Techie Tuesday: GeoGuessr

If you haven't been living under a rock for the last twenty years, you know that we are in the middle of a tech boom. Things change so quickly and so frequently that it can be difficult to keep up. This is especially true in both the library and education worlds, where technology has become absolutely essential. Seeing as I have a foot in each of these worlds, it's understandable that I spend most of my day steeped in technology. Part of my job as a high school librarian is to act as a technology liaison to my staff, introducing them to new tools and strategies to engage their classes in modern learning. 

We throw around a lot of buzzwords and catch phrases like "21st century learning" and "technology integration" and "flipping the classroom" but what all of this essentially boils down to is figuring out a way to use new tools to do new things. If you're using new technologies to do the same old things you've been doing for the last hundred years, you aren't using the technology effectively. 

So, with no further ado, I introduce to you Techie Tuesdays (don't you like the fancy schmancy logo?). Every Tuesday (or as often as I can remember) I'll be posting a new tool or site I've introduced my teachers to along with some suggestions for how to apply it to education. This week we have...

GeoGuessr:

Screenshot of geoguessr.com

If you're a twenty-something like me making minimal money and suffering from severe wanderlust, GeoGuessr is an easy way to see other places and quash those pre-summer travel daydreams. But be warned, it's very easy to waste long stretches of time here. I've fallen prey to the "just one more game" curse more times than I care to admit.

GeoGuessr is an extremely simple (and addictive) game. When you go to the website, you are given a picture from Google Earth from anywhere in the world. You can look around and sometimes move a few places forward or back. Then you have to guess where in the world you are. The game gives you a score based on how close your guess is from your actual location and you get five rounds per game. Then you can share your score with friends or classmates to compete for Best GeoGuessr (or some similarly arbitrary but exciting honorary title). 

Applications for Education:

Most obviously, it would be great with a world Geography Class. Students can look at all sorts of things to infer their location. What does the landscape look like? What style are the buildings? What language (or alphabet) are the signs written in? What side of the road are the cars driving on? What do the people look like and wear? Are distances marked in miles or kilometers? A sample lesson might start with a discussion of these questions and continue on to the game itself. 

This is also a game that could be used with English or Creative Writing classes. English classes could talk about context clues and discuss the way that different details help to create a realistic setting. And Creative Writing classes might try to set different writing exercises in places they've never visited, infer things like the sounds and smells of a place from looking at a picture. 

That's al for today, folks. I hope you enjoy GeoGuessr as much as I have. On second thought, if you enjoy it as much as I do, we might have a problem. I hope you find GeoGuessr an educational tool worthy of being passed along to your friends and colleagues. Be sure to tune in next week for another exciting episode of Techie Tuesday!

Creepy Reading

If you get this reference, you get
bonus coolpoints.
Image property of BBC

I am a wimp. I've been known to cover my eyes during cartoon violence so it probably coes without saying that I absolutely cannot handle horror movies. Even worse than scary movies, though, are scary books. To me, books have always been more real than movies because the action happens inside your own head so you can't just walk away from it. (There are many who would make the opposite argument but I'm a bibliophile, not a cineophile and this is my blog so I'm going to just go ahead and say those people are wrong.)

Still, I like to be mildly spooked to get into the spirit of Halloween. I may not be The Shining material but there are plenty of creepy, weird books that won't keep me awake at night staring at the ceiling and listening for the creak that means my impending doom has finally come. I prefer "weird and other," though, to "downright terrifying." It's been a while since we had a good old fashioned list and that's as good a segue as any.

Image from Goodreads

--We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson: There's no real horror here. There was a murder years before the story starts but wasn't it gruesome and the characters in the story aren't afraid the killer will return to finish his (or her--we don't discriminate here) grisly task. This is more the story of a family of outsiders in a small, close-knit community. It's strange and uncomfortable but not outright  "scary." The best description I've heard came from novelist Jonathan Lethem, who characterizes Jackson's work as one that displays "a vast intimacy with everyday evil." Add a dash of sociopathy, a healthy dollop of family loyalty, and sprinkle with agoraphobia and you've got a deliciously eerie concoction best served with hot tea (but no sugar).

