Press Play @your library -Teen Tech Week 2009

Next week, March 8-14, is Teen Tech Week and we have some great events going down in the Media Center at Sparta Middle School. There will be classes on databases, digital books, audio books, videos and dvds, listening libraries, flip cameras, etc. It's all about advertising our media center's non-print resources.
Students can sign up for classes during their lunch periods.
Here is our list of classes:
Monday - Become a Google Guru
Tuesday- Garage Band
Wednesday- Flip for Flip Videos
Thursday- iMovie
Friday- Teen Screen Festival Viewing.
Also, after school on Wednesday is a Dance, Dance Revolution contest and Thursday is a Guitar Hero contest.
There will be door prizes for students who sign up for the classes and raffles such as graphic novels, tutor.com tutoring minutes, google pens, and gift certificates to various establishments in Sparta.

Letters to Baghdad

A little before Christmas,I received an email from a mother whose son was stationed in Baghdad over the holidays. My students jumped at the idea of sending him cards and they especially wanted to let him know who won the election, what football teams were winning and how the economic crisis was effecting the world.
Last week, Lt. Robert Forrester emailed me thanking the students for the letters, but even better, he wanted to come in and talk to them about his experiences in Iraq.
Here is the slide show Lt. Forrester made and some pictures from today's event.

Be the Change in Darfur

The 6th graders in our middle school just completed a unit called, "Be the Change." They chose to help Darfur refugees in Sudan by raising money to purchase solar cookers. When the NJ Coalition for Darfur found out we were doing this, they were very interested because we were the first middle school to help. They wanted us to create curriculum and a presentation to show to other middle schools. The curriculum is not complete yet, but here is a slide show:

The students were amazing; whether it was figuring out the marketing plan for the bracelets, making posters and flyers, giving up their lunch to sell bracelets, dancing for bracelets, counting money, we never heard one complaint. They always wanted to do more. We have sold almost 1000 bracelets and made enough money to buy about 80 solar cookers.

Mr. Barkley Calkins, Director of the Nonprofit Sector Resource Institute, a funded arm of Seton Hall University’s Center for Public Service, is coming to speak to our 6th graders about public service and the situation in Darfur.

We cannot wait until warm weather, we are going to build an attempt to use solar cookers in the parking lot!