Got a Library Fine? Pay up with Non Perishable Food Items.
This program will be going on from February 23 to March 20th. One item for every fine dollar. Please note that this does not include lost book fines. The food will be donated to a local food bank.
If you have any questions or would like to donate even if you do not have a fine please come to the library.
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Tagged: CHS, CHS Library, Fine, Food Drive, Library
Just want to let people know about this new study. As we at the library have said to you before, please be aware of what you are posting on line. Also if you are going to have a MySpace or Facebook account make sure that everything in it is set as private so that only people you want can see what you have posted.
CHICAGO (Reuters) – More than half of teenagers mention risky behaviors such as sex and drugs on their MySpace accounts, U.S. researchers said on Monday.
They said many young people who use social networking sites such as News Corp’s MySpace do not realize how public they are and may be opening themselves to risks, but the sites may also offer a new way to identify and help troubled teens.
“We found the majority of teenagers who have a MySpace account are displaying risky behaviors in a public way that is accessible to a general audience,” said Dr. Dimitri Christakis of Seattle Children’s Research Institute, whose studies appear in the journal Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine.
In one of two studies, Christakis and Dr. Megan Moreno of the University of Wisconsin analyzed 500 randomly chosen MySpace profiles of 18-year-olds in 2007.
Overall, 54 percent of the publicly available accounts they checked contained information about high-risk behaviors: 41 percent mentioned substance abuse, 24 percent sexual behavior and 14 percent violence.
Christakis said many teens are unaware of how public and permanent Internet information can be, while parents often do not know what their kids are up to.
“No one says, “Whoa! Why are you putting that up there?’” Christakis said.
In a second study, the researchers identified 190 individuals aged 18 to 20 whose MySpace accounts displayed multiple risky behaviors. Half were sent a message from “Dr. Meg” from Dr. Moreno’s MySpace profile.
The message warned about the risks of disclosing personal details online and offered a link to a site with information about testing for sexually transmitted diseases.
Three months after this single message, many of the young people had withdrawn references to sex and substance abuse and tightened security controls.
“It really provides the opportunity to reach millions of potential at-risk teens and try to modify their behaviors or at least prevent them from disclosing them to the entire world,” Christakis said in a telephone interview.
The e-mail was most effective at curtailing references to sex, with 13.7 percent of profiles in the group that received the warning deleting all references, compared with 5.3 percent of those who were not sent the message.
Christakis said displaying sexual information online can expose a teen to advances from sexual predators. Employers and universities may also check those sites.
(Editing by Alan Elsner and Maggie Fox)
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Tagged: Internet Safety, MySpace, teenagers
Now abc new has an article about the 40th Anniversary! If you have a chance check out the game tomorrow night at 8:00 at the Parking Lot.
Nov. 26, 2008 —
On Thanksgiving night, a group of adults, including some pushing 60, will gather in an unused high school parking lot for the holiday tradition of playing a game of Ultimate Frisbee.
That parking lot in the New Jersey suburb of Maplewood is where the game of Ultimate Frisbee began and this year’s game will mark the 40th anniversary of the sport.
In a corner of the lot is a weathered metal plaque embedded in a rock that proclaims “Birth Place of Ultimate Frisbee Created by Columbia High School Students in 1968.”
Cooperstown it’s not, but from that cracked splotch of pavement, Ultimate Frisbee — or Ultimate as it’s known to players — has spread throughout college campuses and around the world.
It has become so popular, and in some places so competitive, it has spawned an official rule book, a regulatory body known as the Ultimate Players Association and dueling national championship games.
“I marvel at it sometimes,” said movie producer Joel Silver, who is to Ultimate Frisbee what Abner Doubleday was to baseball.
“It’s kind of a shock that it’s reached such proportions,” Silver, better known for his “Matrix,” “Lethal Weapon” and “Die Hard” series, told ABCNews.com.
As a Columbia High School student in 1968 and a member of the school’s student council, he won a vote, almost as a joke, to have the game declared a club sport. He and a couple of fellow students refined the rules from football’s first-down rules to the fast paced free flowing game that has swarmed across hundreds of college campuses and around the world.
Silver recalled, as a teenager, watching the game he helped invent and saying to another student on the sidelines, “Someday they’ll be playing this game all over the world. And the kid said, ‘Yeah, right.’
