Earth Day Countdown!

National Environmental Education Week is April 18-22. This is the official countdown preparation to Earth Day, which is April 22nd. Here are some great online resources to learn more about our earth and how to make it a better place:
Extreme Ice Survey - a wide-ranging glacier study that uses time-lapse photography and video to document the rapid changes now occurring on the Earth's glacial ice.
The Day the Water Died - a film produced by the Sierra Club documenting the impact of the Exxon Valdez oil spill that occurred in Alaska on March 24, 1989.
Energy Estimator - A tool from the Solar Energy Research and Education Foundation that estimates how much electricity you can produce through solar and wind power in your own backyard.
It Starts at Home - A National Geographic article in which the author chronicles his attempt to reduce his CO2 emissions by 80%.
United Nations Environment Program - The Atlas of our Changing Environment is a Google Earth mashup in which you click on one of the icons on the map, and it shows a picture and a story of an environmental impact of the region. Very informative and visual!

Award Winning Books

Have you caught the latest releases of award winning books? If not, try our link on the library page titled Find a Good Book to get a complete list. Below are a few of the main awards given. Stop by the library to check out a copy to read.

The Newbery committee has declared The Graveyard by Neil Gaiman this year's Newbery Award winner. Some of you may may be familar with another novel by this author. Coraline was written by Mr. Gaiman and has recently been made into a movie. If you enjoy creepy reads, check out one of these titles.

The state winner of the Rebecca Caudill award has also been declared. The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan has won. Prairie students definitely agree with this choice. In less than a month, the last book of this series is due to hit the shelves.

RSS Feed

Are you looking for a quick way to keep up-to-date with your favorite Web sites? Try using an RSS feed to keep track of updates to these sites. Watch RSS in Plain English for a simple explanation of what an RSS feed is and how to set it up in a reader service.

Life.com photo archive

Over 7 million images of American life, history and culture are now available on Life.com. The site has recently been relaunched and makes the entire archived library of photos from Life magazine and Getty images available for free. This also includes 3000 current event images added daily by Getty. There are 5 channels on the site: news, celebrity, travel, animals, and sports. The photos can be printed out, shared through social networking sites, and are especially useful to educators and students. Many of the photos and captions were taken together and tell a full story. The site also plans to roll-out some new features in the coming months that will all be FREE, so check back often!

Here's an example - in honor of ER's last episode

Study Tools

Here is a good study tool for those of you who like using flashcards: Studystack.com. You can either create your own or browse the database of existing flashcards. The flash cards can be printed, viewed online, or exported to your phone or ipod. How cool is that?! Here are a few more to check out:
flashcarddb.com
Flashcardexchange.com
Quizlet.com

Don't forget to bookmark them with Delicious so you can access your bookmarks from any computer!

2009 Rebecca Caudill Prairie Pick

During the month of February, Prairie students voted for their favorite of the 2009 Rebecca Caudill titles. The ballots were counted and The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan won by a large margin. Second and third place winners were close with The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick beating Susan Beth Pfeffer’s novel Life as We Knew It by only two votes. We will need to wait a few more weeks before the state winner is announced.

Any students looking for a good book to read should follow their peers’ suggestions and check out one of Prairie’s winners!
Students may be interested in reading some other novels by our winning author, Rick Riordan. His Percy Jackson and the Olympians series is quite popular with middle school students. Many of us are eagerly awaiting his last book of the series that will be published in early May.

Other book suggestion lists can be found on our library site by clicking on the Find a Good Book link.

Social Networking

All the latest buzz seems to be about "social networking". If you haven't heard of Facebook, Myspace or Twitter, you must be living in the dark ages. Well, it seems the world of social networking has progressed beyond the teenagers and many adults now find themselves connecting with others and reconnecting with their past through these sites. I have recently ventured into the worlds of Twitter and Facebook. Twitter is considered a "micro blog". It allows users to send and receive updates from other users. These updates, also known as "tweets", are text based posts that are no longer than 140 characters in length. At first thought, it seems pointless, but the concept is actually quite brilliant. You can subscribe follow a person's "tweets". You can also restrict delivery of your messages to specific people. Twitter is not just limited to computers. Tweets can be sent and received through a mobile phone.

Twitter is a great way to connect with like-minded people. It's also being used as a tool to quickly get information out to users. Many candidates of the 2008 Presidential campaign used Twitter to keep their supporters updated. Intrigued? What to learn more? Visit Tweeternet to learn everything you need to know about Twitter.