Quotes about peace

We look forward to the time when the Power of Love will replace the Love of Power.  Then will our world know the blessings of peace.  ~William Ewart Gladstone


If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.  ~Mother Teresa


Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


One must look hard through history to find when a clear understanding of the truth moved anyone to fire the first shot.  ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


If they want peace, nations should avoid the pin-pricks that precede cannon shots.  ~Napoleon Bonaparte


The more we sweat in peace the less we bleed in war.  ~Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit


Let there be peace on earth
And let it begin with me.
~Seymour Miller & Jill Jackson, "Let There Be Peace on Earth," 1955


I take it that what all men are really after is some form of, perhaps only some formula of, peace.  ~James Conrad


The real differences around the world today are not between Jews and Arabs; Protestants and Catholics; Muslims, Croats, and Serbs.  The real differences are between those who embrace peace and those who would destroy it; between those who look to the future and those who cling to the past; between those who open their arms and those who are determined to clench their fists.  ~William J. Clinton, 1997


The pacifist's task today is to find a method of helping and healing which provides a revolutionary constructive substitute for war.  ~Vera Brittain, 1964


You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.  ~Attributed to both Golda Meir and Indira Gandhi


Peace hath higher tests of manhood
Than battle ever knew.
~John Greenleaf Whittier


Five great enemies to peace inhabit with us:  avarice, ambition, envy, anger, and pride.  If those enemies were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace.  ~Francesco Petrarch


Yes, we love peace, but we are not willing to take wounds for it, as we are for war.  ~John Andrew Holmes, Wisdom in Small Doses


If in this present age we were to go back to the old time of "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," there would be very few hon. gentlemen in this House who would not, metaphorically speaking, be blind and toothless.  ~Mr. Graham, 1914, Canadian House of Parliament member, commonly attributed to Mahatma Gandhi as "An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind." (Thanks, Garson O'Toole of quoteinvestigator.com!)


There is one armor that the world of men and women, as a world, has never yet put on.  The churches have long bungled with its fastenings, but the world has gone unfended, and few have been those in whose hands the mystical sword of the spirit has shone with daily use.  This armor, waiting to be worn, is the armor of brotherhood and sacrifice, the world of unselfishness, a conquering sword, with the power, where used, to unite the world in love.  And there are none who may not put it on.  ~M.A. DeWolfe Howe


If you go, go in Peace it makes the flowers sweeter along the path.  ~Mike Dolan, www.hawaiianlife.com


I think that people want peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of their way and let them have it.  ~Dwight Eisenhower


Lord, bid war's trumpet cease;
Fold the whole earth in peace.
~Oliver Wendell Holmes


We have all taken risks in the making of war.  Isn't it time that we should take risks to secure peace?  ~J. Ramsay MacDonald


We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom.  ~Dwight D. Eisenhower


Right is more precious than peace.  ~Woodrow Wilson


Maybe we should develop a Crayola bomb as our next secret weapon.  A happiness weapon.  A beauty bomb.  And every time a crisis developed, we would launch one.  It would explode high in the air - explode softly - and send thousands, millions, of little parachutes into the air.  Floating down to earth - boxes of Crayolas.  And we wouldn't go cheap, either - not little boxes of eight.  Boxes of sixty-four, with the sharpener built right in.  With silver and gold and copper, magenta and peach and lime, amber and umber and all the rest.  And people would smile and get a little funny look on their faces and cover the world with imagination.  ~Robert Fulghum


In the name of peace
They waged the wars
Ain't they got no shame
~Nikki Giovanni


Let us love the world to peace.  ~Quoted in The Angels' Little Instruction Book by Eileen Elias Freeman, 1994


A warless world will come as men develop warless hearts.  ~Charles Wesley Burns


We shall never be able to effect physical disarmament until we have succeeded in effecting moral disarmament.  ~J. Ramsay MacDonald

Quotes about maths

If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is.  ~John Louis von Neumann


Arithmetic is where the answer is right and everything is nice and you can look out of the window and see the blue sky - or the answer is wrong and you have to start over and try again and see how it comes out this time.  ~Carl Sandburg


Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.  ~Albert Einstein


Mathematics are well and good but nature keeps dragging us around by the nose.  ~Albert Einstein


Black holes result from God dividing the universe by zero.  ~Author Unknown


Mathematics - the unshaken Foundation of Sciences, and the plentiful Fountain of Advantage to human affairs.  ~Isaac Barrow