--Blindness by José Saramago: A mysterious epidemic causes city-wide blindness and in the aftermath, society dissolves. The sightless inhabitants of the unfortunate city are confined to an abandoned mental institution, where living conditions and morale quickly degrade to pretty horrific levels. Food disappears, women are assaulted, and soldiers shoot the hapless sick. Blindness was originally written in Portugese and there's something about the starkness of the translation that lends to the haunting air of the story.

Image from Goodreads

--The Road by Cormac McCarthy: Reader beware, this one contains cannibalism. While the main characters of the story, a man and his son trying to survive in a bleak post-apocalyptic world, don't much come into direct contact with it, there is a persistent fear of being caught and eaten. McCarthy's writing is somehow poetic and dense despite his subject matter. The Road was pretty much as far as far down the rabbit hole as I can go. I actually had to set the book down and go for a walk a few times while I was reading it to get some distance but I loved it as much as one can love a story about apocalyptic cannibals.

--The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield: When a young biographer is summoned to write the story of a famously reclusive writer, she has no idea what to expect but it soon becomes clear that there is something--something important--that her subject is not telling her about the past. And it's something that may not be satisfied to stay in the past. I had to read this one twice to funny understand the story but it was worth the effort. The story is tangled and confusing at times but it always walks the line between strange and beautiful.

--Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: Forget zombies. A world where women are considered old maids by twenty-four, where the phrase "old maid" still has legitimacy, and were a woman's worth is determined by her marriage prospects? That sounds plenty horrifying to me. I re-read P&P every year around this time, fall always puts me in the mood for the classics. If you want something a little more conventionally scary, you could try Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (especially this version), some good old Poe, or Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. There's plenty of spook to go around.

I hope you've all got a fun Halloween planned. The best plans, in my opinion, involve both a book and candy so I'll be plenty happy tonight. Now if you'll al excuse me, Mr. Darcy is waiting.

Mean, Mean Girls (and Boys, Too)

Thank you, Tina Fey, for making
a movie about my life.
Image from IMDB

When I was in middle school, my friends and I played a game we called the Truth Circle. We would sit around in a circle in someone's basement or bedroom with a bowl and a notebook and a handful of pens and pick someone to be "it." Then everyone else in the circle would write down five things we liked about whoever was "it" and five things we didn't like. Each girl took her turn being "it" so it was fair because no one got off easy. If it wasn't so awful, it would be almost funny to remember. The lengths we went to to disguise our handwriting, dotting our i's with circles or hearts instead of precise points or making our d's with two deliberate strokes instead of one sloppy line and loop, the way we hunched over our papers with our hands carefully guarding what we wrote so no one would know what we had written, the crisp folds, once horizontal and once vertical, so the papers would be indistinguishable when they were drawn from the bowl. We were like spies, except that instead of bring down dictators using futuristic gadgets we were destroying each other using a game as an excuse.

When I think back on playing Truth Circle, I do remember some of the things that were said about me. The worst turns were those when two papers said the same thing. Oh no, you'd think, is that in there twice because someone wrote it twice because they couldn't think of enough bad stuff or have multiple people noticed that my hair looks kind of stringy sometimes? But the thing that still bothers me about the game is not that someone thought my perfume smelled like an old woman or that I have a tendency to pretend I know things when I don't--both of those things are true (although I have since switched perfumes and I now smell my age). The thing that bothers me is that I played it. I wrote things about people I loved, horrible things, because it was anonymous and everyone was doing it. I won't say that I never think negative things about the people around me, of course I do, but for most of my adult life, I have tried always to be kind. That is why it is so hard for me to admit that, at least in the context of the game, I was a bully. 

