Wanted:  Book Reviewers! 

By: Lauren Carter

Did you read a good book lately? Was it so good that you wanted to let others know how you felt about it?  We have a new feature in our Library catalog website. Students can now rate and review books! Here are the simple 1-2-3 steps to making a review on our site…

1. You are going to need to logon the website as yourself, meaning in the username slot write S.FirstName.LastName, as you would do when signing on to the school network.  The password is your student ID (same as your lunch number).
2. In the Catalog, type in the book or author of the book you found interesting.
3. When the record comes up, click on the Review tab. Next, click on the button that says “Add Review.” You can rate the book from 1-5 stars (Poor to Awesome) and also submit a short written review. Remember to use a well-crafted 2-3 sentence review that can be viewed by all. Your review will be checked by Mrs. Tise first and if it is appropriate it will be added to the Reviews   Stop by, pick up a book and review it online today!

Let’s say you’re having a bad hair day, and don’t really want your face and your surroundings showing to the person you’re talking to.  You don’t need to use the webcam.  You can have the equivalent of a regular phone call with the microphone and Skype.

I used Skype last year when my son studied abroad for a semester.  The program is extremely easy to use, but if you’re the type who needs lots of pictures and instructions, try the Skype Help section of their website.  If you are inclined to use Skype on your own computer, you can also find the download at http://www.skype.com/download/skype/windows/. 

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    •  Go to http://TeachingBooks.net/home/ 
    •  Enter your password: RCTbooks

TeachingBooks is a great way to provide everyone equal access to educational and literacy resources. Through TeachingBooks, all children can see and hear the best authors and illustrators in their studios. These glimpses into who the authors are and how they work are exciting and valuable experiences that can be enjoyed at school and home. TeachingBooks.net, a Wisconsin-based resource, is an entirely new kind of service designed to generate enthusiasm for books and reading by providing thousands author programs and K–12 book resources that reveal the spirit and personality within books. Among the growing collection of more than 12,000 resources available are original movies of beloved authors like Newbery Medalist Christopher Paul Curtis (Bud, Not Buddy) and Caldecott Medalist David Wiesner (Tuesday and The Three Pigs). For more information, contact librarian Mrs. Tise (651-2700 or mary.tise@redclay.k12.de.us)

Next month’s book will be Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson.  The library has a few copies on the shelf, so if you haven’t read it already, check it out and join us in October.

There is a new blog page just for the book discussion group!  Read all about the books and the questions raised at: http://cablibrary.edublogs.org/?page_id=15

Why did I mention Mr. Killheffer in a post on NetTrekker?  Well, one of his rewards was a free subscription for the entire school to NetTrekker.  NetTrekker is an academic search engine that’s safe, fast and easy to use for teachers, librarians, students and parents.  Look up almost any topic and find websites, images, lesson plans and tutorials.  Everything is organized by reading level, format and subject area, so it can be a valuable homework resource, as a starting point for research papers.

You must register as a user, but the instructions are easy.  Find them here.  You will need to select our state (Delaware!) and enter our school name (Cab).  After that, you can start using NetTrekker!  We’ll watch the usage statistics and use them to decide whether or not to subscribe again next year.

So, how can you grab a good read in the meantime?  Even though the library computers are set up for testing, you can still look for books before homeroom or after school.  You can browse the new books cart or the shelves.  If you are looking for a specific book, you can check the library catalog from the computer in your homeroom (or any classroom), or you can use the computer at the library desk.  (All the other library computers are tied up with testing..)

 There’s also a link from the library website (which you can view at: http://teachers.redclay.k12.de.us/mary.tise/)  Click on the link to “Virtual Reference Library” and enter the easy password (available from Mrs. Tise in the library) and you’re on your way researching.

The complete list of titles available as eBooks includes:

 Here’s how ILL works:  Sammy Scholar comes to the Cab/Charter Library with a list of books he’d like to use in his research.  One or two of the books aren’t on our shelves, but they are sitting in the library at, say, the University of Delaware.  Sammy gives Mrs. Tise a list of the books he wants (ideally, he’ll print the information from the other library’s  online catalog).  Mrs. Tise emails the ILL department at the other library, and helpful library workers there go to the shelves and mail the desired book to Mrs. Tise.  The book is officially on loan from one library to another (interlibrary loan!), and Mrs. Tise lets Sammy Scholar use it until it’s time to return the book to the library that owns it.

Of course, Sammy Scholar doesn’t wait until the last minute to ask Mrs. Tise for these books.  Interlibrary loan is a wonderful thing, but it does take time (perhaps a week or two) to request and move books from one library to another.  Sammy Scholar knew this, and he got started on collecting his resources right away.  Way to go, Sammy!

Clever Keys (www.cleverkeys.com) is free software that provides instant access to definitions at dictionary.com, synonyms at thesaurus.com, facts at reference.com, and more.  Click on the system tray icon (lower right corner of the screen) that looks like an open book.    (It’s right there in the middle of the list in this image.)   You’ll find the keyboard shortcuts to make Clever Keys work for you.  Clever keys.  Clever library!

Let’s say you need information about some topic–the Renaissance or the Great Depression, for example–and you make the mistake of starting with a Google search. You type in your search term and find five gazillion hits. How do you know which ones have good information, and which websites were written by a fourth graders for a class project? (There are ways to figure out what’s good and what isn’t, but that’s another story for another day.)

IF you had started with the catalog, you would find a nice list of websites. Each item on the list has a little description of the things you’ll find in that site, and each item tells you what grade level it targets. That way, you can start with the information that’s just the right reading level for you. The library catalog. Check it out at: http://167.21.9.121/webopac/main?siteid=cab