Accomplice by Eireann Corrigan

High school juniors and best friends Finn and Chloe hatch a daring plot to fake Chloe's disappearance from their rural New Jersey town in order to have something compelling to put on their college applications, but unforeseen events complicate matters.

Teens will be drawn to the premise of this book. Would two teens actually do this?

Are you preparing?

One of the building blocks for advanced literacy is to read and understand a wide range of nonfiction and technical texts. According to the book College and Career Ready by David T. Conley, students in college read more materials in a wider range of formats. In preparation for college or the workforce, it will benefit you to be a well rounded reader. You can best accomplish this by reading works that you normally don't. Nonfiction books can be a good place to start. Ask Ms. Bivins for recommendations of nonfiction titles that are being required by college freshman or look at her earlier post on Teen Speak labeled 'nonfiction'. Some of these titles are in the FHS Library.

Below are some other suggested nonfiction titles from the School Library Journal's List of Best Books for 2010. The titles listed are currently available in the FHS Library.

They Called Themselves the K.K.K.: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group by Susan Campbell Bartoletti

Time You Let Me In: 25 Poets Under 25 by Naomi Shihab

Sources: http://www.amazon.com/; http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/; http://www.collegecareerready.com/

Ties to Tatoos by Sherri Elliott

For the first time in our nation's history, you have the potential of working among others who are from four distinctively different generations. These include Traditionalists, Boomers, Xers, and Millennials. Some of you are among the Millennials. Ties to Tatoos takes a look at what current and future work environments will be like. It provides tips on how to best perform among co-workers who have different ideas, expectations, and values then you do. As a young person new to the work environment, this book will help you to see where managers are coming from when it comes to recruiting, training, motivating and retaining workers.

Even though Ties to Tatoos talks about managing workers from all of these different generations, it has other valuable tips for communicating and working with individuals in group settings.

Resource: http://www.tiestotatoos.com/

They're popping up everywhere!

Have you heard of QR codes? If you don't know what they are, continue reading. QR stands for Quick Response. The codes are 2-dimensional barcodes and are used to encode data. If your cellphone has a QR code reader such as Optiscan for the iPhone, you can scan it and it takes you to the URL such as the one shown to the left. It is the QR code for the mobile Wikipedia homepage. Essentially a QR code is scanned using a downloadable app such as Optiscan and it directs your browser to things like URLs. You can also make a phone call, text or send an email. Start to check the back of books, music, etc. You will also find QR codes for viewing booktrailers or movie clips. Once QR codes are actually put into the text of a book or ereader, you will be able to link to maps, video clips or even annotations. Think of it, the possibilities are endless!

This got me to thinking about how you could use these for learning and/or classroom projects. How about embedding one in your next Prezi, Powerpoint or web project that could link fellow classmates to a web link on a topic, to a photo, graphic or podcast?

Use the comments section below this posting to let others know about how you are using QR codes or could use QR codes for learning and/or classroom projects.

Source: ReadWriteWeb, Technosavvy and Wikipedia