Save The Date: Decatur Book Festival Is Coming August 29-31!

 

The 2008 Atlanta Journal-Constitution Decatur Book Festival Presented by DeKalb Medical | Home

 Many thanks to Dr. JoBeth Allen from the University of Georgia Department of Language and Literacy for the heads up on this WONDERFUL event!  I plan to be there…Billy Collins will be giving the keynote address!  Here is the latest info straight from the festival organizers via email:

It’s hard to believe, but here we are preparing to launch the THIRD annual Atlanta Journal-Constitution Decatur Book Festival Presented by DeKalb Medical. The festival has not merely survived its first few years. We’ve built on partnerships with artistic, educational, business, and governmental organizations not only from all over metropolitan Atlanta but from all over the nation. Hosted in the literary haven of Decatur, this festival has quickly joined the ranks of the largest and most talked about book festivals nationwide.
 
 Perhaps we could just keep doing what we’ve been doing and call that good enough, but where’s the fun in that? We’ve added plenty of new and unique programs to this year’s festival:
 
 We’ve had a Children’s Parade since the first year, but this is the first time we’ll be launching a new book at the parade. Not just any book: It’s the first new “Madeline” story in 50 years–”Madeline and the Cats of Rome”–written by John Bemelmans Marciano, the grandson of Ludwig Bemelmans. We encourage everyone to join Marciano in the parade, maybe wear a big yellow hat, sing your favorite French (or, for that matter, Italian) song, or just make some noise.
 
 Though we’ve had programs directed at teenagers from the beginning, 2008 marks the first year we will set aside a space exclusively for teenagers, called Escape. Escape will host best-selling authors for interactive discussions, an open mic and a literary salon. For those under 18, there will also be a quiz show called How Well Do You Know Harry? judged by Cheryl Klein, continuity editor for the last four Harry Potter books.
 
 In a historic partnership, Poets & Writers and Agnes Scott College are working with us to present the best DBF Writers Conferenceyet, with top national editors, agents, critics, publicists, authors, and screenwriters sharing their collective wisdom in a conference tightly integrated with the rest of the book festival. In addition, beginning this year, DBF will host the prestigious Southern Independent Booksellers Association (SIBA) awards ceremony. Many of the nominees will give readings at the festival.
 
 In 2006, we hosted the launch event for the first Atlanta Reads. This year, we’ll launch Atlanta Reads as well as the Big Read, a program of the National Endowment for the Arts. Atlanta’s Big Read will encourage the entire community to read and talk about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby.”
 
 Still not enough to fill your Labor Day weekend? Check out even more of the new programs that make this year’s festival truly unique:

 Brooks & Co. Dancewill perform a dance inspired by Shirley Jackson’s classic short story, “The Lottery,” set to the music of Stravinsky’s “Rites of Spring” and drawing on Ninjinsky’s seminal choreography to Stravinsky’s work.
 
 In a program called “Words from Iraq,” adult and young actors from PushPush Theater will present multiple perspectives on Iraq through readings of letters children have written to their parents in the military, blogs written by soldiers in Iraq, and a blog by a young Iraqi woman.
 
 In the spirit of the Java Monkey Local Authors Stage, we’re adding a stage for emerging authors just beginning to get their work out into the world, called the Emerging and Exhibiting Authors Stage.
 
 Author and former Olympian runner Jeff Galloway will lead a fun run Saturday morning of the festival, followed by a running clinic.
 
 Lee Smith, Marshall Chapman, Jill McCorkle, and Matraca Berg will all be onstage together to give a taste of their traveling musical–The Good ol’ Girls–about their friendship and the mutual influences of their books and music on one another.
  
 And that’s just the new stuff!
 

You know you can also count on us to bring you the nation’s top authors in our strongest, most diverse line-up yet. You know we’ve got you covered for good food and some of the best singer-songwriters in America. You know we’ll show the whole family a good time. So, come join us this Labor Day weekend for the best AJC Decatur Book Festival yet!    
   
   

 Be sure to check out our 2008 DBF web site,www.decaturbookfestival.com <http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=0010o9b8-G1lEKeg0HJ9PdUjGRNyOgyeblVgbcTsEt5PKylDahxzgliuFLJWKLt-zYIoc45cFGTjIsQlOObVGPCdF6Q_S1hyNoiVHSyZMw4GDtx6o-NqZyAj84pBZOFARsm> .

