Media matters, Vol. 5, Issue 10 (May 2007)

Media matters
Volume 5, Number 10 May 2007

Media Specialists are Teachers

These Library Media Specialists were chosen as Teacher of the Year at their schools. Rita Thomas and Beth Lunsford were the TOTY's for their systems.

Ginni Edwards *Beth Lunsford
Hannah Talley

Madison County High School
Westwood Elementary and Dalton City
City Park School: Dalton

Tory Baker Kristine Woods

Button Gwinnett Elementary: Hinesville
Teasley Middle: Cherokee County

Pati Olton Owen Ditchfield Jane Kendall Claudia Zurbrick Lindsay Lipscomb

Woodstock Middle: Cherokee E.A. White :Ft. Benning Argyle Elementary :Cobb County Manning Oaks Elementary: Fulton Union Point Elementary: Greene

Linda Mobley

Smoke Rise Elementary: DeKalb

Avis Snow

Armuchee Elementary: Floyd

Marcia Clark

Jackson Elementary: Butts

Teresa Cruce

Partee Elementary: Gwinnett

*Rita Thomas Debbie Vassell Mitchell

Putnam County Elementary and Putnam County
Austell Primary : Cobb

Inside this issue:

Children's Book

2

Award Conference

Happy Retirement

4

Sympathy

4

South Georgia

5

Valdosta ETTC

6

Susan's List

7

Film Clips

8

Kelly Bingham

8

Dale Lyles,

9

Renaissance Man

PBS for Teachers

11

Michael P. White

11

Yeah Janice!

12

World Data Analyst

13

Calendar

16

PAGE 2

MEDIA MATTERS

Georgia Children's Book Award Conference a Rousing Success!

Marion Dane Bauer and Keiko Kasza chat between signing autographs.
Dr. Joel Taxel and author Jane Yolen
Patricia Polacco autographs books for Stephens County Media Specialists Amy Lee and Ella Baldwin.
Jane Yolen signs an autograph for a Media Specialist.

VOLUME 5, NUMBER 10

PAGE 3

Debbie Smith of Gilmer County had to have a giant bag for the all the books she purchased. Author Keiko Kasza hands Debbie her treasures.
Helen Ruffin Reading Bowl made a big splash at the conference!
Owen Ditchfield of Ft. Benning meets Chris Soentpiet.

Did you miss the conference? Make plans to come next year !

Chris Soentpiet, author and illustrator, with some of his books.

PAGE 4

MEDIA MATTERS

Congratulations to our retirees

Becky Humphrey Sharon Fly Jane Toth Beth Nasworthy Karen LeCroy Marilyn Hoehne Jane Kirk Vicki Gossett Ginger Jennings Linda Wagner Sharon McBrayer Jerry Stowe David Hinson Julie Stephens Donna Ray Glenda Crumbley Rosemary Norris Margie Hall

Oak Hill Middle: Baldwin Putnam County Middle Carrrollton Elementary Cannon Street Elementary: Troup Arnold Mill Elementary: Cherokee Bascomb Elmentary: Cherokee Chapman Intermediate: Cherokee Johnston Elementary: Cherokee Collins Hill High: Madras Middle: Coweta Armuchee High School: Floyd Banks County Elementary Clinch County Coordinator Calhoun City Shallowford Falls Elementary: Cobb Cherokee County Braelinn Elementary: Fayette Chapel Hill Elementary: Douglas

The Georgia Department of Education extends heartfelt sympathy to the family and friends of Lou Dewberry. Lou was a Media Specialist in Forsyth County and had worked in the education field for 37 years. Lou received her B.A. degree from the University of North Alabama and Masters degree from the University of Alabama at Birmingham where she also received her Education Specialist degree. She was president of the Georgia State Technology Fair and will be missed by her family, friends, colleagues, and students.

VOLUME 5, NUMBER 10
South Georgia Media Specialist Conference

PAGE 5

Linda Williams of Berrien County, author Jackie Hardrick, and VSU ETTC staff member Shirley Sainz.

VSU ETTC Director Mimi McGahee and friends share ideas before the meeting begins.
Many Media Specialists traveled over the highway, through the woods, and around the South Georgia fires to get to Valdosta.

