So James is running a contest to see who can guess the exact time of the 10,000th edublog created. That is so cool! But what is even cooler is that so many people are taking advantage of such an awesome resource with so many applications for education. Kudos, James!
My guess is May 19th @ 2:24 p.m. Wish me luck!
Mission: Accomplished
OK–so this is not my favorite theme (no offense) but my old theme doesn’t work with the new wiki link, so I will live with this for now. Better than having no blog show up at all like I have for the past four days. I’m not upset–they’ll work it out–happens with lots of new stuff. And, no, I have not done anything with the wiki and I probably won’t until school is out, but I am excited about it. I am reading Will Richardson’s Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms (Corwin 2006) and getting a lot of great theory as well as ideas for practical applications. It should be required reading for those integrating technology in the classroom (which should be all of us).
Mission: Accomplished (sort of)
With the last Books & Bites of our school year, we have broadened our horizons with books “beyond our borders.” One (of many) great things about books is that they can help us experience a different place (real or imaginary) without having to physically go there. Check out the following titles that can help you do just that:
The Star of Kazan by Eva Ibbotson is on next year’s Rebecca Caudill list. It is part poor-orphan story, part mystery, and all Vienna and its surrounding areas. Taking place around the turn-of-the-century, this book tells the story of Annika, an 11-year-old girl who has been living with three unmarried sibling professors and their servants, Ellie and Sigrid, who found Annika abandoned in a church as an infant. Although she loves her “family,” Annika has always dreamed of a gorgeous, refined mother coming one day to reclaim her long-lost daughter. And one day it actually happens! Frau Edeltraut von Tannenberg bursts on the scene and whisks Annika away to her family manor. There, Annika misses her hometown, Vienna, and her old friends, but is eager to start a new life with her mother.
However, things are not always as they seem. The von Tannenberg home is in disrepair, many fine furnishings are “out for repair” and there is no money to send Annika’s “new” (and horrible) brother Henry to military school. Then, Frau Edeltraut’s distant uncle dies and leaves her a fortune just at the same time the reader discovers that Annika also inherited a trunk from an elderly friend–a trunk that has since gone missing…Is there a connection and if so, what will Annika do?
Siberia by Ann Halam is a fascinating book about a girl named Sloe who enjoyed a comfortable life in the city until she and her mother were forced into the Wilderness Settlement when Sloe was about four years old. Her mother, once a prominent scientist, is forced to make nails all day and live in a little shack attached to the factory. But she has a secret–one that she shares only with Sloe. She has a Lindquist kit that she uses to grow tiny animals that then die so she can preserve their “seeds.” Why the big secret? The animals in the kit are all that are left of the animals on Earth after people have destroyed their habitat–except for the rats, muties, and fur-farm animals that people harvest. When the authorities take Sloe’s mother away, it is up to Sloe to guard the kit and use her mother’s map to get to the faraway, safe city where one day her mother’s friends might help create animals again. Boy, what she has to deal with along the way–including constantly being tracked by Yagin, who may be friend but may be foe. The cold and desolate setting of this novel reflects the state of Sloe’s dystopian world and as the author says, “Siberia…is not a place. Siberia is a state of mind.”
The Convicts by Iain Lawrence is without a doubt an English book. The action takes place in London somewhere around the 1830s. Tom Tin, age 14 , is having a really bad time–not only has his father, a once prominent sea captain, been sent to debtor’s prison, but his mother is half-mad mourning the death of his sister. When Tom tells his mother he will go to sea to support her and pay his father’s debt, she begs him to stay away from the sea and then rages, “I have no son!” On the streets, things get worse for Tom when he gets mixed up with a scavenging blind beggar and bone grubber and when the street boys mistake him for one of their own, the Smasher. When the blind beggar turns up dead, Tom is convicted of murder and must serve time on a horrible prison ship until he is transported to Australia. The conditions Tom must endure on the filthy ship are stomach-churning, and Tom is constantly in danger as more boys become convinced he is the Smasher and responsible for many a terrible deed. If you like gritty descriptions this is the book for you. It makes me shudder to think how much of this book is based upon fact.
Want to know more about The Star of Kazan, Siberia, or The Convicts? Then check them out and read them yourself!
Mission: Accomplished
It’s not every day someone offers you an absoultely free book to keep for your very own–and it’s even rarer to get more than one book free. Agreed?
Well, this Saturday, May 6th is your chance to get a bunch of free comic books! Free Comic Book Day is a national event designed to promote this great type of recreational reading. Comic book stores around the nation are participating–and we have one right in our town. So go on down to Acme Comics in downtown Normal from 9:00 a.m.-7:00 p.m. and see what you can get!
Remember, you can also check out comic books EVERY DAY from our IMC for FREE! Right now we have a lot of superhero stuff and some miscellaneous, too. ATTENTION MANGA READERS: I have barely any manga because I don’t read it myself, so if you want more manga in the IMC I need your help to know what to buy. Maybe if you suggest some titles to me, I’ll find something I really like, too.
Mission: Accomplished
