Transporting Files Between Home and School

A jump drive is a compact storage device that can be used to save files to or from a computer. They are a handy and durable replacement to writing files to CD or floppy disk. Jump drives are smaller in size than a pack of gum and can be attached to a key chain, or worn around your neck. The jump drive plugs into the USB port of a computer, which then provides easy access to your files. Jump drives are also referred to as flash drives, and USB memory sticks. They can be purchased at every major retail and office supply store. As the storage capacity has gone up, the prices have come down and a 1GB jump drive can be found for under $20. We recommend that every student have their own jump drive and many teachers at Prairie require them for their classes. We do have jump drives in the Library Media Center available to students for a 1 week check-out, and they are very popular items!

Jump drives are the best way for students to transport their files between home and school. CD’s do not hold nearly as much data and are not as durable as jump drives. Many students think they can email themselves documents between home and school, only to find out that access to their personal email accounts are not allowed on school computers. Having a jump drive would alleviate many of the issues of transporting files between home and school and they are a great investment for students!

Rebecca Caudill 2008 Winner

The state winner of the 2008 Rebecca Caudill award is Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie by Jordan Sonnenblick. A total of 38,340 votes were cast across the state and these voters agree with Prairie students that Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie is definitely a book worth reading! The other place winners are:

2nd place: The Old Willis Place by Mary Downing Hahn

3rd place: MVP*: Magellan Voyage Project by Douglas Evans

4th place: The Miraculous Journey by Kate DiCamillo

5th place: The Ranger's Apprentice/Ruins of Gorlan by John Flanagan

We have four days left before Spring Break. Stop by the library to check out some books for vacation. We have just added many new books to our collection. Another item for checkout that might help break up a long car trip would be one of our audiobooks. We have many titles on cassette and CD. We would be happy to recommend or help you find a book or audiobook to enjoy over break.

Sharing Books

According to our question of the week, it looks like many of us get book recommendations from friends. So here is your chance. Post a comment about a book(s) you have read recently that you would recommend to one of your friends.

Over the weekend, I finished the book Wolf Brother by Michelle Paver. This was the first book in a series called Chronicles of Ancient Darkness. The main character, Torak, along with his wolf friend try to save the ancient clans from a demon bear. It is a true adventure as Torak searches for the items listed in an ancient prophecy that will help him conquer the bear. I really liked how friends played such an important part in the story.

Urban Legends

Have you ever heard of an Urban Legend ? According to Dictionary.com, an Urban Legend is “a modern story of obscure origin and with little or no supporting evidence, spreads spontaneously in varying forms and often has elements of humor, moralizing, or horror: Are there alligators living in the New York City sewer system, or is that just an urban legend?”.

In this age of technology, Urban Legends have found their way into our everyday life. You know those emails that get forwarded to you with stories of “millionaires giving all their money away if you just forward this email to 20 people”? How about the various viruses you can catch from email, cell phones, etc? How do you know if theses stories are true or Urban Legends?

The site I visit most often to sort fact from fiction is Snopes.com. Otherwise known as the Urban Legends Reference Page, Snopes.com is a well-known resource for validating or disproving, Internet rumors, email forwards, and other such stories of uncertain or questionable origin in popular American culture.

Snopes.com is an interesting and fun website to browse and most importantly, it reminds us that not everything we read on the Internet is true!