According to some information I found on Bloglines in the School Library journal:
Apparently, Scholastic is refusing to publish a book for its book fair. The book is titled "Luv Ya Bunches" by Lauren Myracle. They have told her that she needs to remove some offensive words like "crap", "sucks", "geez", "God" (as in "Oh my God") and by writing out a pair of lesbian mothers. Now, I would think that would be a HUGE change to make in the story line. And why shouldn't they appear in the story? It is a real life experience that children are going through and need good literature to identify with. It would also be helpful for the friends of these children to see it in a book to see how their friend might be thinking or feeling. Do we leave out parents in mixed race relationships? What about parents with handicaps? No! Why would we leave out same sex parents?
Scholastic's credo states, "To enlarge students' concern for and understanding of today's world. To help build a society free of prejudice and hate, and dedicated to the highest quality of life in community and nation." It sounds like they are going directly AGAINST their own credo. Instead, they are continuing to perpatuate the prejudice against same sex parents by censoring them from books that are provided by Scholastic. Scholastic needs to realize that to help students understand "today's world", they must provide literature about all aspects of today's world. Whether or not Scholastic likes it, or the local school board agrees with it, or the local outspoken Christian parents like it, same sex parents ARE a part of "today's world". Shouldn't we teach our children to love, accept, and treat all people equally?
Scholastic needs to realize that it is a publishing company, not a parent of the children. Their parents should be the ones to determine if this book is or is not appropriate for their children. I, personally, want to expose my child to all types of people so that he doesn't have to "reeducate" himself as an adult as so many of the rest of us have had to do. I want to read this book as is...crap, sucks, geez, God, and lesbian parents included.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Friday, October 23, 2009
Chicago's new "YOUmedia"
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6702816.html?nid=3270
I found this on bloglines and I am totally geeking out over it. Basically, the public library in Chicago has a space – over 5500 square feet, actually – for teens. It has thousands of books, more than 100 laptop and desktop computers, and even a recording studio for music and the spoken word. On the computers, they can do typical internet stuff like social networking sites and gaming, but they can also do digital photography, fan fiction, graphic design, digital video and music production, and game design. These kids are going to be exposed to so many technologies that they wouldn’t have access to otherwise because either they cannot afford it and/or their schools cannot afford it. What is really cool is that the library is encouraging Chicago high school teachers to reserve the space during the school day so that their students can go through some skill building workshops during the school day. Doing this will take a lot of the financial burden of these technologies off of the school system while also promoting the use of the public library at the same time. I expect that if teachers and school media specialists help promote this space at the public library, they will begin to see students who have greater literacy and digital literacy skills. What an awesome idea and a great way to get teens into the library!
I found this on bloglines and I am totally geeking out over it. Basically, the public library in Chicago has a space – over 5500 square feet, actually – for teens. It has thousands of books, more than 100 laptop and desktop computers, and even a recording studio for music and the spoken word. On the computers, they can do typical internet stuff like social networking sites and gaming, but they can also do digital photography, fan fiction, graphic design, digital video and music production, and game design. These kids are going to be exposed to so many technologies that they wouldn’t have access to otherwise because either they cannot afford it and/or their schools cannot afford it. What is really cool is that the library is encouraging Chicago high school teachers to reserve the space during the school day so that their students can go through some skill building workshops during the school day. Doing this will take a lot of the financial burden of these technologies off of the school system while also promoting the use of the public library at the same time. I expect that if teachers and school media specialists help promote this space at the public library, they will begin to see students who have greater literacy and digital literacy skills. What an awesome idea and a great way to get teens into the library!
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Bloglines? What?
So, I have done all of the reading in the activities section and then went to bloglines and completed most of the instructions. However, it would be nice for this lab and for many of the other labs to have an explanation of what we are signing up for and how to use the program. It seems like it is just assumed that we either (a) know what these programs are and how to use them or (b) have time to play around on them to figure them out. Neither of these is true for me. So here I am, at almost midnight, trying to figure out why I am signing up to have a ton more junk email sent to my email that I don't have time to read (my inbox is still flooded with emails from the listserver from Lab 1 or 2). Now, I am trying to figure out how to answer the questions about whether or not these "major news sites" (who is determining what is major and where do I find them) provide RSS and if so, which ones. Well, any logical person can figure out that the answer is yes, I just have to be able to tell which ones now. Which I might be able to do if I understood what RSS is, but since the reading on RSS was all in "techie" lingo, I still don't get it. I am looking on bloglines on what I think are news sites, but I can't tell because I have no clue what I am even looking at and I am not finding "sign up for RSS" on anything I look at. Who knows. Needless to say, I am incredibly frustrated with the vague instructions on many of the assignments for this class which greatly need to be updated (because of dead links and updated programs for which the instructions are no longer valid). I guess I could have saved all this for the end of the course survey or whatever, but afterall, this is a blog, and from what I have been reading, this is often what happens on blogs.
Anyway, I signed up for some school library stuff on bloglines. I took a look at some of the stuff. It looked like there were some interesting book reviews that I could have looked at. However, I didn't click "keep new" on each individual one, so now, I can't figure out how I can read what I have already looked at. Again, another frustration. Not to mention that I am not sure if I signed up for the right type of stuff. I mean, most of the stuff I signed up for are from School Library Journal, not someone's personal blogs, but I am not sure if I was supposed to do that or not, since I have no clue what bloglines even is.
Most of the blogs that we were to look at for the first part of the assignment were also very old and not updated very often or the links were dead links. Perhaps a new list would be appropriate there as well.
Anyway, I signed up for some school library stuff on bloglines. I took a look at some of the stuff. It looked like there were some interesting book reviews that I could have looked at. However, I didn't click "keep new" on each individual one, so now, I can't figure out how I can read what I have already looked at. Again, another frustration. Not to mention that I am not sure if I signed up for the right type of stuff. I mean, most of the stuff I signed up for are from School Library Journal, not someone's personal blogs, but I am not sure if I was supposed to do that or not, since I have no clue what bloglines even is.
Most of the blogs that we were to look at for the first part of the assignment were also very old and not updated very often or the links were dead links. Perhaps a new list would be appropriate there as well.
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