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MEDIA MATTERS

VOLUME 5, NUMBER 10

May Events

PAGE 7

Flower: Lily of the Valley or Hawthorn

Birthstone: Full moon New moon:

Emerald May 2nd May 16th

Blue moon: May 31st (2nd full moon in the same month) ALS Awareness Month (Lou Gehrig's Disease Healthy Vision Month

Clean Air Month

National Bike Month

*Get Caught Reading Month*
National Physical Fitness and Sports Month *go out and play!*

National Military Appreciation Month (link <http://www.nmam.org/>)
National Smile Month *turn that frown upside down!*

May 7-12 National Wildflower Week
5/5 Leo Lionni, 1910; J. Patrick Lewis, 1942

May 13-19 Reading is Fun Week
5/9 Sir James M. Barrie, 1860; William Pene DuBois, 1916

5/10 Caroline B. Cooney, 1947; Christopher 5/11 Zilpha Keatley Snyder, 1927; Peter

Paul Curtis, 1954

Sis, 1949

5/12 Edward Lear, 1812; Caroline Feller Bauer, 1935

5/15 L. Frank Baum, 1856; Norma Fox Mazer, 1931; Paul Zindel, 1936

5/16 Margret Rey, 1906; Bruce Coville, 1950

5/22 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1859; Arnold Lobel, 1933

5/23 Scott O'Dell, 1898; Margaret Wise Brown, 1910

5/25 Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803

5/27 M.E. Kerr, 1927

5/28 Ian Fleming, 1909

5/29 Eleanor Coerr, 1922; Willo Davis Rob- 5/31 Walt Whitman, 1819; Elizabeth Coats-

erts, 1928;

worth, 1893

Thanks to Susan Grigsby at Tate Elementary in Pickens County for compiling this information and much, much more each month. Susan posts her information on the n GaMedia List Service.

VOLUME 5, NUMBER 10

PAGE 8

Media Specialists of the year

Linda Martin Maribeth Driskell

Hall County DeKalb County

Were you left out? Numerous email requests were made for the names of retirees, TOTY, and Media Specialist of the Year, but e-mail doesn't always get to its destination and things get forgotten...so email and let us know if you should have been on one of the lists.

Film Clips arrive in Georgia!
All elementary, middle and high school media centers should have, at this time, received the Film Clips for Character Education program. The three DVDs were addressed to the school's media specialist and were shipped Federal Express. Inside the box were the DVDs, an introductory letter, and MARC record information.
This is a six episode program and each episode will focus on three key character themes. Each theme is represented in four different movie clips. The Teacher's Guide that accompanies each DVD offers questions and activities to engage the students in meaningful discussions.
These DVDs may be used by classroom teachers, counselors, or anyone in the school that might use this resource to engage the students in character education.
If you have questions about the program please contact Wayne Robinson, Unit Director of Student Support at wayrobin@doe.k12.ga.us.
If you have not received your DVDs, please let Judy know at jserrite@doe.k12.ga.us.

Meet Georgia author Kelly Bingham
Kelly Bingham is the author of a young adult novel entitled Shark Girl. It was published in April 2007 and has been nominated by the American Library Association for a Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers. It is also being featured in a special insert on debut fiction in Kirkus Reviews. Kelly Bingham was a story artist and later director for Walt Disney Feature Animation, where she worked for twelve years. She received her MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College in 2004. Kelly lives with her husband and their five children in Ellijay, Georgia. Shark Girl is her first novel.

PAGE 9

MEDIA MATTERS

How Dale Lyles Spent His Spring Break

I received a copy of William Blake's Inn in a set of Newbery winners back in 1982, and since I was at the high school level at the time, I was taken aback to find a picture book in my library. But the illustrations and the poetry were immediately captivating, and I began setting some of them to music as a personal exercise. Public performance was not what I was after, since it was a violation of Nancy Willard's copyright even to set them to music. After a while, I set the project aside to work on other things--I was artistic director of the Newnan Community Theatre Company at the time and too busy to work on a song cycle that couldn't be performed.

Cut to 2002, when I retired as artistic director of NCTC with a production of The Marriage of Figaro. I had been asked by an organization called Global Achievers to audition and train young singers to go to Scotland to perform with an international cast of children, with the Scottish Opera's "The Tale o' Tam." It was a phenomenal experience, and we decided we wanted to do the same thing in Newnan. I remembered William Blake's Inn and pulled it out. After hearing the music, others in the group agreed that this piece would be a good place to start.

That meant I had to get the author's permission. I printed out the music I had and sent it off to Vassar, where Nancy teaches. Imagine my thrill and delight when I got e-mail from her graciously giving me the rights!

