Glogster: Create Interactive Posters

Once again, my SPLAT homies have put me onto a cool site for all of you =D They mentioned this site a couple months ago, but I forgot the name of it. Then, they mentioned it again this last time we had our quarterly meeting, so I figure I'll do a post on it so I don't forget again hehe.

The site is Glogster, and its another one of those social media like thingys. This network focuses on creating interactive posters called Glogs (Graphic Blogs), combining pictures, text, videos, and graphics into your own creation.

Like most of the social media entities, this does require creating a free account. Glogster seems to promote its connectivity to video and photo sites (like Youtube and Flickr), and then the sharing feature for all your other social networks (Facebook, Twitter, and the like).

For educators, there is also a Glogster EDU that has recently been launched to offer private classroom management of multiple Glogster accounts. Just so you know, these ones cost money.

So if you make a lot of posters, I thought that this might be a cool alternative to the traditional stuff. 

Creepy Scavenger Hunt =D

So the theme "Own the Night" made me think of creepy and darkness, so I thought we'd do a creepy scavenger hunt. I came up with some clues and activities, put the kids in teams of 2 or 3, and let them go at it.

In addition to a fun program, some of my questions leaned toward literacy. These questions looked like finding a book, or finding a piece of information. This was an awesome opportunity to see how much the kids knew about finding things in the library, and filling in the blanks of how to find something if they weren't very familiar with it.

If you wanted to make the program a little creepier, it would be more fun to do this at night, in a darker library, and have some creepy decorations going on. 

All in all it was a great program, and if you were wondering what my questions linked like, here is a list for you =D

What is the theme for this year's Teen Summer Reading?

One of the horror books that Rick Yancey wrote is titled...

Create your own ghost (using paper towels and a sharpie), and use it to decorate the Young Adult Section

Write down what is hidden inside the slime. (I used some cornstarch, water, and green food coloring to make my slime, and hid a plastic bug in it)

Do the solar system puzzle. (Not exactly creepy, but the kids had a fun time doing it. I originally thought of each team having to do the puzzle individually, but I thought it would take to long. So instead, I had all of the kids built it together to start the program)

Find a creepy book and write the title here

Who wrote The Monstrous Memoirs of a Mighty McFearless?

Find a creepy movie and write the title here

Find 5 creepy crawlies and right down where you found them. (I placed 10 plastic bugs across the library, just in case a few were too hard to find in a short time)

Do the Creepy Words Word Search Puzzle

Do a creepy face and have your librarian take a picture of it

A Step from Heaven?

A Step from Heaven by An Na

Why did I read it?

This was one of the books for my Diversity in Children's Literature class, and it also won the 2002 Michael L. Printz Award.

What happened?

Young Ju doesn't know what Mi Gook means, but she is pretty sure it means heaven. Her friend tells her that she won't be coming back once she goes there, and every time her struggling Apa (father) and Uhmma (mother) say the word, they associate it with a better place, and happiness. It can even make her Apa stop hitting her Uhmma. But, it turns out that Mi Gook isn't heaven at all. Its really a place called Ah-me-ri-ka.

Its a place where Young has to have her hair in curls, her mother and father still struggle, they live in a small house, and Halmoni (grandma) isn't around anymore because she is still in Korea.

As Young Ju starts going to school and church, she begins to find a balance between her Korean heritage, and her new American home. If only her family didn't make it such a confusing balancing act...

What did I like or not like?

This novel has a very interesting writing style. In an interview, the author mentions that she wanted to realistically portray childhood experiences, and she thought that was better portrayed in small instances and memories instead of a coherent narrative.

She writes, "Memory doesn't come as a complete story with a beginning, middle, and end, but rather lives in moments that focus on a smell or a touch or a feeling." This made the novel almost read like poetry, and was very cool.

In addition to this fascinating writing style, this novel does a great job portraying the struggle that Young Ju has between staying true to her heritage, and living in her new home. It also realistically portrays the struggle of loving her family, while they are often very difficult to love.

While this isn't a necessarily enjoyable novel to read, it is a powerful story, and I'm glad I read it.

Rate My Professors: Will I Like this Teacher?

Can you believe that it is almost the end of July? I'm really confused? Where did the time go?