Silver brought a version of the game to Columbia High School from a summer in Massachusetts. He taught it to his pals and they revised the rules until they were codified and printed up by Silver and two friends, Jonny Hines and Bernard “Buzzy” Hellring. Hellring died in a car accident and Hines is now a lawyer in Moscow.
The name also evolved from Guts Frisbee, where they lined up and simply threw it at each other as hard as they could, to Speed Frisbee, Ultimate’s forerunner. Thinking Speed Frisbee didn’t sound very cool, Silver suggested Ultimate Frisbee instead.
“It was all very kind of funny, silly and we played in the faculty parking lot because it was lit at night,” he said. “It was always kind of a counterculture kind of joke.”
It was the students after him who began to take the game seriously, Silver said.
“Classes in the years after us had the fervor and they took it to their colleges and were really serious about it. They were the Johnny Appleseeds,” Silver said.
That seriousness remains. In the halls of Columbia High School, which serves the sister towns of Maplewood and South Orange, Ultimate is not a sport for unaggressive peace-loving hippie types. The school has won the New Jersey state championship eight years running and is the reigning champion for the eastern United States.
Although it has standing only as a club sport, its players train with a dedication that the school’s varsity football team can only dream about.
When the team plays for keeps, it is a game remarkable for its speed and the gleeful willingness of players to launch themselves into the air to catch a frisbee and land stretched out, breaking their fall with their chins, or chests or knees.
Maplewood takes pride in its frisbee heritage and its teams. The Columbia players are split into an A team and a B team, instead of varsity and junior varsity.
The B team is composed of players as young as eighth-graders, and the town recreation department has a training program for kids that starts in the sixth-grade.
Coaches warn the kids and their parents that they expect year-round dedication to Ultimate that will produce another championship.
Silver, 56, has made his reputation as a high-powered and flamboyant mogul of Hollywood, but he looks back at his creation with affection.
He says he has some frisbees “somewhere in my house,” and recently took his 7-year-old son to Maplewood to show him the plaque in the parking lot and teach him how to throw the disc.
“I hope at the end of my obit they will say that I invented Ultimate Frisbee,” he said.
He was serious.
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Tagged: Anniversary, Columbia High School, Joel Silver, Ultimate, Ultimate Frisbee
A great article in today’s NY Times about Columbia High School being the birthplace of Ultimate Frisbee.
MAPLEWOOD
ALMOST every day after school in the fall and spring, an athletic team with a unique tradition gathers for practice on a large lawn, bare in spots, that runs downhill from a baseball diamond to a rock-strewn creek near the New Jersey Transit rail station.
Memorial Park is a place to play ball: baseball, pickup basketball and football, tennis, field hockey and lacrosse. But these two dozen athletes, sweating and chattering like members of any other sports team, are throwing a white disc to each other.
The boys are members of Columbia High School’s Ultimate Frisbee A team. There is also a Columbia B team of younger players, and a girls’ team, which was started in 2005. About 75 Columbia students play on the three teams, and the number is growing.
Ultimate Frisbee has been compared to soccer or football — except that a flying disc is used, not a ball. The object of the limited-contact sport is to score by passing a disc to a player in the opposing end zone. (The name was shortened to Ultimate, because it now uses a disc made by a company called Discraft, and not a Frisbee made by Wham-O).
But the disc is not the only difference. The sport, which is played by millions of adults and children internationally, was invented right here at Columbia High in 1968 by a group of student leaders who did not think of themselves as athletes.
“It was originally created to be a sport that was an anti-sport,” said Anthony Nunez, a 1998 Columbia alumnus who now coaches the A team. “If you’d go to a game then, you’d see hippies with long hair having a good time. It’s turned into a game that’s created a lot of athletes and competition.”
Tim Morrissy, a senior who is one of three co-captains of the Columbia A team, said: “It’s the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me. I was not very athletic and not very focused on anything, and I know I was suffering in my grades.
“It helps me stay sane. It helps me concentrate on classes, because I can take all my anger out at practice.”
Tim was a skateboarder. Jordan Taylor, a senior who is another team captain, ran cross-country as a ninth grader, but then joined the Ultimate team and dropped cross-country. He said many Ultimate players do not like to be reminded that the sport has a hippie heritage and, even at Columbia, still does not carry a high profile among students. “They’ll say, ‘Is that the thing you play with dogs?’ ” Jordan said, smiling.
Ultimate is not a varsity sport at Columbia. Coaches volunteer their time. Team members pay a $150 fee to cover uniforms and insurance. They buy their own soccer shoes, and hold bake sales or garage sales to cover travel costs.
