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Welcome to the November 2006 Grandview Library Newsletter. I hope everyone enjoyed a peaceful and safe Thanksgiving holiday.
Well, the cold weather has hit. I am sitting in my office feeling a bit chilled around the edges. But there is also warmth in the form of books! The first eight boxes of books -- part of the $20,000 project literacy grant -- arrived this week. The children were as giddy as I was as we sampled the new arrivals. I've made it a top priority to get the books into the hands of children as quickly as possible -- your child should come home with a new book by the end of next week! Recently, I found a reference to this resource in one of my emails ~ See: Newsmap, "Newsmap is an application that visually reflects the constantly changing landscape of the Google News aggregator." Move your mouse over the colored captioned boxes and click. You will receive a snippet of info on the topic along with a count of related articles. The more related articles, the bigger the colored box the topic occupies. You can click on different countries to see their news -- and then use Google Language Translator to translate from another language to English or vice-a-versa. Why am I sharing this? Firstly, because this is a great example of the power of internet-based computing to aggregate and summarize the overwhelming amount of information which is produced each minute of the day. Of course, importance is shaped by biased media sources. "Newsmap does not pretend to replace the googlenews aggregator. Its objective is to simply demonstrate visually the relationships between data and the unseen patterns in news media. It is not thought to display an unbiased view of the news; on the contrary, it is thought to ironically accentuate the bias of it." Still interested see Bill Moyer’s The Future of the Net. Secondly, I share this because it is the world of information into which your children are entering as consumers and producers. Now, I don't know about you, but a single evening newspaper and three television news channels were the norm when I was young. Except for the option of writing a letter to the editor, there weren't many channels to share one's opinions. Today, anyone can build a weblog (blog) for free. Your potential audience could be in your backyard or on the other side of the world -- and this audience can give you immediate feedback. Rest assured, your children are learning to both consume and produce information in the Grandview Library at a level which is appropriate to young children. This newsletter was a bit a divergence -- sharing adult-to-adult -- the exciting and sometimes problematic world of information. Have a wonderful December vacation break! Warmly, |
to Listen 