I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You

If you liked Alias, high tech and adventure, this book is for you.  The Gallagher Academy for exceptional young women is not your typical all-girls high school.  You take advanced martial arts in PE, open secret passages with obscure levers, learn the latest in chemical warfare, break codes, learn surveillance techniques and your Mom is a secret agent.  She wears tiny microfilm recorders in her broaches.  Cammie Morgan is fluent in 14 languages but has no idea what to do when she meets an ordinary boy.  She can hack into the family computer, track him, yet try to keep her identity secret.   However friends arrange for a clandestine meeting.   All kinds of things go haywire as this relationship progresses.  This is an enjoyable story for teenage girls.

Reads for Boys

The Ranger's Apprentice Series

The Ranger's Apprentice series has a lot a guy could want. Adventure, intrigue, non-stop unexpected events and friendships that develop throughout the books. The special marine like organization and training takes place during the middle ages using the technology of the time. The human insights and coming of age threads are very well done. There are seven books published so far and the author, John Flanagan may have more coming. We have seven in the MC. I have enjoyed reading the first three of the series. The photos are courtesy of Amazon.com You can order these on line. They would make a great gift.

Twilight Series of Books

Twilight

Since my 7th and 8th graders love these books, and we have requests for them all the time, I bought a set and started reading. These books are very well written, with woven subplots spicing up the tale as it progresses. There are several larger themes within the books that attract teens. Love wins over anger and lesser motives. Love puts the other person first, although it may get clouded by faulty vision sometimes. There is a lot a young heart wants to hear.

Picture of the book is from Amazon.com

Trailer Enjoy! More on Youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBvOhfL4mYw

Trends of Worth

Trends Worth Noting
I read several articles recently that are quite good. Among them are...

From eSchool News (www.eschoolnews.com/emails/esnTW/esntw120108.htm)
Seven Skills Students Desperately Need...
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/?i=56127
Four Trends that Could Change Everything...
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/index.cfm?i=56180
Why some Students Prefer Virtual Schooling
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/related-top-news/index.cfm?i=56217

Technology brings about changes. Staying alert to these trends requires time to read about them and reflection time to integrate them into my thinking at least. Ignoring them is dangerous for everyone in education. ICT skills are taking on more importance as they are integrated globally. Forgive me if these comments are short. Time is of the essence for all of us.

Wonderingwind

Second Life: Education in a Virtual World (slidecast)

From: HVX.Mica, 9 months ago

Second Life: Education in a Virtual World (slidecast)

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: lauc-b conference academic library 2.0)

Presentation slides for the LAUC-B Academic Library 2.0 conference. Presentation given by Bernadette Daly Swanson (UCD) and Danielle Kane (UCSC)


SlideShare Link

Interesting Reads

At the moment I am combining reading new books with a quick comment in Ed.VoiceThreads. You are invited to comment on the book with your thougts by going to Ed.VoiceThreads.com and typing in the title of the book. This adds to the coversation about a book. Both teachers and students may add in their comments about a book title. Teachers must sign in as an educator for their free educational account. This is a world wide service for teachers. Please listen to the piece "What is Ed. VoiceThread?"

The current book I finished was The Book Thief. It is told from Death's point of view. Listen and read comments in Ed.Voice Thread.com .This is not depressing but very insightful and a very good read.

Second Life Adventures

Last night ISTE had a very honest speaker on the adventures of one university teacher as she started with a bare island and started to set up a learning place. Graphic artists came in to help her and many beautiful buildings were created. Then came the learning and information architectures. The result was very creative.

KJ Hax selects and arranges for the speakers to come to ISTE island to present ideas on educational topics. The presentation was at the Band Shell but most are at the ISTE auditorium you see left. ISTE is the International Society of Technology Educators, a great group of people from all levels of education.

Here is another great seminar from ISTE auditorium: http://www.slideshare.net/mguhlin/tilt-second-life-presentation?src=embed

Winds of Change

Time and technological change marches on. I am learning new things this summer. Big learning curves as well in new versions of software in my graduate courses. Updating entries with web2.0 tools I already have and learning more about their options has taken up many hours.
Web Based Learning, a graduate course at NIU means getting my own laptop, a Mac to log into the course from various points in Illinois and Wisconsin. This is courtesy of my family. There was only one F2F meeting and the rest of the course is online via Adobe Connect. We all have earphone/mic head sets.  This is the face of the future and it enabled me log in from anyplace...as long as I had my Mac and an Internet connection.
The surprise was that all of the 24 other graduate level students were teachers from the north shore. I was the only western sububerban teacher. Our F2F meeting was in Lake Forest, IL.
We were in a Mac lab in the school Media Center Library. Everything was Mac orientated. Most of these teachers had their own MacBookPro with all the goodies.  The only person using a Mac lab computer was me since my laptop had not arrived yet. I did some real fast orientating into required web sites.  I was sure happy to get the laptop and catch up!