“It’s just a different atmosphere,” said Stephen Panasci, a former Columbia player who now plays Ultimate at North Carolina State University, where he is a junior landscape design major. “It’s being run by the players, mostly. Even though there are coaches, most of the decisions are being made by the players.”
The Columbia A team has won eight consecutive state championships and it plays in tournaments against college club teams. A Sunday-morning program run by the Maplewood Recreation Department is popular among sixth to eighth graders.
Many of the best players continue after high school. Stephen Panasci’s older brother, Emilio, Columbia High School class of 2000, plays for a club team, the Pride of New York. There are Sunday pickup games at Memorial Park for less-intense players.
“Everybody finds a place in Ultimate that they like,” Emilio Panasci said. “So much of it is about creating an atmosphere where everybody buys into the collective.”
That was the general intent when the sport was invented. Joel Silver, the film producer, who was then a junior at Columbia, had played a less-structured form of the game at summer camp, and, at the high school, he proposed at a student council meeting that Frisbee be added to the curriculum.
The council, as a joke, passed the motion. Joel, Bernard Hellring, known to classmates as Buzzy, and Jonny Hines immediately began drawing up rules for the game, first called Speed Frisbee. The first official game was played behind the high school.
The action soon moved to a new student parking lot down the street. The lot is still there, its surface cracked and rutted with potholes. In the corner is a stone marker, erected in 1989, with a circular plaque carrying an inscription: “Birthplace of Ultimate Frisbee, created by Columbia High School students in 1968.”
The lot is used only once a year now. Every Thanksgiving weekend since 1970, a team of Columbia students plays a team of alumni — the longest continuously held event in the sport’s history. Players say it really feels more like a class or a family reunion.
“I have yet to have met one bad kid in all the years I have coached or played the game,” Mr. Nunez said.
The alumni game is again on tap, and a parents’ committee is planning a 40th anniversary dinner for the spring. Earlier this year, the team raised funds by selling $10 anniversary discs with a bold “1968” printed in the middle.
“I consider myself lucky,” said Jordan Taylor. “If I lived in another town, I wouldn’t have heard of Ultimate at all.”
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Tagged: Columbia High School, Joel Silver, New York Times, Ultimate, Ultimate Frisbee
The librarians would like to remind all of the students who are 18 to make sure that they vote tomorrow.
ABC New complied a great Voting 101 guide that is very helpful for all of you first time voters.
With the election just hours away, voters want to make sure they have everything in order so that their votes will count. Check out “Good Morning America’s” voter guide, which answers several common voter questions.
Q: How do I know if I’m registered to vote?
A: To make sure you are registered. Visit Canivote.org. It will direct you to the registration rolls in your county to make sure you haven’t been purged. It also will tell you which polling place to go to.
Q: Can I take off work to vote?
A: Most states require employers to provide time for employees to vote on Election Day. While these laws vary in each state, they generally require employers to give employees time off to vote if the polls aren’t open two or three hours outside of the employee’s regular shift.
Some states require that employers pay employees for time off while they are voting, while others require employees to request time off from their employers in advance.
Q: What should I do if I go to vote and my name is not on the list?
A: In many, but not all states, you can ask for a provisional ballot. If you forget your ID and can’t get home in time to get it, or you aren’t registered for some reason, then you can cast a provisional ballot and argue about it after the election.
Q: Can wearing a T-shirt with a candidate’s likeness prevent me from voting?
A: It’s a first amendment freedom of speech question. Obviously, you can’t campaign for a candidate inside the polls or within a certain number of feet in most states. And the problem is that some states have indeed interpreted that wearing of campaign paraphernalia as being electioneering or campaigning.
To be safe you shouldn’t wear your campaign stuff when you go to vote.
Q: If I am still in line when the polls close, will I be able to get in to vote?
A: If you are in line when the polls close, then you vote. They can’t slam the door in your face.
Q: Do you have to have proof of residency in the state you are voting in?
A: You should bring a photo ID like a driver’s license or state issued ID, which are best. Seven states want it and the others will accept alternate photo ids or forms of identification.
Note: Beware of false flyers like one in Virginia telling voters that because of high turnout Republicans will vote Tuesday and Democrats Wednesday.
Also watch out for inaccurate e-mails out there like one going around telling Barack Obama voters that for their vote to count, after they vote for him they then have to vote straight Democratic on the ballot.