I don't know why we played the game or who came up with it. I do know we weren't the only group of girls playing it. These were not after-school-special girls, they were good girls. They came from good homes and got above average grades. They all went to college and became mostly functional members of society. Some of these girls are my friends today and I harbor no grudges towards them. I know that the things we said and did to each other were horrid and I was not blameless. It's a hard memory to have because I felt victimized but I also made victims of my friends.

My inner child is a mean,
creepy little bugger.
Image from Warner Bros.

Playing Truth Circle has not damaged me irreparably. I am a confident, successful young woman now and I would not change the way my life has unfolded thus far, despite the bumps I've hit along the way, but the fact remains that ten years after the last game of Truth Circle, I have niggling insecurities. The sad, weird kid in me has hoarded those little paper insults (because of course the compliments were forgotten long ago--isn't that always the way?) and whispers them to me in moments of weakness and I'm sure I'm not the only member of the Truth Circle who has held tight to those little hurts.

Here's what I wish I had done: instead of calling someone else a slut, I wish I had written, "I think this is an awful game and we shouldn't play it anymore." There would have been no risk, the game was anonymous. But the truth of the matter is that I'm sure some dark, secret part of me enjoyed seeing the girls around me laid low because that dark, secret part of me got to feel superior for just a moment.  It was an agonizing, broken time and I would like to say that I am not ashamed that I did what I needed to do to survive but I would be lying. I am ashamed. I was a bully and a coward and I am sorry.

October is National Anti-Bullying Month or National Bullying Prevention Month, depending on who you ask and what website you look at. Either way, we can all pretty much agree that bullying is bad and it's worse today than ever it was when I was a kid. Today, my students are on Facebook and Twitter and Tumblr and Pinterest and who all knows what else. They never get to disconnect from their peers so if one of those peers is giving them a hard time, they get to see it at school and at home. They get it on their phones. They literally never get away from it and the internet has given kids the same anonymous license to say whatever they want that Truth Circle did. We say things online that we would never say in person because it's so easy to type it out and hit send. 

I don't have an easy answer for you here. I don't know how to fix this. I know that I don't want to live in a society where it's even remotely acceptable to sit in a circle and tear your friends to pieces and I don't want to live in one where it's acceptable to do it online. I want to live in a society of compassion and tolerance and perhaps the best way to do that is to begin by noticing all of the ways--even small, seemingly insignificant ways--that I am uncompassionate and intolerant.

This month--and every month--I ask you to do the same. I always joke that my mission at the high school library is to make life suck just a little less for at least one person each day but I'm not speaking entirely in jest. I do believe in the power that small acts of kindness have on the lives of my kids. To be a total cliché, I'd like to leave you with a quote from Mother Theresa, who said, "We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop." Little by little, drop by drop, we make a difference.

Grandmother Willow: As wise as Mother Theresa but feistier.

Clip property of Disney

In Defense of the Cranky Librarian

Image from WebStockPro

You know exactly who I'm talking about. She has her hair pulled back in a bun so tight, it looks like she got a facelift. She wears her cat eye glasses with the jeweled chain around her neck un-ironically. Her cardigan is a little too big and her skirts are that awkward length between knee and ankle. Worse still, she's wearing a look on her face like she just smelled something awful and her perpetual scowl makes you anxious and jumpy. She might have one eyebrow raised as she watches you browse the stacks. Other than the scritch of pens on paper, the click of keyboard keys, and the gentle whisper of pages turning, her library is completely silent. She is the Cranky Librarian.

I always vowed never to turn into the Cranky Librarian. I play music in the library and joke around with my kids. I haven't worn a bun in years (although that's partly because my hair is about an inch and a half long). I love my students and I love to let them be themselves in the library because I firmly believe that libraries are no longer simply storehouses of information, they are centers of collaboration and community. But. In my second year as a high school librarian, I'm beginning to understand the Cranky Librarian. I'm developing a newfound respect and sympathy with the crochety old cliche. 