Simon Pulse Blogfest Is Underway! Get Bloggin’!

Just a reminder—the Simon Pulse Blogfest has kicked off!  Here is a short synopsis about this landmark event that arrived in my “inbox” yesterday from the organizers of this great blogfest!

“It’s here! Our first annual Simon Pulse Blogfest launches today, giving you the chance to watch more than 100 of your favorite teen authors come together on a single jam-packed blog for 2 weeks, answering fan questions. We previously solicited questions from teens and chose 14 great ones, with the authors addressing one question every day!You can come on the blog and post your own responses to any entries as well. Please note – your own responses won’t show up immediately, as for safety purposes we are moderating the blog. But any posts that don’t contain inappropriate language or personal information WILL go up! Not all authors will be able to respond to your posts – many authors are touring and on the road, and aren’t able to check back to see the responses to their entries – but other authors will be joining in and answering back. And we’ll make sure all authors get printouts of any comments you leave about any of their entries, so they know your thoughts!So head on over to www.PulseBlogfest.com to watch the fun! Click here to read the rules first before posting your own comments, but after that, dive in and have a blast. And in case you can’t always stop by the website every day (we’ll have new entries going up every HOUR) be sure to visit our downloads area for a screensaver you can have on your desktop that pulls the blogfest directly into it!

The fun kicks off today with a question submitted by Dana, who asks our authors: “What would you be doing if you hadn’t made it as a writer?”

Just a handful of the authors posting over the next few days include:

Holly Black Julie Hearn Staton Rabin Judy Blume Karol Ann Hoeffner David Randall Jennifer Bradbury Nancy Holder Deborah Reber Kate Brian Ellen Hopkins Randi Reisfeld Teri Brown James Howe Kristopher Reisz Linda Buckley-Archer Jeffry W. Johnston Ashley Rhodes-Courter

Cool Tool: typoGenerator

Are you trying to create a cool, Photoshop-ish badge or logo image for your website, blog, or wiki?  Check out this cool new tool I found courtesy of Joyce Valenza:  typoGenerator.  You simply type in your text, click a button, and this magical web 2.0 tool will create a beautiful and striking image for you!  If you don’t like what it generates, you can keep repeating the “try again” button until you get something you like.  Here are some samples I created for our new 23Things@TheUnquietLibrary project.

 

Check Out The Unquiet Library Science Fair Project Blog!

Are you working feverishly on your science fair project?  Do you need a place to brainstorm with other students or ask questions about the project to Mrs. Hamilton, Mrs. Fleet, or your science teacher? 

Check out Science Fair Project Blog!

You can also view our Science Fair Project Pathfinders here:

• Pathfinder for Ms. Panik’s students
• Pathfinder for Ms. Hunter’s students

If you need assistance locating research/information on your topic, using the databases we have put on the pathfinder page, finding science experiment ideas, or need  MLA style assistance, please come by the library and see Mrs. Hamilton or Mrs. Fleet!  Or….you can post a question on our science fair project blog!

Parent Involvement: Blogs for Homework?

Check out this interesting article from The New York Times called “Spreading Out Homework So Even Parents Have Some.”  Damion Frye, an English teacher at Montclair High School in Montclair, New Jersey, requires parents of his ninth grade students to participate in weekly homework assignments that mirror those he gives to his students.   Parents are given identical assignments as their children and asked to respond on a blog set up by Mr. Frye. 

The point, he said, is to keep parents involved in their children’s ’ education well into high school. Studies have shown that parental involvement improves the quality of the education a student receives, but teenagers seldom invite that involvement. Mr. Frye  decided to help out.

While a few parents have been resistant to the idea, Mr. Frye reports that most have eagerly jumped in and found the experience to be a positive one. 

Tracy Parsons, whose son Danny is the second of her two boys to be a student in Mr. Frye’s class, said that the weekly assignments had changed the way she approached homework with her children.  “In high school, to some degree you have to back off from homework, so they can gain independent learning skills,” Ms. Parsons said. But teenagers, she noted, “leave a lot out. You ask, ‘What’d you do in science?’ and they say, ‘It was fine.’”

While some educators caution against Mr. Frye’s policy of penalizing students’ grades if parents do not do their assigned homework, Mr. Frye reports that only one parent has flat out refused to participate in the three years of assigning parents “homework.”  He states that he is flexible and works with parents who may not have Internet access or who may have challenges dealing with language differences. 