There are sixteen poems in William Blake's Inn, and I had set about two-thirds of them at that point. I worked on the rest of them, taking a year off for another project, and finally finished the last one, "Blake Leads a Walk on the Milky Way," in September of 2006. I work slowly anyway, but I was impeded even more by trying to finish up my Ed.S. at the University of West Georgia.

Carol Lee Shankel, retired English teacher and member of Lacuna Group presents one of our sunflower puppets to Nancy.

VOLUME 5, NUMBER 10

PAGE 10

This past January, we had a "First Look" concert, where the whole work was performed for the first time. We invited representatives from Global Achievers and a few other groups that might be interested in moving the project forward. Reaction was extremely positive, so we decided to do a fuller presentation in May for the actual movers, shakers, and check-writers we would need. A group of us began to workshop three of the pieces so that we could provide some kind of staging for those who might need a little help in seeing how a song cycle could become a stage performance.

Our lunch with Nancy came about when several of us decided to spend spring break in New York. I e-mailed her and asked if she would join us for lunch while we were in town, and she and her husband Eric Lindbloom (a photographer) took the train down. She is as wonderful in person as her writing suggests! We gave her a couple of books from Coweta County, plus a sunflower puppet from our workshops.

Dale and Nancy enjoying lunch in NYC.

She in turn took my copies of William Blake's Inn with her, painting the Sun and the Moon in one and an angel bearing a banner made of my music in the other. They were waiting for me when I got home.

With any luck, we will begin workshopping the full scale production in the fall of 2007, moving towards the premiere in the fall of 2008. It will involve adult and children singers, dancers, puppets, and musicians. Nancy and Eric are already planning to attend.

Anyone who's interested can keep up with us at http://www.lacunagroup.org.

Dale Lyles

PAGE 11

Pbs for teachers

MEDIA MATTERS

PBS has formally launched a comprehensive new web site for K-12 educators, called "PBS Teachers." In production for more than a year, the site is the front door for all educational resources and services that PBS offers, including thousands of free lesson plans, teacher professional development opportunities, videos, blogs, and more. It also provides information about effective ways to use media and technology in school or home-based learning environments. Among the site's features are a new blog called "Media Infusion," that will showcase ideas for (and encourage conversations about) using media and technology in the classroom; thousands of free, standards-based lesson plans, classroom activities, and interactive resources, organized by subject, grade level, and curriculum topic; hundreds of curriculum resources from local PBS stations, forming a local-national search that combines the best educational resources from around the country; dedicated areas for early childhood educators, library media specialists, and technology coordinators; on-demand streaming video from selected PBS programs; a "Shop for Teachers" feature for purchasing video programs; and online professional development opportunities from PBS TeacherLine for graduate credit and recertification. Also coming this summer : advanced personalization features that will enable educators to bookmark, annotate, and share the resources they find.
http://www.pbs.org/teachers
From eSchool News:
http://www.eschoolnews.com/resources/links/showLink.cfm?linkID=340

Michael P. White Calendar and a
clever (what else?) Fund Raising Idea!
Check out Michael P. White's new website at http://fragileearthproductions.com/furain.html
Michael is also offering Media Specialists an opportunity to sell his calendars for a fund raiser for your school.

VOLUME 5, NUMBER 10

PAGE 12

Jackie Robinson breaking barriers contest
Taisha Whitehead, 5th grader at Skyview Elementary (Bibb County) recently won the Jackie Robinson Breaking Barriers Contest. She was one of the top 3 selected from over 8,000 entries. Taisha wrote about her dad, a Bibb County Deputy Sheriff, who was slain in the line of duty in May 2006. Media Specialist Janice Habersham worked with Taisah one-on-one in developing her essay and entered her in the contest.
Taisha will fly to Los Angeles with her mother to receive her award-- a new lap top computer.
Jackie Robinson's daughter is coming to visit Skyview Elementary in April and Janice is receiving a lap top for assisting Taisha with her project.
Congratulations Taisha and Janice!

What is happening in your media center? Share with your colleagues by sending an email to: jserrite@doe.k12.ga.us
To become indispensable, we must first become visible. Toot your own horn!