There are forty-five thousand books in my library. By library standards, that's tiny but by I'm-the-only-librarian-here-so-I-have-to-do-all-the-organization standards it's gargantuan. I don't have the time to shelf-read every day to look for titles out of their proper places. That means that when a student asks me for a book, there's a pretty good chance that even if the computer says it's in, it's not on the shelf where it's supposed to be. That is extremely frustrating. It makes me feel like I am losing my mind and it also makes me look like I have no idea what I'm doing. "It's supposed to be right here," I'll say to a student while rubbing my temples, "the computer says it's here but it's... you know... not."

Here's the thing. There are six freshman English classes here and I had them all come down for a little library orientation. I explained the library to them, how it's organized. It's all just alphabetical and numerical order. If you can count to ten and you know your ABC's, you can put a book back in the right place. And if you don't feel like putting it away, there are three--count 'em, three!--reshelving carts all around the library where you can leave your books and I'll do it for you! They all nodded and laughed at my lame one-liners and I thought, "Oh good, they get it. Maybe this year I won't have to spend 65% of my time looking for misplaced books." Oh, dear readers, don't shake your head at my silly naiveté. I'm not unintelligent, just hopeful, but sometimes it feels like the two are closer than I'd like.

Yes, the library system looks complicated but all fiction books are organized alphabetically by author and all non-fiction books are organized by Dewey number. Both of these are printed on the spine label of every single book in this library. Every single one. And I repeat, there is no need to put the books away. You can put them on the reshelving cart or in the return slot or simply hand them to me and I'll do it. It's what I went to school for, it's the reason I have a job. The one thing I tell students they must not must not must not do is put a book somewhere it doesn't belong because then it might as well not be in the library at all. But the fact that I'm writing this at all shows you all exactly how well that rule plea was followed.

But you, my dear, lovely, organized readers, would never do such a thing. I simply know that you always put your books back in exactly the right places, be those places on the shelves or on the reshelving carts, and you do all of the things I've asked of you. And I know you are always respectful and kind to your librarian and treat him or her with the reverence that his or her incredible knowledge and skills demand. You bow at the feet of librarians and you are incensed at my predicament. Today, my lovely readers, we are all Cranky Librarians.

It's Going to Be a Bookish Halloween

Image from NerdApproved

Halloween is just around the proverbial corner and I'm feeling the crunch. I love to dress up in costumes and mine have ranged from the unoriginal (I was a referee in college) to the extravagant (my David Bowie costume included a wig and some serious makeup) to the disastrous (when I was Lucille Balle, my hair turned out fire engine red instead of auburn). But whoever I am, I always have fun. Given the originality and intricacy of my more recent costumes, I feel like I really need to be on top of my game this year but I can't quite decide who to be. My natural inclination, of course, is to look to my favorite book characters and literary figures. For example...

Sylvia Plath: How does one dress like Sylvia Plath? First of all, plenty of period-appropriate pearls, a proper sheath dress, and general mid-century glamour. Here's where it gets dark, though. To dress as Sylvia, one should also paint tear tracks down one's face and sport oven mits (or, alternatively, make a small cardboard oven and wear it on one's head). I saw this once on the interwebs and wanted very much to be offended but somehow couldn't muster the proper indignation. It's funny the same way Helen Keller jokes are funny. You don't want to laugh, you really don't, and you know it's awful but a tiny, soulless part of you chuckles. Sometimes audibly. It's so wrong, guys. So very very wrong but... Let's move on, shall we?

Image from BuzzFeed

Max from Where the Wild Things Are: Mostly, I just want to dress up like Max because I want to wear an enormous onesie--er, wolf suit. This one would be pretty easy to do with one of the adult onesies that seem to be taking the place of the Snuggie. All that you'd need to do would be to sew on some ears and wear a Burger King crown and talk a lot about wild rumpuses (rumpi?) all night. I think I could handle that. [NOTE: The one in the picture here is gorgeous but costs more than a month of rent and I'm pretty sure you could get everything you would need to make a reasonable facsimile for under thirty dollars.]

