These are the two different ways you can search for information. Kingdom encompasses things like BIRDS or MAMMALS.

Meanwhile, searching for genus and species is like searching for homo sapien.

Here endeth the lesson

Yesterday I went to a library instruction class. It was an amazing hour. I am super jealous of the Bellevue students because after they graduate they get lifetime library privileges. NOT FAIR!

Anyway, I learned that you need to make the learning process fun for them you're a fish out of water.

I have to finish my tutorial and my topic bibliography for my two summer classes. It should be a piece of cake. I'm not too worried about it. If need be, I can do it during Shakespeare. That's 8 hours of my life I never get back.

Only one more week and life will slow down a bit.

http://screencast.com/t/ZTOxo31Hok

This is a link to something I have started playing with for my Library services tutorial. It's pretty lame at the moment, but I hope to turn it into a powerhouse awesome video. And the possibilities are kinda endless. That's just me thinking though.

Grrr Rubrics

I've created a rubric for my presentation. I have a presentation topic. It's not my best, but I think I'll be able to make a good tutorial project out of it. I hate assessment. I always have. It just doesn't sit well with me. Color me hippie, but there are better ways to see if a person is succeeding. I know that a rubric is much more open that a test might be, but I'd rather just not do it at all. Sink or swim?

A few things:

If i cannot put 16th century science questions on the ACT, then why on earth should I be expected to know 16th century literature. God bless Shakespeare, but I think that there is some awesome literature being written today that would make excellent test questions for standardized tests. Just saying.

You all need to read 13 Reasons Why by Jay Asher. A-MAZING book. Not even joking. It's a beautiful novel that you don't even expect until you're suddenly 100 pages into the book and you can't put it down. Simply Wonderful.

In my library job, I have a lot of duties. Some of them are trivial and some of them are fantastic. I'm finding that this latest series of duties to be really, really fun.

To wit: I am making a list of books to purchase. This is awesome, because not only do I get to spend someone else's money, I get the opportunity to put a little bit of myself into the library. I'm looking for graphic novels at the moment. I have to keep reminding myself to balance the trade paperback comic book graphic novels with the hard hitting, edgy, biographical ones. I'm not a huge fan of the boring stuff, but there some that look really good. One in particular is called Baghdad Pride. It's the story of four lions from the Baghdad zoo that escape during the bombing of the city in 2003. The lions and other creatures are sentient in this novelization, so it's interesting to see their take on the surrounding events. I only got a limited preview, but already I know that this is one of the books that I need to get my hands on.

Another graphic novel i'm thinking of getting is the Buffy collection. I know you'll say that I'm jsut getting them for myself, which is not true since I already own them all, but I think that if we had them, we could get more YA girls into the stacks. Chicks these days are not the Babysitters club readers they used to be. They're into Halo now, and all of those other shoot em up games that the boys are into. It's quite interesting. I'm trying to find a line between girly and guns without being cliche. I just know that some girls don't want princess books anymore.