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During Banned book week, Fahrenheit 451 which deals with the idea of banning books is being challenged by a Texas family for being objectionable. The students of the school are rallying the the defense of the book. Here is the video. I would love thoughts on this topic.
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Tagged: Banned Book Week, banned books, Fahrenheit 451
Every year the library celebrates banned book week. Which promote the Freedom to Read. Banned Book week is sponsored by the American Library Association. Please make sure to check out our website or our display in the library.
Here is the list of the most banned books of the last century.
1. Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling
2. “The Chocolate War” by Robert Cormier
3. Alice series by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
4. “Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck
5. “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou
6. “Fallen Angels” by Walter Dean Myers
7. “It’s Perfectly Normal” by Robie Harris
8. Scary Stories series by Alvin Schwartz
9. Captain Underpants series by Dav Pilkey
10. “Forever” by Judy Blume
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Tagged: ALA, American Library Association, Banned Book Week, banned books, book, Columbia High School, Library
With the Presidential election coming up soon a lot of people have been asking about where you can find some good websites that deal with the election and with the candiates.
This list of good websites I got from LM_Net which is a great library listserve. Here are some really good resources:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com
http://americanpublicmedia.publicradio.org/engage08/selectacandidate/
http://www.pollingreport.com/2008.htm
http://www.votesmart.org
http://www.memory.loc.gov/learn/features/election/home.html
http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/elections-in-brief/
http://www.270towin.com
http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/2008/
http://www.opinionjournal.com/ecc/calculator.htm
http://clerk.house.gov/member_info/electionInfo/
http://electionlawblog.org
http://election2008.usc.edu/
http://election2008.usc.edu/topics/education/
http://www.ontheissues.org/default.htm
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/issues
http://uspolitics.america.gov/uspolitics/elections/issues.html
http://www.procon.org
http://www.thebostonchannel.com/compare-candidates/index.html
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18437398
http://www.opensecrets.org
http://www.factcheck.org
http://www.declareyourself.com
http://typology.people-press.org/typology
http://www.youthradio.org/election2008/
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/issues_in_depth/20080204.html
http://exchange.co-nect.net/Teleprojects/project/Election
http://www.nationalmockelection.org/index.html
http://www.psr.keele.ac.uk/election.htm
http://www.votebyissue.org/election2008
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/candidate-match-game.htm
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Tagged: election, election websites, Presidential election
On today’s Oprah Winfrey Show she talked a lot about Internet predators. If you did not watch it it is well worth checking out her website for a recap.
The site did have a very good list of tips to protect children from online predators. They are listed below.
Minimize the Chances of an Online Predator Victimizing a Child
Types of Children Sexual Predators Target and Prey Upon
Signs Your Child Might Be at Risk Online
If Your Child Is Approached by an Online Predator
Write down as much information as possible—including the screen name or e-mail address of the person who contacted the child, the URL of the chat room and the date and time of contact. Report the incident to the local police department or FBI.
In addition, you can contact the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s cyber tipline at 800-THE-LOST. This tipline collects leads from individuals reporting the sexual exploitation of children.
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Tagged: Internet Predators, Internet Saftey, Oprah
The library staff would like to welcome the class of 2012 to CHS. In the next few weeks we will be meeting with you to give you an orientation to the library and all that it has to offer.
A few helpful computer tips:
1. If your password to the computers is not working please try the word password.
2. Remember your username is your student ID #.
There are also a large number of new things going on @ the library.
New Staff
Mr. Terry Woolard joins the library staff as the Director of Media and Technology for the District.
New Books
The library has received over 500 new books. Make sure to stop by the library to check out all of the new books. In the coming weeks we will highlight some of them
New Databases
The library has added a number of new databases to its already outstanding collection. This year we have added Literature Resource Center, GreenFILE, NoveList, NoveList Plus, Professional Development Collection, Custom Newspapers, and three new historical newspapers where added to the Proquest Historical newspapers collection. Check out our database page for all of the information.
New eBooks
The library has added over 400 reference e-books to our collection. They are grouped by subject: Arts, Biography, Business, Education, Environment, History, Law, Literature, Medicine, Multi-Cultural Studies, Nation & World, Religion, Science, and Social Science. Search individual resources or whole collection. Titles can also be accessed through the Library’s OPAC. Click here to access the eBook collection.
(Remember that in order to access the databases from home you must have a database brocheur which you can pick up at the library)
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Tagged: CHS, Class of 2012, Library
