Bassmama's Bookland

Week #3, Thing #6: Librarian Trading Card

2008-01-27T00:22:00.001-08:00

Librarian Trading Card
Originally uploaded by Bassmamapix

I'd love to do book or author trading cards, but would there be copyright issues about uploading book covers, for example?

Week #3, Thing #6: Flickr Mashup

2008-01-27T00:03:00.001-08:00

Vietnam Magazine
Originally uploaded by Bassmamapix

I created this magazine cover with a picture from our summer vacation to southeast Asia, and some phrases about the Vietnamese portion. I could definitely see using this application on some of the collaborative research projects kids do in the library, like the geologic time travel brochures, or the Spanish speaking country projects. I'm pretty sure Flickr is blocked by our district filter, though. I'll have to check that out.

Week #3: More Flickr with Ms. Druzella

2008-01-26T09:13:00.001-08:00

Ms. Druzella
Originally uploaded by Bassmamapix

My evil twin sister, Ms. Druzella, only works one day a year: Halloween. On that day I always seem to unexpectedly fall sick, and she is my regular sub. Here she is mixing up her evil brew in a bowl on top of an overhead projector.

Week #3, Thing #5: Bassmama Rocks Out on Flickr

2008-01-26T08:51:00.001-08:00

Bassmama
Originally uploaded by Bassmamapix

"Floozy" had a gig last year at (where else but) the community room of our local public library, as a fundraiser for arts education in the schools. We totally ROCKED the HOUSE!

Week #2, Thing #4: Register Your Blog

2008-01-25T16:29:00.000-08:00

Okay, everybody, I PROMISE that I didn't pick the name "Bassmama's Bookland" in order to land myself right at the top of the blogroll! It didn't even occur to me until after I registered! Please, somebody come along and call yourself "Aardvark's Odd Book World" . . .

Week #2, Thing #3: Set Up Your Blog

2008-01-25T16:21:00.000-08:00

Well, here it is! I love my avatar! I call myself Bassmama because playing electric bass guitar is one of the many things I do toward my lifelong mission of disabusing the whole world of its stereotypes about librarians. I play with the choir at my middle school, as well as with two of my own bands: my girl band (called "Floozy") and a klezmer band (that's Jewish party music, like you'd hear at a Jewish wedding).

The "mama" part is of course because I am a mama to 3 beautiful teenage boys.

It's late on a Friday afternoon, and anybody who might read this blog would love this exchange I just had with an 8th grade boy named Matthew, right before I walk through the door toward my weekend:

"I didn't used to like to read before, but reading "White Fang" really changed how I feel about books. I liked White Fang because it has a lot of action, and the way wolves had to survive. And it had a lot of pages, and influenced me into reading a lot more."

"Matthew, you have just made my whole week! Thank you for telling me that."

"No, thank YOU for letting me check out this book!"

Week #1, Thing #2: Lifelong Learning

2008-01-25T16:06:00.000-08:00

I fit the profile of a pretty dedicated "lifelong learner," but I have one fatal flaw: lack of follow-through. Maybe that's kind of typical, to have a lot of initial enthusiasm but then to run out of gas and just never...quite...finish. The main way I am trying to mitigate that tendency in myself is to draft buddies to do this with me. I will try the contract thing, but again the issue will be following through on all the steps I lay out. The "23 thing" concept is brilliant. It automatically breaks the whole thing down into doable steps, which is perfect for someone like me.

Week #1, Thing #1

2008-01-24T15:06:00.000-08:00

I must have logged into this School Library 2.0 deal about 3 dozen times over the past six months, but today is the day that I jumped into the water. There's never enough time, and there still will never be enough time, but I decided it was important enough, and now I have some colleague buddies to do it with me so we will all keep each other honest!

Frankly one thing that scares me is that endless blogroll running off the bottom of my screen. I love the idea that all my statewide colleagues are blogging here, but I will never get around to reading them all.

Breathe in, breathe out, one step at at time . . .