Update to My Book Map

So, my mom, who was mentioned in My Book Map, pointed out a few things that she wanted me to clarify about my reading history.

1. She never censored books. 

In some ways, this was fun. For example, in 1984, I was 7, and I read 1984 because I thought you were supposed to. I didn't understand a word of it, but I read it.

In other ways, this was terrifying. Like when I found The Exorcist on the bookshelf and couldn't sleep for a week. Note: if you like to sleep, do NOT read The Exorcist. Especially if you're Catholic, and you then ask your uncle, who is a priest, about exorcisms, and he says, "The church doesn't like to talk about it," which, when you're a teenager (or an adult for that matter) means that your imagination is now free to tell your brain that since he didn't deny it, then it's totally real.

And now I'm not going to be able to sleep again tonight.

2. We borrowed books all the time.

I didn't have time in the movie to write about the 100,000,000 trips that we took to the library or taking part in library summer reading programs or the bookmobile that came to my school or the other ways that we borrowed books. My mom insists that means I didn't steal books; rather, I borrowed them for a really long time. 

There's some books on my bookshelf that tell a different story.

My Book Map

I made this book map as an example for Educ 535 at Penn.

It's not perfect.

After I made the video, I realized that I didn't have enough time in the video to explain most of the books I chose. And, I realized that I didn't have enough time to go into pretty much all of the complicated issues around reading - how hard reading is for some students and how the types of reading in which they engage might not be valued (comic books, memes, tumblr), and how that complicates my whole, "I love books, and I want everyone else to love them, too," message.

That said, it was a lot of fun to make - Dave and I spent Friday night shooting the video with Stop Motion (which is awesome, and only costs 99 cents), and I put the rest of it together using iMovie.

In asking students to make their own book maps, I'm pointing out that I don't think my way is the right way. I used my book collection because it was a resource that I had right there. From students, I could see anything from an animoto to a glogster to a hand-drawn stop-motion map. In using the online resources, what I hope will be their biggest take-away is that, they can construct a map with paper and pen AND they can construct a map using edtech tools, too.