Well, a site that I've mentioned to a couple people recently is ratemyprofessors, and I wanted to let you all know about it as well.

Basically, the site lets you look for colleges and see how students rate the professors at that school. Here's a scenario: you know you have to take Psychology 101 this Fall, but you have no idea which teacher is good. You could ask your friends you've they took, but none of your friends have taken the class yet. What to do...

As we all know, a good teacher can make or break a subject. So, if you look a teacher up on ratemyprefessors, you'll at least have an idea about what other people say about their overall quality, helpfulness, clarity, easiness, and whether or not their hot.

Even though we have almost a month of freedom yet, I know that those registration deadlines are coming fast, and I figured I'd give you a leg up :)

Messy Experiments!

So science experiments are some of our most popular programs, and one of our most popular science experiments programs is Messy Experiments. Why? Because its awesome!

As I've mentioned before, I love Steve Spangler, and these are the ones I stole this time :)

Diet Coke Mentos Geyser

If you drop a handful of Mentos into a full 2-liters of Diet Coke, you get a fabulously sticky and awesome geyser that goes about 20 feet up! Can't stress the fun and awesomeness of this one hehe.

Color Changing Milk 

Drop some food coloring into some milk, and then dip some dish-washing soap (I use Dawn) into the milk. The milk isn't a big fan of the dawn, so the colored milk runs away from the soap. Cool stuff!

Quicksand Goo (or Oblique)

If you add corn starch and water together in the right proportions, it will be hard if you hit it, but soft if you slide through it. Awesome!

Vinegar and Baking Soda...with a twist

If you put a layer of baking soda in a container, and then drop colored vinegar onto it, it smokes and leaves a cool design. Try it! I thought this was a fun twist on the vinegar and baking soda experiments that you normally see. Got this idea from Pinterest :)

Pop Rockets

Last but not least, get some old 35mm film canisters, put some water and alka-selzer into them, and watch what happens. Experiment with changing the level of water, the amount of alka-selzer, and the temperature of the water.

Internet Movie Database: When You Can't Think of the Name!

Imagine this: It's Friday night, you're chillaxin with your friends, and you all sat down to watch that new movie you got at Redbox. You're so excited to watch (fill in the actor's or actress's name), and the movie is going really smoothly, and then suddenly, you can't enjoy the movie anymore.

There is that one side character that looks ridiculously familiar but you can't for the life of you remember where you know them from. You have to know who that other actor is, and what TV show or movie you have seen them in previously, or you won't be able to enjoy the rest of the movie!

Internet Movie Database to the rescue! This site is so awesome. It offers photos, upcoming movie trailers, suggestions, and entertainment news. But, that isn't the best part. It also gives you full filmographies of pretty much every writer, actor, director, or editor in Hollywood and elsewhere. You can also search by the movie's name, and it will give you all the people involved with it.

When your one friend who knows all the actors just can't put his/her finger on it, jump onto the Internet or pull out your smart phone, and bounce over to IMDb.

P.S. If you already know about IMDb, please disregard the above scenario. I figured some might not know about this cool database, but if I am mistaken, and you all knew about it already, just let me know =D

Paint the Night!

So my boss's name is Miss Karen (I'd say her name is Karen Yother, but I call her Miss Karen so much more often than Karen Yother lol), and her dad's name is Donnel (for some reason we call him that instead of Don. Maybe we're just weird here hehe). In addition to being my boss's dad, he is also a local artist that just did a program for me.

Basically, we bought each participant a 9x12" canvas board, and had some acrylic paint on hand. We laid down some newspaper on the tables, passed out a small paint pallet (a paper plate works just as well if you can't find them at the dollar store), and gave everyone an inch brush and a detail brush. Donnel took the group step by step through painting a great looking night scene (we figured with a theme like "Own the Night," a night scene was awfully appropriate. The above image is a painting he did that gave him the idea for the night scene that we did).

I'm going to post some step by step pictures of the process, but I'm not saying I could paint it based on the pictures. I'm saying that having Donnel was awesome!

Our Tools

 A pencil gave us a Moon and a horizon line. 

We put some gesso putty in the moon which we'll use later.