Image from
TAAL

Miss Viola Swamp from Miss Nelson is Missing: Viola Swamp is so mich fun. She gets to be the bad guy and never has to deal with being disliked because she can just disappear back into Miss Nelson's closet. Plus, her outfit is super simple. An ugly black dress, striped tights, ugly black shoes, and (temporary) black hair dye are all it takes. Draw a disgusting mole on your chin and yell at people all night and you're good to go.

Alice from Alice in Wonderland: Yes, this one is a little overdone but it's also very recognizable. Just a blue dress and pinafore, some black Mary Janes, and a hair ribbon. I'm kind of obsessed with this trompe l'oeil skirt, which would be awesome with a puffy sleeved blouse and some white tights. Besides, Alice is pretty much my favorite book character of all time. I've always wanted to dress up as her and say things like "Curiouser and curiouser."

Image from PagePulp.com

[Bonus Section] Dorian Gray and his portrait: This one is a couples costume, which I normally hate, but it's so clever! One half of the pair dresses up in a nice suit and looks like a generally dapper dandy while the other half wears a similar suit with a photo frame around their neck and age lines drawn all over their face.

There are lots of options and I probably won't be any of these but you can bet that when I finally figure out what I'm going to be, it'll be from a book of some sort. So what are you going as? Halloween is only two weeks away. When I was a kid, I always waited until the last minute (once my mother stopped making my awesome Halloween costumes--seriously, they were intense) so I went as a hobo three years in a row. And while that's an incredibly easy costume--all you need are some oversized clothes and makeup to make your face look dirty and maybe a scampish hat--it's not the most fun. So start planning now, people, and get into the spirit (no pun intended) of the season.

Hobbit Mania

You guys. Peter Jackson's "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" comes out on December 14, just a little over two months from now. Are you excited yet? Personally, I can't even talk about it in public. I turn into a blithering idiot saying things like, "I just can't even... I'm just so... I love.. And Gollum! Did you see.. Oh my gosh, I just can't even..." All eloquence goes right out the window. 

For the record, The Hobbit is not just a prequel to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. These days,when you say "prequel" people generally think of a book written after the original series is finished meant to go back and explain some of the loose ends, similar to The Magician's Nephew in C. S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia (which is supposed to be the sixth book in the series, not the first and I can't even explain how much I hate that the publishers have reordered Lewis' works chronologically instead leaving them in the order Lewis wrote them and intended them to be read, but that's a rant for another day). The Hobbit was published in 1937, a full seventeen years before the publication of The Fellowship of the Rings.

Ahem, moving on, The Hobbit is a much simpler, lighter tale than LOTR. It was a children's story about dwarves, elves, hobbits, and one mean dragon. Other than that fourteen members of the expedition (yes, I can name them all from memory), there aren't a lot of extraneous names floating around to remember and the story doesn't have all that much nuance. The dwarves want their treasure back. The dragon, Smaug, stole it. They go on a quest to get it back. Bilbo, a hobbit, comes along as a burglar because... well, because otherwise the book wouldn't exist. I think I might love The Hobbit even more than LOTR precisely because of its simplicity and lightness. Given the sheer care and attention to detail shown in the LOTR movies, I feel confident that Jackson will do my preciousss Bilbo justice.

So now we get down to the meat and taters of this post. In case you've been living under a mountain (I'm going to cram in as many inside jokes and references as I can so bear with me), here is a quick rundown of the awesomeness that has flooded the internet in the previous months. Be aware that compiling all of this in one place may cause me to have a nerdapoplexy.

First of all, please tell me you've seen the trailers. Even if you haven't, lie to me or my poor little nerd heart might just break in two. And after that, watch even more footage that wasn't in the trailers. Now pick your jaw up off the floor and reattach it to your face. Then, go look at the character gallery and tell me if you think it's weird that I find two of the dwarves strangely attractive. Or rather, only tell me if you don't think it's weird.

I'll give you a hint. One of them is Thorin Okenshield.
The other one is Kili.