1970 Twin Towers East 205 Jesse Hill Jr. Drive Atlanta, Georgia 30334
jserrite@doe.k12.ga.us

PAGE 13

MEDIA MATTERS

World Data Analyst
Does your student need to compare economic factors for Canada and Mexico for social studies?
What countries in the world are in the top ten for total square miles?
Do your students need to analyze data in a chart or compare statistics for math class?
Have you ever wondered how the number of cell phone subscriptions in the UK has changed over the last five years?
Want to travel to Egypt? Do you know the official language of Egypt?
All of these questions and many more can be answered in the World Data Analyst database. This resource provides statistical information for over 200 countries across the globe. It also provides tools to make charts and tables to compare statistics from different countries.
World Data Analyst is a resource from Encyclopdia Britannica that was made available through GALILEO in December of 2006. This collection of statistics can be found in GALILEO by choosing "News/Facts & Reference, AZ" on the News/Facts Reference tab or by choosing "World Data Analyst" from the Databases-A-Z list. However, this information may also be found by clicking on the "World Data" link in the academic and public library editions of Encyclopdia Britannica Online.
Country Snapshots

Country Snapshots allows users to obtain brief, ready reference statistics for many countries around the world. Statistics include information on demography, vital statistics, economy, transportation, communication, education, health, and military.

VOLUME 5, NUMBER 10

PAGE 14

Country Comparisons
Country comparisons allow users to create tables and charts comparing statistics from several countries through Current Comparisons or examining statistics in countries over time using Chronological Comparisons.
Teachers of geography, math, and history may find the student activity for country comparisons helpful in assisting students to meet particular Georgia Performance Standards. The activity description and teacher tips can be found in the Help section of the database.
Current Comparisons With Current Comparisons, one can select several countries and several statistics of interest to compare in a table or chart format.

Chronological Comparisons The Chronological Comparisons feature creates tables or charts comparing statistics from countries over time.
Ranked Statistics
The Ranked Statistics feature compiles information from all countries and displays tables of the highest or lowest ten countries for a particular statistic.

May 2007

GaDOE Library Media Services

Sunday

Monday

April S M TW T F S 1234567 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

Tuesday
1
1923 : Joseph Heller is born
Empire State Building dedicated: 1931

Wednesday
2
1670 : Hudson's Bay Company chartered

Thursday
3

Friday
4

Saturday
5

1942 : The Battle ofthe Coral Sea begins
1952 : Fletcher lands on the North Pole

1789 : Government 1770 : The

under the U.S. Boston

Constitution

Massacre

begins

1861 : Lincoln

inaugurated

6

7

8

9

10 11 12

1475 : Michelangelo born
1857 : Supreme Court rules in Dred Scott case

1876 : Alexander 1957 : Egypt

GrahamBell

opens the Suez

patents the

Canal

telephone

1923 : "Stopping

By Woods on a

Snowy Evening"

is published

1959 : Barbie makes her debut

1864 : Lincoln 1942 : Go Down, 1828 : Poet and

signs Ulysses S. Moses, by Willi- painter Dante

Grant's commis- amFaulkner, is Gabriel Rossetti

sion to comma- published

is born

nd the U.S.

1988 : Irving

Army

Berlin's 100th

birthday

celebration

13 14 15 16 17 18 19

1907 : Daphne Du 1804 : Lewis and Maurier, author Clark depart ofRebecca, is born

1890 : Katherine Anne Porter is born

1777 : Georgia 1954 : Brown v. Patriot Button Board ofEd is Gwinnett receiv- decided es fatal wound in duel

1980 : Mount St. Helens erupts. Where is Mt. St. Helens located?

1864 : Author Nathaniel Hawthornedies in New Hampshire

20 21 22

1498 : Vasco da 1881 : American

Gama reaches

Red Cross

India

founded

1873 : Levi Strau- 1932 : Earhart

ss and Jacob

completes trans-

Davis receive atlanticflight

patent for blue

jeans

1859 : Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is born

23 24 25

1911 : New York Public Library dedicated

1883 : Brookly n

1787 : Constitu-

Bridge opens. How tional Conven-

many people loss tion begins

their lives in the building of the bridge?

1977 : Star Wars opens

26
1897 : Bram Stoker's novel Dracula goes on sale in London

27 28 29 30 31

1937 : Golden Gate 1935 : Tortilla Flat 1953 : Hillary and 1971 : Mariner 9

Bridge opens

is published.

Tenzing reach departs for Mars

Who wrote the Everest summit

book?

1819 : Walt Whitman is born

June S M TW T F S
12 3456789 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

Nothing you do for children is ever wasted. Garrison Keill or