Carly's group on banned and challenged books was pretty interesting!

Here's what I learned from participating in her group: normally when I think of banned and challenged books, my mind immediately goes to that age old list on ALA's site, or book burnings and bannings in the 19th and 20th centuries. Until I checked out her link that automatically searches Google News for challenged books for you, I hadn't even really stopped to think that books are ALWAYS being challenged!

I thumbed through a lot of the links (got lost in a few, actually) but ultimately decided to talk about the first link. The book was challenged in a school but the challenge was overturned and the book kept: it was a children's picture book about a family of guinea pigs. The niece was worried that after her uncle got married (to another man) that he wouldn't have as much time to spend with her. According to the article, the book wasn't so much about the union as it was the relationship between the niece and uncle. I agreed with the board's decision to keep the book.

I enjoyed her group because it made me think, but I also think she did a good job engaging group users by inviting them to go on the scavenger hunt.

All in all, I don't hate Diigo, and I definitely can find a couple of good uses for it, but I feel like, in my library, I like to be innovative in other ways. As I mentioned previously, I like to use tools like Blogger and Google Docs, and try to get innovative with those. I may use Diigo in a technology-geared group or perhaps in a group of advanced learners, but in general, I think I'd stick to tools that had a slightly smaller learning curve.

I would, however, dedicate time to learning how to use Diigo because I feel like it could be uniquely useful in very specific situations, perhaps as an online meeting hub or, again, with advanced learners (gifted and talented children, for example.)

Hi!

http://diigo.com/0ued6

My poem is by author Billy Collins who served as US poet laureate from 2000 to 2003. This poem is called Forgetfulness, and I love it because I don't feel as though there are is anything too emotionally heavy or convoluted about it.

The poem is very simply about forgetfulness. The author takes the notion of forgetfulness and essentially personifies it, describing it as facts slipping and floating away.

No one fact is particularly deep, either. He describes forgetting things from academic knowledge to addresses.

You'll note that he isn't really describing things like forgetting meaningful life events. There is no tone of lamenting or deep sadness that comes from the act of forgetting. Rather, it's a fact of life. We forget things.

I do take interest in the fact that he describes the memories as slipping off to a remote fishing village.