No Shhing Here

Just a quick vent: I'm annoyed at Apple's App Store. When I'm searching for apps, I want to be able to sort by rating . I don't have time to click through thirty different Spanish translator apps to find the one that gets the best reviews. Apple --  make my life easier!!! Let me sort by rating! Okay, I'm done now.

It's been another month, and it's time for an app update! Here are the apps we're using on our iTouches and the ways we're using them: 8th Grade Social Studies (American History) Puppet Pals ($.99) allows users to create and record animations in a snap. It can be used for a huge variety of curriculum . Our 8 th grade social studies teachers are using it. The students will create animations where one character interviews another character (in this case, a famous reformer from the Progressive Era). It's great because it's so simple! Students hit record, then move the characters around on the screen and speak into the little headset microphone. The app records their actions and voices, and saves the animation in a movie file for easy playback. It is a little bit easier on the iPad with the bigger screen than the iTouch, but it should work. We also sprung for the "Director's Pack" - an in app purchase ($3.99) that adds a host of new characters a...

This is what our circulation statistics look like for the past three years (as long as I've been working here). The y axis is total number of loans for the month (excuse my lack of proper labels). Humm ...there seems to be a trend! We start off strong in September, and then it's a downhill slide from there. What gives? Is it the enthusiasm of new school year? Students getting bogged down with homework? Teachers lending books out of classroom libraries? Whatever the cause, the results are a little disconcerting. I want those high numbers ALL. YEAR. LONG. My goal: Get February's numbers back up. Probably not easy, considering it's a short month, and we miss a week of school for break. We'll come up with something, though. Anyone else see a similar pattern in your school libraries??

January is Wellness Month in our junior high building. The library is embracing Wellness month with displays, like our carrot character at the circulation desk, books, and activities. As far as activities go, we're celebrating every week with Wii Fit Fridays. We hook up two Wii's in the library - one to a tv , the other attached to the LCD Projector. Students who visit the library during study halls and lunch time can use the Wii to play games like Wii Sports Resort and Wii Just Dance. For the most part, it works out really well. The kids are excellent at taking turns and sharing. We've only had one minor incident over, of all things, Wii bowling, but ultimately not a huge deal. At the end of the month the whole building will participate in a Wellness Day with activities like Zumba , yoga, ballroom dancing, and snowshoeing. Also, kids will meet with a panel of nutritionists and participate in a healthy food taste test.

We've spent the last month experimenting with a **BRAND NEW** iTouch cart. I forgot to take a picture, but our cart looks exactly like this ( image from Mindshift ). The cart is stocked with 20 32 GB 3rd generation iTouches and a MacBook Pro for management. I'm mostly happy with the set-up, though the cords connecting the iTouches to the hub aren't of the highest quality. We spend a lot of time wiggling and giggling to make sure they're connected for charging and syncing. In addition to the twenty iTouches on the cart, I sometimes supplement them with two library iTouches and a library iPad, bringing our device total up to 23. Whenever we roll out a new technology, it takes a while to figure out exactly how to use it with classes. Honestly, integrating the iTouches has been almost pain-free . They seem to work themselves seamlessly into our lives, and I'm not quite sure how we ever survived without them. Here's a list of the things we've used them for over ...