for presenting books for the day. I love my library and try to squeeze in as much time for cataloging new books each week as I can possibly mange.

Join us Tuesday, November 18th 12:30 CST/1:30 EST for a collaborative Picture Book Month Smackdown. The following educators will be joining us along with their picture book loving students to share favorite book titles and brief summaries. Here is the PBSmackdown link or watch below.
Twitter hashtag is #pbsmkdwn

Participating schools include:
Andy Plemmons, school librarian in Athens, Georgia
Jenny Lussier, school librarian in Durham, Connecticut
Cathy Potter, school librarian in Falmouth, Maine
Kathy Kaldenberg, school librarian in Solon, Iowa
Shawna Ford, school librarian in Weatherford, Texas
Julee Murphy, school librarian in Corpus Christi, Texas
Christina Brennan, school librarian in Pennsylvania

Thing 18: Online Productivity Tools

Downloaded and explored Open Office. A lot of the same templates are available on Microsoft's template pages. My first question was "is it available for Macs?" It is, but now I wonder if I create documents on Open Office and send them to a PC user, will they be accessible to non-Open Office users? I have encountered such minor snags with Office 2007. I will have to give it a test run. Luckily, I have two separate computers on two separate networks within feet of each other. I simply have to glide across from my school district computer to my university computer.

I have been utilizing Google docs this past year on a project called Early Bird Readers. Each librarian in my school district has editorial rights to an EBR spreadsheet. We update our information when it becomes pertinent. This was at first awkward and we resented having to use a new method, but now I am accustom to it. I do like seeing how the other libraries' numbers change.

I would prefer, and would think a wiki page would work better. A wiki devoted to EBR with one page link set up for a spread sheet to update numbers. Numbers, alone, do not tell the whole story. We need a place to hold discussions and to share ideas. (To find out more about Early Bird Readers, click the pic)

In summary, I might use Open Office on my Mac at home, but will probably stick with what I am using at work. Google Docs has proven useful on many occasions, particularly with university groups and clubs.