What do you as teachers, students, parents, and administrators think of Mr. Frye’s creative way of involving parents in homework as a means for involving parents to be involved in their children’s education?  The primary suggestion I have is that he have the students blog along with their parents rather than doing all the assignments in the traditional format of paper and pencil.  If students are having the opportunity to blog too, then perhaps more dialogue could be ignited between parents and students.

Let us know what you think! Is this a good idea?  Bad idea?  Somewhere in between?  Teachers, parents, students, administrators—share your responses!

Weapons for Freedom: Blogs and the World Wide Web

While we associate blogs and the World Wide Web with fun and learning, most of us have probably never thought of these tools as weapons in a war for freedom or as the last defense in a desperate attempt to let the rest of the world know of atrocities occuring in your country.  When we lose our Internet connection, we are annoyed and inconvenienced.  Imagine being cut off from the world and silenced if you lost your Internet access.

On Friday, the government of Myanmar cut off the nation’s Internet connection in an effort to stop citizens from emailing photos of violence against citizens who were protesting against the government.  Until Friday, citizens literally risked their lives by emailing the photos to the world outside Myanmar.  The “Internet blackout” also silenced bloggers who were posting information about military crackdown on protestors.

The importance of the blog in this fight for freedom is underscored in this excerpt from this September 28 CNN article:

Ko Htike is a 28-year-old who left Myanmar, once known as Burma, seven years ago to study in England. He told CNN.com a day earlier that he has as many as 40 people in Myanmar sending him photos or calling him with information. They often take the photos from windows from their homes, he said. Myanmar’s military junta has forbidden such images, and anyone who sends them is risking their lives. “If they get caught, you will never know their future. Maybe just disappear or maybe life in prison or maybe dead,” he told CNN. Why would they take such risks?  “They thought that this is their duty for the country,” he said. “That’s why they are doing it. It’s like a mission.”Even with Friday’s action by the government, he said he will continue to do all he can to get images of what’s happening out for the world to see.  “I will also try my best to feed in their demonic appetite of fear and paranoia by posting any pictures that I receive through other means,” he said on his blog. “I will continue to live with the motto that ‘if there is a will there is a way.’ With few Western journalists allowed in Myanmar, his blog has become one of the main information outlets. More than 170,000 people from 175 countries have gone to the blog, according to a counter on the page.

Why did the military based government perceive Internet access as a threat to its power?  The September 29 issue of The Economist sums it up in a nutshell: 

One genuine difference is that, in the age of the internet and digital cameras, images of the spectacular protests in Yangon, the main city, have spread at lightning speed across Myanmar itself, encouraging people in other towns to stage demonstrations of their own; and around the world, bringing the crisis to the attention of leaders as they gathered in New York for the United Nations General Assembly. 

Have you ever thought of the importance of blogs and other World Wide Web based tools in today’s society?  While many of us recognize these tools as an important means for sharing information, most of us have probably never thoughts of our blogs as a tool for civil disobedience or as a way of changing the world.  How can we use blogs to make a difference?  What do you think?

To learn more about the violence in Myanmar and the history of this country, check out these resources:

• September 29, 2007,  Associated Press:  Hope Wanes Among Protestors in Myanmar
• “Blogs Helping Expose Myanmar Horrors”, CNN, September 27, 2007
• 9/17 Time magazine article via GALE Opposing Viewpoints:  “Burma on the Edge” (our GALE password is required)
• 9/29/07 The Economist article via GALE Student Resource Center Gold:  “On the Brink:  Myanmar’s Protests” (our GALE password is required)
• For current news articles, use the search time “Myanmar” and try these databases: Academic Search Complete (great for magazine and news articles) via GALILEO; Newspaper Source via GALILEO; MasterFile Premier via GALILEO (GALILEO password required off-campus)
• For more information on Myanmar (formerly known as Burma), try our GALE Virtual Reference Library.
• Who is Aung San Suu Kyi ?  Search our GALE Virtual Reference Library for more information on this woman who won the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize for her leadership in the pro-democracy movement in Myanmar.  You can also read more about her at the PBS Frontline site.
• Read this 9/30 firsthand account from Michael Pearson in the Atlanta Journal Constitution.  Free registration may be required to read this article.

October 3 update:  Read the latest news here at CNN.