OHS Ruffin Readers Place 4th in N. GA Regional

Our Ruffin Readers placed fourth in the North Georgia Regional reading bowl competition held on March 11th in Carrollton. To prepare for competition, team members read and studied twenty books on the 2006 Georgia Peach Teen nominee list and competed against other high school teams to answer factual questions from book content.

Student at Osborne may read any Georgia Peach Teen nominee book and submit an evaluation for the Read IT and Rate IT contest. Chosen by teen readers of Georgia, the Georgia Peach Teen winner for this year is Bloody Jack by L.A. Myer. Honor books are Shattering Glass and Imani in Never Say Goodbye. Students are encouraged to submit an electronic book review (on any of the Georgia Peach Teen nominee books) in the OHS media center Read IT and Rate IT! Contest.

We have five more drawings left this year and a grand finale award which will include one winner of a $40 book store gift card and one other book review author will receive a $40 prize for merit. Please encourage your students to participate.

OHS Celebrates National Poetry Month

Poetry reading events will take place on April 14, 21 & 28 in the Osborne Media Center. Two events will be scheduled during each of the three dates. Times for the events are from 11:45 – 12:15 and from 12:40 – 1:20. The organizing committee has suggested that we encourage students to contribute an original, typed poem for publication in a print (bound booklet) and electronic format for the school Webpage.

Students, faculty and staff may read/perform the work of a favorite author or read an original work. Each participant (approximately 10-15 per session) will have an opportunity to read one poem. If any time remains in the session, participants will be invited (in the same order as the sign up sheet) to read/perform a second poem.

To participate in an event, a student must sign up in advance. Sign up sheets are available in the media center. The content of all poems to be read by students must be approved (deemed appropriate) by either an OHS English teacher or a media staff member. Student performers will be required to rehearse their reading with an English teacher or media staff member. Ms. Vanderbilt will set up the sound system for a student rehearsal on Tuesday, April 11th, 18th, and 25th. Students may rehearse using the sound system before or after school in the media center. All participants (both student and teacher participants) are invited to attend a luncheon reception immediately following each performance.

If you would like to have a copy of the promotional flyer to post in your classrooms please request one from Ms. Vanderbilt. Additionally each teacher may request a free copy of the national poetry month poster available on the www.poets.org website. For information about National poetry Month look at http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/41

Rewards for participating
Each student who participates in a poetry event may enter their name in a drawing to receive a $25 book store gift card. Students that assist in planning and implementing the poetry events may also enter their name in the drawing. Only one entry per student is allowed regardless of the number of times they participate. Drawings will take place after all events conclude and three student winners will be chosen to receive the gift cards.

Poetry Out Loud

For the past three years the OHS Media Center has hosted poetry reading events in our library during National Poetry month in April. Students, faculty, staff and administrators are invited to share their own poetry or to read works written by favorite authors. The National Endowment for the Arts and The Poetry Foundation are sponsoring a National Recitation Contest that begins in the classroom, moves to school level, city, state and national level. While the Website is still under construction there are many fine resources on poets and poetry. I am interested in finding out more about this contest... the Website states that "$50,000 dollars in scholarships and school prizes will be awarded." Maybe one of our own students could walk away with a scholarship... that would be awesome.

I encourage each of you to participate in our annual poetry events at Osborne. How can you help? Encourage students to participate in the events and volunteer to bring your class to one of the events to hear some great poetry.

Let's Collaborate

At the beginning of the next semester in January we would like to meet with teachers to plan major projects for the semester. We would love to sit down with you and discuss the ways that we can support learning and include information literacy skills instruction. We have some really great print and nonprint resources that we can recommend for projects and assignments. Additionally we can help plan for the use of LFS strategies, help with direct teaching, and brainstorm assessment strategies. So let's collaborate and get the New Year started off right!

KV

Checking for Movie Licensing

AV materials that are in our library collection have been purchased for use in the classroom for direct teaching purposes and their usage falls under the fair use copyright guidelines. In order to use any videos for after school activities we had to purchase an annual movie license. To find out if a video/DVD can be used for entertainment purposes just following the directions below.

To check movie titles for licensing and rating just enter the movie title into the window (top right side of screen) on the following Website:

http://www.movlic.com/k12/schools.html

For example I put in Mr. Miletto's favorite title Toy Story and I found out you could show TOY STORY G or TOY STORY 2 G

Remember that in order to show any movies rated PG and above you must have parental permission per our AV video policy (see REQUEST FOR USE OF AV MATERIALS available on the O drive) or approval from Mr. Miletto.

GALILEO EbscoHost database trials

Karen Minton from GALILEO, Georgia's virtual library recently announced a trial for some new EbscoHost databases. If you are interested in investigating these new databases you can request a trial login/password to access them. Your evaluative comments can help to make sure that new databases selected for purchase and inclusion in GALILEO will serve your curricular needs.

Karen sent out the following information:

Trials for several EBSCO databases, listed below, have been added to the GALILEO Database trials for Review page. An announcement introducing this new feature was made to the GALILEO list last week and is attached below. To request a user name and password to access the trials page, please follow the link at http://www.usg.edu/galileo/help/library/trials.phtml.

You can also reach the database trials page from the GALILEO home page by clicking Help >
Support for Libraries > Database Trials.

EBSCO database trials:
* Auto Repair Reference Center
* BookSource: Nonfiction
* Business Source Complete
* History Reference Center
* Humanities International Complete
* International Security & Counter-Terrorism Reference Center
* MagillOnHistory
* MagillOnLiterature Plus
* SocINDEX with Full Text

Happy Holidays

The OHS media staff wants to wish our faculty and staff the happiest holidays ever. To celebrate we have two beautiful graphic novel calendar posters to give away to the first two members of our faculty and staff that reply to this message and request them. The posters are from the graphic novel version of Macbeth.

Read IT & Rate IT! Contest

Teachers please encourage your students to write and submit a book review or a book promotion poster for our Read IT & Rate IT! contest sponsored by Walton Communities. The rules, book review template and the book list are available on our Osborne Media Center Webpage. So far we have had five book review winners: Nicole, Vanessa, Keri, Kristyn & Carmina. Each winner has received a $20 book store gift card.

Welcome Faculty, Staff & Students

Greetings from the R.L. Osborne Library Media Center in Marietta, Georgia. We have lots of new books (602) that were just added to our media center collection. Please come visit soon and check out some new titles. 187 of our new books were purchased with a grant from Walton Communities. Thanks Walton for supporting our school improvement plan and reading at Osborne.