Are you geeking out yet? No? Okay, well look at these elf action figures, including a female elf captain of the guard (Hooray, empowered female characters!) and Legolas in all his blonde be-wigged glory. Also check out these posters, featuring Bilbo and Thanduil looking all brave and fantastical and these production stills (including one of Radagast the Brown). And if that isn't enough to get your nerd heart pounding, here's a shot of a flying Smaug. If villains are your thing, here's a little peek at the Goblin King for your nightmares.

Have I hyperlinked you into submission yet? Alright, calm yourself down by checking out Noelle Stevenson's Broship of the Ring, which reimagines Gandalf as an old hippie and Balrog as a ticked off bouncer. Brilliant. And if you want to feel better about your new and improved geek status, know that you're in good company. The folks over at Google are clearly Tolkien fanatics, too.

Look close, do you see it?

So take heart, my friends, the release of the first installment is only nine short weeks away. I know, I think Peter Jackson is a bit of a dragon for doing it in three parts, too. (I mean, the guy already has a treasure hoard as big as Thrain Son of Thror's, am I right?) But I'll still be there in the theater on opening night with my bucket of popcorn (because Longbottom Leaf is a little hard to come by) and my hobbit feet on.

Bonus Perks

Earlier this year at ALA Annual, I had the incredible fortune to be at an advanced screening of "The Perks of Being a Wallflower." The movie is based on the book of the same name by Stephen Chbosky. Now, I don't want to say too much about it since the movie won't be released to the general, non-awesome-librarian public until October 5 (limited release September 20) but I will tell you that you absolutely without question must see it. Seriously. Go. See. It. The Freedom to Read Foundation provided a copy of the book to every member of the audience (which I was very thankful had the original cover rather than the movie poster because, even though I liked the movie, I really hate it when they do that) so I literally began to re-read the book as I was walking out of the theater. But alas, I have finished the book (again) and I won't be able to re-watch the film for another two months so I've begun casting around for other books to satisfy my hankering for slightly off-beat but ultimately uplifting stories about the dispossessed. Essentially, I want more Perks and I'll take them wherever I can get them.

I was very excited, then, when I read a review of Joe Meno's latest work, Office Girl, which compared the work to Perks if Charlie had grown up to be an experimental artist rather than a writer and had continued right on falling in love with damaged but irresistible girls. It's a very sweet little story about bicycling, self acceptance, young love, a very strange art project, and living in a time and a city that are big enough to swallow you whole. I should admit at this point that pretty much I'm obsessed with all things Joe Meno right now. I challenge you, though, to read this strangely beautiful and beautifully strange book and remain unmoved.

In my quest for more Perks-esque stories, I also stumbled upon a short story by George Saunders called "Jon" (you can read the whole thing on the New Yorker). Jon (or maybe we should call him Randy) is in a very different world from Charlie. While Charlie lives in middle-class mediocrity in good ol' PA, Jon is provided with every possible luxury and material comfort. But the two share a unique voice and a struggle to find a sense of self that isn't defined by their situation or past.

Next I went back to old favorites and revisited It's Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini. It's not a perfect match but I think Charlie and Craig would have understood each other. Heck, they might even have been friends on the inside. I've also mentioned Daniel Handler's heroine Min Green from Why We Broke Up recently. While Min is a bit more confident and self-actualized than Charlie, she shares his love of all things vintage, interest in art and literature, and desire for things larger and more important than the small town high school she's temporarily stuck in.

Of course, the thing that makes Charlie so beautiful is that he is utterly unique among YA characters. While there are plenty of characters who are struggling with depression, sexual abuse, and sense of self, Charlie's approach to all of these things is different because he neither hides from nor wallows in his issues. He is funny but he does not use humor as a defense mechanism. He is introverted but he still interacts with his classmates instead of retreating into himself. He is the perfect balance of "seriously messed up" and "okay anyway." And that's kind of wonderful, isn't it?

So read the book. See the movie. You'll laugh, you'll cry, and you'll fall in love with Charlie and his friends and family and the utter, beautiful dysfunction.