We double loaded our brush (put one color on one side, and another color on the other side) and then brushed back and forth. The top was black and purple, we then blended in some blue near the horizon line, and then we used some green and brown for the ground. The trick is to put both colors directly on your brush and then just mix them as you paint back and forth. Gives you a great blended look.

 If you put some white paint on a toothbrush and flick it with your finger, you get some great looking stars in the sky.

Then we took our fingers and scratched the paint off of the top of the putty. That way we can see our moon again.

We added some trees (some black and mostly brown), and some purple, black, and green for the leaves. All that was left was initializing the bottom and taking a picture with a frame! 

Thanks Donnel!

Netted By the Webbys: Cool Websites Sent to Your Email

So I think I heard about Netted By the Webbys from a SPLAT (Special Project Library Action Team) colleague, and I'm so glad she mentioned them!

Basically, dudes at Netted scour the online world for surprising sites, awesome apps, and useful URLs and then send you an email each morning to tell you what they found. The email you subscribe to has a really nice format, and only highlights one cool thing a day, making it really quick and easy to read.

They have a search engine on their website for archived posts, and I'm really impressed with the cool things they point out each day. A recent post mentioned JPEGmini, which shrinks the file size of a photo while retaining the original quality. Another one was StickyGram, that turns your Instagram photos into cool fridge magnets. Some of the finds may not apply to you personally, but they are cool to read about anyways, and when they do apply to you personally, they are really awesome!

Tell Your Own Ghost Story

So each year, the Collaborative Summer Library Program (representatives from each state team up to offer better and more affordable summer reading programs) chooses three themes; one for kids, one for teens, and one for adults. This year, the teen theme is Own the Night. In addition to choosing a theme, they also offer incentives and prizes and a manual full of program ideas.

One of the suggested programs was making up your own ghost stories, so I thought we'd make a program out of it by giving our older tween group (6-8 grade) some suggestions and then videotape what they came up with.

I figured that like most stories, there were certain things that a ghost story would need (who, what, where, etc.) and I wrote the questions down and some possible answers to them. I gave an answer sheet to each participant, made up my own story to show that it wasn't that bad, and then let them at it. I've posted some of the videos on my YouTube Channel, and the rest will be coming soon.

Enjoy!


P.S. Here's the questions that I asked just in case the program sounded interesting :)

Who are you? (TV reporter, Ghost survivor, local farmer)

When did you first hear about it? (Childhood, 10 minutes ago, sometime last year)

How do you know about it? (Lived through it, your friend survived it, heard it from some neighbors)

What is this thing called? (The Big Hairy, Terribleautapus, The Reptile)

When did it come into existence? (18^th century, last week, every eclipse)

How did it come into existence? (freak experiment, untimely death, no one knows)

Where does it lurk now? (an old house, graveyard, in the library)

Why should we be afraid of it? (decapitation, tickles people to death, creeps up and says boo)

The World Without the Internet

Via: OnlineEducation.net

Almost Camp Food: S'mores and Fire!

What kind of activities does summer bring to mind? Swimming, fishing, camping? I always think about making s'mores around a camp fire as the sun sets. 

Well, its hard to do an actual fire or sunset in the library. But, we did make s'mores on a stick, and some edible fire. We did both activities for our 3-5 grade group, but younger kids and a couple older kids were also interested in doing it.

The S'mores on a Stick recipe we used was really simple, and came from food.com. Melt some milk chocolate chips (add a little bit of shortening, so it melts right), and put it into a crock pot or fondue pot to keep it warm. Skewer a large marshmallow (we used popsicle sticks cuz we had them handy), and dip it into the chocolate. Have some graham crackers crunched up, and roll the chocolate-covered marshamallow in them. Put it on a cookie tray and put it in the fridge so it hardens. Simply awesome!

Doing s'mores on a stick didn't take very long, so we also did Edible Fire. The link is to an explanation I found. Instead of just having the kids make the fire and then eat it, the site suggested walking the kids through the making of an actual fire. Then they do the same steps to their edible fire. So get the kindling, light it with a match, add more logs, etc.

That particular explanation asks for a lot of supplies. We just used pretzel sticks, Red Hots, red licorice, candy corn, and some black licorice mounds for rocks. You can be as simple or complicated as you would like to be :)

Both activities are super simple, and the kids really had a great time with both of them!