Appy Hour for Kids and Apps Folder Shared via Google

I have started a folder via my Google docs where I am starting to store all my presentations and info on Apps.  Here is the link: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0ByZSJgcQD22tU1VOdFh2TDhyZXM&usp=sharing


In the folder, you can access my handout for the "Appy Hour for Kids" program:

This presentation on iPad apps is for an audience of school-age kids, parents, teachers, and other adults who have an interest in being introduced to learning apps for kids in Kindergarten to fourth grade. Children must be accompanied by an adult. Program is from 6:00 to 7:00 pm

Intelligence in Learning Environments

The following was posted on the storytell listerv: http://www.storynet.org/storytell.html. For me, it's a reminder about the overarching goal of libraries to provide access to all kinds of information and to provide programs that meet those educational gaps as well as to motivate learning in general as opposed to learning a particular kind of knowledge:

What Is Intelligence, Anyway?
By Isaac Asimov

What is intelligence, anyway?

When I was in the army, I received the kind of aptitude test that all
soldiers took and, against a normal of 100, scored 160. No one at the
base had ever seen a figure like that, and for two hours they made a big
fuss over me.

(It didn't mean anything. The next day I was still a buck private with
KP - kitchen police - as my highest duty.)

All my life I've been registering scores like that, so that I have the
complacent feeling that I'm highly intelligent, and I expect other
people to think so too.

Actually, though, don't such scores simply mean that I am very good at
answering the type of academic questions that are considered worthy of
answers by people who make up the intelligence tests - people with
intellectual bents similar to mine?

For instance, I had an auto-repair man once, who, on these intelligence
tests, could not possibly have scored more than 80, by my estimate. I
always took it for granted that I was far more intelligent than he was.

Yet, when anything went wrong with my car I hastened to him with it,
watched him anxiously as he explored its vitals, and listened to his
pronouncements as though they were divine oracles - and he always fixed
my car.

Well, then, suppose my auto-repair man devised questions for an
intelligence test.

Or suppose a carpenter did, or a farmer, or, indeed, almost anyone but
an academician. By every one of those tests, I'd prove myself a moron,
and I'd be a moron, too.

In a world where I could not use my academic training and my verbal
talents but had to do something intricate or hard, working with my
hands, I would do poorly.

My intelligence, then, is not absolute but is a function of the society
I live in and of the fact that a small subsection of that society has
managed to foist itself on the rest as an arbiter of such matters.

Consider my auto-repair man, again.

He had a habit of telling me jokes whenever he saw me.

One time he raised his head from under the automobile hood to say: "Doc,
a deaf-and-mute guy went into a hardware store to ask for some nails. He
put two fingers together on the counter and made hammering motions with
the other hand.

"The clerk brought him a hammer. He shook his head and pointed to the
two fingers he was hammering. The clerk brought him nails. He picked out
the sizes he wanted, and left. Well, doc, the next guy who came in was a
blind man. He wanted scissors. How do you suppose he asked for them?"

Indulgently, I lifted by right hand and made scissoring motions with my
first two fingers.

Whereupon my auto-repair man laughed raucously and said, "Why, you dumb
jerk, He used his voice and asked for them."

Then he said smugly, "I've been trying that on all my customers today."
"Did you catch many?" I asked. "Quite a few," he said, "but I knew for
sure I'd catch you."

"Why is that?" I asked. "Because you're so goddamned educated, doc, I
knew you couldn't be very smart."

And I have an uneasy feeling he had something there.

My Weird School

I just discovered that Dan Gutman has a "My Weird School" website! http://www.myweirdclassroomclub.com/

Better late than never ...

I Spy: Near and Far

I'm a little frustrated that Google Docs has made its older version unavailable.  (The older version allowed me to grab the embed code from my uploaded PDFs' "Properties".)  As far as I can work out, there's no simple way to embed an uploaded document.  (It's a different story if one uses Google to create the document in the first place.)  So I grabbed an embed code from somewhere on the net.  I'd like to display the code here, but I don't know how to display the code without the computer thinking I want it to follow through with the command.  Contact me if you'd like the embed code.

Graphic Novel, Squish the Super Amoeba ... and Peggy Paramecium

Speaking of graphic novels ... I recently read Squish: Super Amoeba, the first volume in a new series by the creators of well-known Babymouse.  I LOVED the humor (don't forget to watch the face change on Squish's hat!), the successful use of panels versus no panels, and the incorporation of the micro and simple organisims I learned about in middle school.  I also love the labeling in this graphic novel.  For example, below you'll see that Principal Planarian gets a stamped name as well as an arrow with further information.

I'm a little obsessed with Peggy (Paramecium) and wish I could have the original illustration of these two pages:  

I also love the following "running" late to school action scene ... Reminds me of my recent "great exercise" in the airport.  Perhaps I need to adopt a little more of Peggy's postive attitude ...

It'd be awesome to do a "Squish the Super Amoeba and Science" program ... You could show videos like this one ... a "real" interpretation of Peggy running!

Or this video about planarian regeneration from Exploratorium's Microscope Imaging Station: http://www.exploratorium.edu/imaging_station/research/planaria/story_planaria1.php  

Graphic Novelist, Ben Hatke

I was totally STOKED to meet Ben Hatke at his own booth in the ALA Exhibit Hall!!!

Don't know Ben Hatke?  He's the author/illustrator of the graphic novel
Zita the Space Girl.


Zita the Spacegirl: Trailer from Ben Hatke on Vimeo.



Here's some of his ORIGINAL ARTWORK that he was kind enough to let me purchase!  The black and white sketch is my favorite (okay ... one of my favorite) scenes in the book.  Turns out, it was one of his, too!  The watercolor is not a scene from the novel, but involves the characters from the book in a scene that, to me, describes in so many levels the marvel of all graphic novels -- "It's an ART book!" 

Transliteracy Programming

So that "multimedia tween program involving conversation, music, video, print, and games" idea actually has a name ... "TRANSLITERACY" programming.  It is reminiscent of the "multi-genre" English education model and Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences.

Here are some resources:

Transliteracy Interest Group (LITA - Library & Information Technology Association).

Introducing Transliteracy: What Does It Mean to Academic Libraries? by Tom Ipri

Andretta, S. Transliteracy: take a walk on the wild side, 2009. In World Library and Information Congress: 75th IFLA General Conference and Assembly,Milan, Italy,23-27 August 2009.IFLA. (Published) [Conference Paper].

Digital storytelling: creator's guide to interactive entertainment  By Carolyn Handler Miller

http://theunquietlibrarian.wordpress.com/2011/05/13/transliterate-libraries-creating-conversations-for-portable-participatory-and-personalized-learning/

http://theunquietlibrarian.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/ala-11-presentation-transforming-information-literacy-for-todays-students-libraries-as-sponsors-of-transliteracy/

http://librarianbyday.net/transliteracy/

http://librariesandtransliteracy.wordpress.com/

transliteracy.com or http://nlabnetworks.typepad.com/transliteracy/