Update!

Hello all,
I total forgot we still had this. My life has been great. I currently filling out all the lovely paperwork for student teaching and planning for it as well. I changed my minor at the beginning of Fall quarter to Early Childhood Education, so it put me behind a quarter, so I will now be student teaching in the Fall 2009 rather then this spring. Oh well, I am learning more in my Early Childhood classes then Middle Level Math and Science. I was away for the holidays and see that that their was major problems with the weather to the point that Seattle, made international News in London and in Italy. I was able to take a trip with my family to London and to parts of Italy. It was so pretty, but oh so cold in Italy. We were able to visit Perugia and Venice. Both cities were so beautiful and so full of history. Due to cheaper tickets, we flew into London and were able to make a visit to the British Library. They have the most amazing manuscript and artifacts from all the major british authors and many of the major religions first written texts. They also had two of the three surviving copies of the Magna Carta on diplay. It so amazing. A must see and visit if you are ever in London.
Other then that I have been trying to aviod the cold and horrible weather Ellensburg seems to be having lately. I hope all is well with you and hope to hear more about how you are all doing soon, Emily

Snowbound in Sumner

Hello, All.
Once again, the snow put a damper on the end of the year in the Puyallup School District. We closed Wed-Fri, and now I'm kind of stuck at home. Normally I like this, but for some reason, this year it isn't fun. Could be because my 'friend' Randy is in Arizona, my best buddy lives miles away, and I have no money! Oh well, life goes on.
On a positive note, I am still loving my job as a high school librarian! I'm so surprised and happy about that.
Hope to read some more posts by some of you. You're all probably as busy as I have been. Talk to you soon. Claire

Greetings From Jerry

Greetings my friends. So sorry that it's taken me so long to join back in and say hello. Life has been crazy & hectic as usual - but also quite good. The summer ended on a couple of wonderful notes after my "good friend" finally passed, allowing me to get off of medication and return to a "normal??" mental state. Hawaii was absolutely wonderful, relaxing, beautiful, etc. etc. Our sons wedding was great fun - & then it was back to work. It's been an interesting year - many more administrative issues, pains, red-tape, garbage, etc. etc. this year than in some past years - but it appears that things may be starting to smooth back out a bit. The last few weeks have been all about Follett Destiny. Our district is upgrading our Circ/Cat system. I was made the lead librarian on the project so have been working hard on all the arrangements, communicating back and forth between the company, trainers, technicians, all the other librarians, etc. Tomorrow we finish up our second day of on-site training and then we go "live" with Destiny on Monday. We are all so excited. I knew it was a cool system - but after today's training and learning even more of what it can do - am very excited to get going with it. Looking back on some past posts I see that Emily already gave you links to some of my new stuff. The most important one for you is my Delicious site with all of my bookmarks:
http://delicious.com/jdredge

I am working at getting in all of my links from all of my CWU classes and getting them organized. I have completed entering all the Web 2.0 links - but am still working on links for some of the Information Literacy, Questioning stuff - and then things from my Production Class. My plan is to continue to keep this updated and keep adding stuff as I find new cool sites. So, keep checking it out if you're interested. Even though I haven't contributed much here - I am seriously enjoying checking in every once and awhile and reading about your various exploits. It's always fun to see how my "kids" are doing. Continued good luck to all of you & many rich blessings - Jerry

Praxis Test Results!!!

I checked my score online today and I'm pleased to say that I passed with a 740. What a relief, though really I don't see myself using that particular endorsement in the near future. What is the process for getting it added to my certificate? I've completely forgotten the presentation we had this summer about it.

Jerry's new Web 2.0 Sites

Hey All!
We had a Central Washington Meeting in Ellensburg yesterday and Jerry showed us a couple of great wikis and other sites that are great for working with web 2.0 information. I have really enjoyed it.

The sites are:
Central Washington Library Lessons Wiki (built for library lessons by Jerry)
http://centralwalibrarylessons.wikispaces.com/
Jerry's Bookmarks on Web 2.0 Resources
http://delicious.com/jdredge
Jerry's Website
http://www.jalldredge.com/

There is already some great lessons for students k-12. Have fun!
emauk me if one of the links does not work. Emily

Does anyone know how to visit the Scholastic warehouse to buy books? And other News...

I've been informed that I've got over $6,000 (yup, thousand!!) to spend at Scholastic. The warehouse is in Portland. I have about 5 empty shelves, so I could really go to town, particularly with paperback series that the school doesn't have. No Magic Schoolbus! Sheesh.

Anyone have experience with this?

In other news, I'm happily settled into a rented house in Vancouver. Our wedding was absolutely great, even though it was on the HOTTEST DAY OF THE YEAR (almost 106 in Yakima that day). It was an evening wedding, and as soon as the sun set it cooled nicely and fun was had by all. The band turned out to be delightful, with a banjo and mandolin and everything! If you're familiar with Nickel Creek, you'd know the kind of sound. We sang two songs: Simple Gifts and For the Beauty of the Earth. There were twinkle lights everywhere, and the frogs were singing in the pond, and I couldn't have wished for anything lovelier. If you are on Facebook, you can visit and see more pictures.

The job is great--I've got an unusual schedule that I really like. Other schools in my district are so slammed with back-to-back classes that they're using itinerant teachers in the library. My school, on the other hand, is on an 8-day specialist rotation. I see the kids for longer (48 min) but I only see them for 6 of the 8 days. So...two days per rotation I have the library to myself and I can work on collaboration projects, management, and planning! Next week those days will be Tues and Wed...I hope to visit Portland's warehouse on Wed.

We started WCCPBA books today and between The End and Chester the overwhelming favorite is Chester. He's such a stinker cat!

Hope everyone is well!

hello from the 'Couve! I love love love being a librarian! More later...