Budget Cuts

From Bob Cerra, "As the lobbyist for FAME, I am very aware that the state budget provided by the Legislature to the school districts will result in substantial cuts to all types of education services. If your district is making disproportionate cuts to school library media programs and/or positions, please let us know what the proposals are and the rationale for cutting school libraries more than the rest of the education program.

FAME is doing its best to help to keep unfair cuts from being accepted into final district budgets. In order to assist, we need to have a good handle on what is being done at the district level. Please feel free to send a private email (not using your district's email system) to my email at bobcerra@comcast.net. We want to make sure that we do not attack superintendents and/or school boards for having to make cuts. The Legislature has decided that they were unable or unwilling to provide for the current system. However, we do not want to watch certain districts destroy their library media programs without doing something about it."

Florida Teens Read Winner Announced

From FAME, "The Florida Teens Read Committee of FAME is delighted to announce that Uglies by Scott Westerfeld is the winner of the 2007-2008 Florida Teens Read Award. Uglies is the first in a series of books by Westerfeld that explores such themes as the nature of beauty and conformity vs. rebellion. Set in a future world that is eerily close to our own in some ways, the fast-action plot will engage most teens. We are also happy to report that over 1,300 Florida teens cast votes for this year’s titles. Thank you to all the high school media specialists and teachers who promoted these titles and encouraged the love of reading." Do you have it available for your students?

What Do Children Read?

More than 3 million students took quizzes on books they read last year. This comprehensive report provides detailed information about the books school children are actually reading. The report also includes results by sex and section of the country. Renaissance Learning's Accelerated Reader software for monitoring reading progress online was the source of the survey. Read the Washington Post article for additional information.

Join the Flock

Flock is essentially Firefox with added features that let you connect with various social services (Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, etc.), as well as collect your favorite RSS feeds in one place. You may not want this on school computers (Do we really need to make it even easier for the darlings to socialize online?! :-) ), but so far, I like the organization, the look, and the cool tools.

For those of you who like your browsers a little greener, Grist (tagline: it's gloom and doom with a sense of humor. So laugh now -- or the planet gets it.) has partnered with Flock to bring you this eco-version.

Make Every Day Earth Day

Make doing good for our planet a year-round activity. Here are 50 fairly simple things that can make a difference. Hopefully you've already made some of these changes, if not, there's no time like the present to go green.

FAME Members -- Vote Now!

The 2008 FAME Election is now open to all FAME members. Vote for the next FAME President, four FAME Executive Board members, and two members of the FAME Nominations Committee. Read about the candidates, then make your choice. Cast your vote anytime between April 20 and May 10, 2008.

Vote for FAME officers now!

Final Call for Student Videos

Students from grade school to grad school are invited to submit a compelling video clip to the Empowered Education student video awards. The contest is produced by eSchool News, in cooperation with the Pearson Foundation. The application deadline is April 30, 2008. Enter today at http://www.eschoolnews.com/empowered/.

To qualify for the award, students should make a three-to-five minute original video on the theme of “How Technology Helps Me Learn.” Winning entries will be those produced by students in the best journalistic style illustrating how their schools or colleges are employing technology to advance learning.

Teen Read Week™ 2008

Register now for Teen Read Week 2008, October 12-18. The theme this year is Books with Bite @ your library. 2008 marks the 11th anniversary of Teen Read Week, an initiative of the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA). More than 4,800 school and public libraries participated last year, so join the fun and register now!

Tech Help

Doug Johnson has made his and his son's book, Machines are the easy part; people are the hard part, available online. You can download the book for free or order a copy for a small charge. Here's a description of the book, "This little book takes a somewhat skewed approach to educational technology. Its focus is on the human elements to which attention must be paid before technology can have an impact on teaching and learning." Read, learn, and enjoy!

Are You One?

Here's a game to test your memory and skill in finding the right books for a never ending stream of students. Fair warning, the game is just a tad bit addictive. Ready? Get set, GO!

Goodbye and Best Wishes!

We here at SUNLINK are a little sad as we say goodbye to Carol McWilliams. (Sad for us, happy for Carol!) She's decided the call of retirement is just too strong to ignore any longer and will be joining her husband in Tokyo for several months.

Here are a few words about Carol's time with SUNLINK (which was posted by our former director, Dr. Donna Baumbach, last summer): "Carol joined the SUNLINK staff after serving as a member of the Florida Tech Team (back in the olden days of the early '90s). Her technical knowledge and skills have served her--and SUNLINK--well. She is a great troubleshooter and willingly tries almost every innovation we want to experiment with!

Tasked with the annual "adds and deletes," Carol can sometimes be heard but not seen. She is a little short in stature and the boxes can be piled rather high during "the season." But she works away at each one until--presto! chango!--they have disappeared and we can see Carol again! It is a yearly magic show we all look forward to seeing (except maybe for Carol!)

Carol is also our current cataloging pro. She teaches cataloging online for the UCF Ed Media program and gets rave reviews for helping students navigate what is not the most fun course in the curriculum! Carol also uses her cataloging expertise to assist in record clean-up for the SUNLINK database...you know, fixing those nasty little typos that keep a record from being found!

When you email SUNLINK, Carol is first--and often the last--to see your messages. She handles each one promptly and professionally...and handling all of the email helps her pick up on trends and recurring problems to alert the staff, and when a nice message comes in praising SUNLINK , commending a staffer, or offering a suggestion for improvement, she shares those with all of us!

In her spare time, Carol keeps busy and (mostly) out of trouble! Like most of the SUNLINK staff, Carol is a voracious reader. She loves movies. She maintains the FAME website and the new SSYRA website, too. She is a breast cancer survivor and works tirelessly on behalf of the cause. Carol also loves to travel and spend time with her family--her husband, Jim, three grown children, and one growing granddaughter.

And here are a few words from Carol herself as she heads off for her next big adventure:

Friends and colleagues,

It is with mixed feelings that I announce my retirement from SUNLINK effective 30 April. Over these many years, I have had the great good fortune to work with the best library media professionals on the planet, and so many people are on that list.

But the time has come for me to take advantage of a wonderful opportunity to join my husband in Japan for several months, a once-in-a-lifetime adventure for both of us. I will be leaving for Tokyo on Monday the 21st on a VERY long plane flight! SUNLINK will continue to be near and dear to my heart, and it will be exciting to see how it evolves during my retirement years. My plan is to stay involved with FAME on some level, as long as they will have me :-)

My UCF email address will be available to me as a retiree (gosh, it feels very odd to type "retiree!"), so I hope you will keep in touch when your time allows.

Thank you for your friendship and support over my SUNLINK years, I wish you all the very best in your future.

Sayonara for now,

Carol

Get it right

Ever wonder how to pronounce the names of some of your favorite authors? Why not hear it from the author herself (or himself)? Visit Teachingbooks.net's free service, Author Name Pronunciation Guide to hear an author pronounce her or his own name. Enjoy and get it right this time, the authors will thank you ;-)