I’m really looking forward to seeing the finished project with all the linked posters!

In the first one the kids tell why they like the library: books, computers, hanging out with friends, lemonade!

And the second, an appeal to voters to get out and support the library budget in November.

Creative and fun! This library participated in a summer reading mini-grant project sponsored by the Mid-Hudson Library System.  The grant provided video cameras and training on editing video (full disclosure – I had great fun doing the training session). Many of the videos are now posted on the NYS Summer Reading site.

Thanks to Marilyn Fino of the Milton Library for sending these in!

A Book for Every Mood written, performed and filmed by the teens.

And don’t miss their Little Red and the Pigs Revenge!! and the instructions for an Origami Star Box

As part of their summer reading programs, the Mid-Hudson and Ramapo-Catskill library systems provided mini-grants for member libraries to buy small video cameras for the kids and teens to make movies. And I conducted workshops for the staff on movie editing and camera use. What fun we had.

But not as much fun as the kids seem to be having making movies!  As the summer draws to a close, the videos are pouring in and I’m having a great time watching them.  We’re posting a selection of them on the NYS Summer Reading web site.

The kids and teens at the  Stillwater (NY) Free Library have a created a great set of READ posters as part of their summer reading program. Great example of a fun, creative project on a budget! And don’t you love the libraries motto? “If the light’s on, we’re home.”

In a class last week, someone suggested using the the free trading cards generator at bighugelabs.com as a ‘get to know you’ sort of exercise at the beginning of the school year.  That got me thinking about and looking for other back to school ideas for this fun tool.

Like all the tools at bighugelabs, this one is very easy to use. Upload a photo/graphic or grab one from your flickr or photobucket account, enter a title, caption and some text and shazam, you have a cool trading card. You can download the trading card to your own computer, post it your flickr account, copy html code to put it on a web/blog/wiki page or print it out.

Some ideas – please share your ideas in the comments!

• Book Reviews – find a photo that expresses your feelings about a book you’ve read. Write a few lines about what the book meant to you.
• Student book reports -  Use the 2-sided Character Trading Card generator from the ReadWriteThink to create a summary of the book, notes about the characters, plot and more.  (sample card)
• “5 facts” reports – Find a photo or graphic of a topic. List 5 facts about that topic. Expand this to a podcast of the ’5 facts’ (that idea from the Beverly (MI) Elementary School Podcasts) and use the trading card to illustrate the blog/web/wiki page listing the podcasts.
• Super Powers Cards – Have students create avatars for the trading card. And then create names and identities for themselves. Perhaps super powers that relate to things they enjoy doing? Fun “get to know you” cards to figure out who’s who.
• Parent’s Night – Use those same mysterious avatar cards to post next to student projects on parent’s nights. See if the parents can find their child’s work.
• Trading Cards for Parents – Have students create trading cards about their parents for parent’s night.
• State/country reports – Photos, map, flags, etc of their topic. List most important info about their state/country in the text section.
• Review Cards – Have students create foreign language/vocabulary review cards to share. Picture of an object and the words/definitions/meaning.
• Faculty trading cards – Teachers could create their own super hero trading cards to give to students – with information about their class or maybe their own “super-hero” traits!
• Research skills trading cards – Savvy Searcher, Commander of Databases, and other such silly things. Given to students as master various research skills. Collect a set, collect a prize?
• Solar System trading cards – Use photos of planets, etc. from NASA to create cards. Have students list facts, but not the name of the object. Others have to guess what it is. More ideas, photos and an online game available at the Solar Trading Cards System web page.
• Fact or Fiction – Each student creates a card with their photo or avatar and lists 2 facts about themselves and one false statement. Use this as a get-to-know-you activity. This idea from Experiments in Technology . See that post for a cool time capsule idea.

Here are some popular resources to help with making trading cards. But please check them out for yourself to determine how they’ll work in your school setting. If you know of other great resources, please leave a comment.

Photo Resources

• pics4learning Copyright friendly images for education.
• flickr.com Use advanced search to limit to creative commons licensed images and to use safe-search.
• Tag Galaxy Fun visualization tool. Can’t limit to creative commons license though.
• PicApp Free stock photos.
• CompFight Handy flickr search tool. Simple interface and very fast. Limit to Creative Commons license and set safe search on.

Avatar Creation Tools

• meez
• Yahoo avatars
• HeroMachine
• Face your Manga

Trading Card Makers

• Big Huge Labs
• Character Trading Card generator

Interested in joining in the 2009 program? Check out the StoryTubes site for more information.

StoryTubes – Reading Energy

As Aaron said: “I’m all for making library services easier to use, but making people’s lives easier is an even better goal.” Couldn’t agree more.

p.s. Don’t forget to check out the news on the Summer Reading blog.

I won’t attempt to write up my notes since my good friend and librarian extraordinaire, Sue Rokos, did such a great writeup.

Some excerpts from Sue’s excellent post.

… every book of narrative fiction and non-fiction fits
at least one of Nancy Pearl’s four potential doorways through which
readers enter a book:Doorway # 1 is Story

This doorway is the largest – if someone says “I couldn’t put it down”
or “I couldn’t wait to see what happens”, they are looking for story…..

Doorway # 2 is Character
When someone talks about liking three dimensional characters, fully
developed characters, they enter books through Doorway #2…..

Doorway # 3 is Setting
Setting can be thought of as another character. If someone says they
felt like they were in that place in a book, that’s setting…..

Doorway # 4 is Language
Books with language as the biggest doorway are usually the award
winners. In general, they are books that move at a slower pace, where
“voice” is often talked about….

Do read her whole post to get more info and her book suggestions!

(via: mvls.info)

(Source: http://abowman.com/google-modules/tree-frog/)

And Spider!

(Source: http://abowman.com/google-modules/spider/)

I’ve been having great fun working on the NYS Summer Reading web site!