L.T. Blog

Photoshop Elements 8 Presentation from Nathan Lott on Vimeo.

It was in high school that I decided I wanted to be a music teacher. I knew I didn’t want to be a secondary music teacher because of marching band so I thought I would be an elementary music teacher. When I got to college I knew what my major was going to be and it happened. The first job I got out of college was an assistant band director for grades 6-12 in a small town south of San Antonio. I then added grades 3-5 to that because I wanted to teach elementary music and went from classroom to classroom with a rolling cart. It was discipline and classroom management that I would be struggling with for the next six years. I had to resign from the first job because I could not handle the 6th or 7th graders. I knew from then on I did not want to go back to middle or high school. My next job was in Hearne, north of Bryan/College Station, TX, and it was a pretty miserable experience classroom management-wise as well. The summer after that job I came back to San Antonio, got married, and got a job in another small town south of San Antonio. I was there for four years and again struggled like crazy with the classroom management. One day in the third year I had a breakdown, and broke down crying. They had just worked my last nerve. The fourth year I got a little better at calling parents, sending kids to the office, and administering time-outs, but they were still “eating my lunch” so to speak. I was sitting in the principal’s office constantly being lectured about my lack of disciplinary skills and how I’m not assertive enough until finally I resigned because they were not going to renew my contract another year. Ever since then I have been a substitute teacher in San Antonio. I still struggle with classroom management sometimes, but for the most part the kids in this school district are much better behaved. I even got to teach music long term last year for a music teacher who had knee surgery.

Which brings me back to the music discussion and my career ahead of me. Like I said in my last blog post I am about to finish my second Masters degree. I finished my Masters in Music just as I was leaving my last professional job. In May or June I will have finished my Masters in Library Science. The hope in all of this is that I would have more options in looking for a job in the library or teaching elementary music. I pursued areas of study that I love, music and reading. I voiced my concerns with the library job somewhat in the last post, but I wanted to touch on concerns in music with this post.

Two of my main areas of concern in my music education are my poor ear training skills and my laziness when it comes to practicing. Of course, these could obviously go hand-in-hand. In the third level of my Kodaly classes, my lack of dictation skills was readily apparent. My stomach would hurt during the ear training classes worried that I would be called on to do melodic dictation. I have the worst time writing out notes and melodies just by listening to them played. I’m OK at identifying two note intervals and whether they are a major 2nd apart or a perfect 5th. When we start getting into four measure melodic phrases, I just can’t do it. I can kind of get the rhythm down, but forget about the notes. Practicing is something else. Ever since middle school I have not been good at practicing every day. I practiced for tests and recitals, but those were something probably fear of failure made me do more than anything else. I really do need to play more because I enjoy doing it, but I just get lazy and don’t.

If anyone has ideas on how I get better at being more assertive, practicing more, practicing ear training or anything else, please leave a comment.

Here is a short little update on what’s going on with me. A couple weeks into my diet, and I’ve lost 5 pounds. I have to continue to keep logging using the Lose It! app on the iPod Touch. Speaking of apps, I’m still doing AppADay podcast 5 days a week and I’m amazed that this is the first podcast I’ve ever done that I’ve been consistent with. I did the Macintosh Users Group last night and someone suggested I talk about one or two of my favorite apps at the meetings so maybe next time I’ll try to incorporate that.

The other thing I’m happy about is that earlier this week I registered for my last class in library school. In February I will do the Capstone which is a week of writing three major research essays. That may be the first week I take a hiatus from AppADay. By May I will graduate and then the fun starts, looking for a job. I want to stay in the elementary and be an elementary school librarian, but if I can find an elementary music teaching job, I’ll do that too. One thing I worry about with the library degree is that I have barely any experience in an actual library and wonder if that will be a deterrent from getting a job.

Substitute teaching has been kind of slow lately. I got 2 jobs last week and only 1 job this week. Hopefully it will pick up more as we move forward into the Spring semester.

One of the reasons for this post is to do some testing with plugins to send this blog directly to Twitter and Facebook.

I was reading my blog post from last year about New Year’s Resolutions. Boy, I didn’t do very well. My first resolution was to lose weight. I gained 10 pounds. I may be a little bit better with my keys, glasses, etc but not by much. I didn’t really look for a job that hard last summer because I was taking a rather involved course. Podcasting is the only success I’ve had this past year and that didn’t happen until November with NaPodPoMo (National Podcast Post Month). So here we go again with another year.

1. My goal for this coming year is to really cut back on fast food and sodas. That is probably the main cause of my weight gain. I’ve got to cut back on the cheeseburgers, pizzas, sliced bar-b-que sandwiches and fried chicken. It took me getting a bad stomach virus earlier this year for me to cut out Chick Fil-a completely. Hopefully I can exercise enough self-control to cut back on the rest. The only good thing I can say is that I’m still keeping up the walking several times a week (unless I’m substitute teaching and then I have no energy after the day).

2. I want to do something musical for at least 30 minutes every day. This can be either practicing the trombone, playing the piano, singing, or doing ear training exercises on my iPod Touch with a couple apps I have.

3. I will be finishing my library degree in May and then next summer I will really be looking for a job. I am looking for school library or elementary music jobs; maybe even public library.

4. Podcasting: I’m going to let Daily TV Review fall by the wayside. I don’t really care to do that show anymore. I’m going to put most of my attention and effort in to the App-a-Day podcast. This is the first show I’ve done where I really think I can be consistent and put out a 5 day a week show (at least until I run out of apps). It is also a show that I really have fun doing and my Feedburner numbers actually hit 50 subscribers one day. It is staying in the 30’s and 40’s normally. I will still be doing Rental Reviews on the occasion I see a movie and I’m still writing for Book Sandwich after I read a book.

That’s about all I can think of for this post. I am looking forward to Christmas and the New Year and I hope everyone reading this has a Happy Holidays!

There is this cute site called Xtranormal.com where you can quickly and easily create little animated movies based on text you write.

Here is a video I did about the ongoing National Podcast Post Month or NaPodPoMo.

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School libraries and learning a time for bold action
Ross J Todd

Learning to read and reading to Learn
Fundamental to ongoing school reform
We will weave Information into a deep fabric
You build knowledge in the schools
5 key challenges in future of school libraries:
We have no future if we have no research
What is the future of school libraries and what does it look like?
Given prescence of school libraries do students actually learn anything?
Heart of school libraries is not information. Infrastructure In school to facilitate knowledge journey. Build knowledge and understanding.
Teach students to become informed about the world around them.
Keith Curry Lance 12 state studies correlational studies.
His work documents the centrality of school librarian’s work.
Ohio was first of 4 studies. Ohio, Delaware, Australia, New Jersey
Looking at s school libraries from lens of students
Captured the voices of students
Explored help concept. How are students helped by school librarians.
In eyes of principals, politicians school libraries are invisible
Assumption that libraries contribute to social good.
Austin Public Library Wired for Youth Community Technology Program.
7 conceptions of help
Critical incident remember a time when the school library helped you.
Research shows that students value access to information really value information technology helps them work with the information. Framework for building knowledge.
Central dimension of your role is that of educator.
Students value your role in helping them become good researchers. Real value is helping kids engage and build knowledge. If we just tell them how to find information we are accomplices in plagiarism problem.
Helping kids engage, synthesize. Gift of school library beyond learning about curricula
Not about findng information but helping them engage so they can get “their heads around it all”.
Important trilogy formational, tranformational, informational
SLIM School Library Impact Measure
New Jersey study did they learn anything? For some of these kids the answer was no.
Captured existing knowledge and exit knowledge at the end and for one class the knowledge didn’t change.
Did students experience change of knowledge?
3 survey instruments beginning middle and end
Transport. Gathering facts and more facts. Research task was just compiling facts. Facts was the end product of report. 60% of students wrote reports in this way. Transporting information from one sourcc to new paper.

Transform. Set out to gather facts. Moved beyond gathering facts. Building explanations. Interpreting, personal interaction and engagement with information. Formulate conclusions.
Nature of task: either collect facts or transform facts
Central point nature of instructional interventions. We need to go beyond just teaching kids to find stuff. Help kids make sense of information.
Libraries are inquiry centers. Places of intellectual discontent and conflict. School libraries are instructional zones.

Future of the school library?
The school library of the future?

Learning commons. Challotsville library Massachusetts
There is evidence that students are using libraries less and using the Internet more.
We need to understand why we need school libraries.

Schoolsucks.com evilhouseofcheat.com cheathouse.com phuckschool.com websites where kids go to cheat and find term papers

Blog: schoollibraries21c.edublogs.org
We can’t bury our heads in the sand. Ask the question do we need school libraries? Some principals are already answering the question and it is no.

We have to engage and think about what the research tells us and it has to spur us to take action. Are you riding the steamroller or are you part of the road?
You need to take action.

•Without inquiry there is no reason for school libraries.
Without vision you walk in darkness.
Enable kids to develop deep knowledge

Wordle.net. Create tag cloud on school mission statement and school library policies. What words stand out? What do your school library’s mission statement focus on? Frame your vision on what you want students to become. Foster inquiry and building knowledge. Information-to-knowledge commons– school libraries.

• Without evidence it is just another opinion.
How do school libraries contribute to learning literacy and living?
We have to be intense consumers of the research. Build practice on evidence of research.
Build summative and formative data of how this library helps students.

• Without teams there is limited capacity for change.
Collaboration one of most guilt laden words in our profession. Build partnerships and teams. Form allies. Research documents low levels of collaboration.
Kent State Collaboration Study.
We need to come with common purpose student achievement and content
What is the expertise that each member of school team can bring?

• Without Web 2.0 missed opportunity for situating kids in real world.
Look at way Internet is changing and growing. Not about providing information but provides tools for participation and construction. Library is a place to experiment with these tools in safety. We need to engage the expertise of the tools. Kids being part of the team. Safe places for experimenting with ideas and technology.

Core values

Community
Communication
Collaboration
Creativity

Sent from my iPod

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Peoples Choice - Daily Giz Wiz
Best Produced - TWiT
Best Video Podcast - Cranky Geeks
Comedy - Hypernonsense
Entertainment - Appslappy
Political - No Agenda
Technology / Science - This Week in Google

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