I never did very well in math - I could never seem to persuade the teacher that I hadn't meant my answers literally.  ~Calvin Trillin


I don't agree with mathematics; the sum total of zeros is a frightening figure.  ~Stanislaw J. Lec, More Unkempt Thoughts


If you think dogs can't count, try putting three dog biscuits in your pocket and then giving Fido only two of them.  ~Phil Pastoret


[A mathematician is a] scientist who can figure out anything except such simple things as squaring the circle and trisecting an angle.  ~Evan Esar, Esar's Comic Dictionary


"Every minute dies a man, Every minute one is born;"  I need hardly point out to you that this calculation would tend to keep the sum total of the world's population in a state of perpetual equipoise, whereas it is a well-known fact that the said sum total is constantly on the increase.  I would therefore take the liberty of suggesting that in the next edition of your excellent poem the erroneous calculation to which I refer should be corrected as follows:  "Every moment dies a man, And one and a sixteenth is born."  I may add that the exact figures are 1.067, but something must, of course, be conceded to the laws of metre.  ~Charles Babbage, letter to Alfred, Lord Tennyson, about a couplet in his "The Vision of Sin"


Math is radical!  ~Bumper Sticker


There was a blithe certainty that came from first comprehending the full Einstein field equations, arabesques of Greek letters clinging tenuously to the page, a gossamer web.  They seemed insubstantial when you first saw them, a string of squiggles.  Yet to follow the delicate tensors as they contracted, as the superscripts paired with subscripts, collapsing mathematically into concrete classical entities - potential; mass; forces vectoring in a curved geometry - that was a sublime experience.  The iron fist of the real, inside the velvet glove of airy mathematics.  ~Gregory Benford, Timescape


It is a mathematical fact that fifty percent of all doctors graduate in the bottom half of their class.  ~Author Unknown


If two wrongs don't make a right, try three.  ~Author Unknown


Arithmetic is where numbers fly like pigeons in and out of your head.  ~Carl Sandburg, "Arithmetic"


Arithmetic is numbers you squeeze from your head to your hand to your pencil to your paper till you get the answer.  ~Carl Sandburg, "Arithmetic"


If equations are trains threading the landscape of numbers, then no train stops at pi.  ~Richard Preston


Even stranger things have happened; and perhaps the strangest of all is the marvel that mathematics should be possible to a race akin to the apes.  ~Eric T. Bell, The Development of Mathematics


So if a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics; for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so little, he must begin again.  ~Francis Bacon, "Of Studies"


The essence of mathematics is not to make simple things complicated, but to make complicated things simple.  ~S. Gudder


The human mind has never invented a labor-saving machine equal to algebra.  ~Author Unknown


The mathematics are distinguished by a particular privilege, that is, in the course of ages, they may always advance and can never recede.  ~Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire


Go down deep enough into anything and you will find mathematics.  ~Dean Schlicter


It is not the job of mathematicians... to do correct arithmetical operations.  It is the job of bank accountants.  ~Samuil Shchatunovski


Trigonometry is a sine of the times.  ~Author Unknown


Mathematics is not a careful march down a well-cleared highway, but a journey into a strange wilderness, where the explorers often get lost.  Rigour should be a signal to the historian that the maps have been made, and the real explorers have gone elsewhere.  ~W.S. Anglin


A mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems. ~Paul Erdos


Let us grant that the pursuit of mathematics is a divine madness of the human spirit, a refuge from the goading urgency of contingent happenings.  ~Alfred North Whitehead


The tantalizing and compelling pursuit of mathematical problems offers mental absorption, peace of mind amid endless challenges, repose in activity, battle without conflict, "refuge from the goading urgency of contingent happenings," and the sort of beauty changeless mountains present to sense tried by the present-day kaleidoscope of events.  ~Morris Kline, Mathematics in Western Culture


Mathematics is as much an aspect of culture as it is a collection of algorithms.  ~Carl Boyer, 1949, calculus textbook


The cowboys have a way of trussing up a steer or a pugnacious bronco which fixes the brute so that it can neither move nor think.  This is the hog-tie, and it is what Euclid did to geometry.  ~Eric Bell, The Search for Truth


Sometimes it is useful to know how large your zero is.  ~Author Unknown


The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.  ~Eric Hoffer, Reflections On The Human Condition



Mathematics is the only good metaphysics.  ~William Thomson Baron Kelvin of Largs


The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.  Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic.  ~Bertrand Russell


Music is the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting.  ~Gottfried Leibniz


How many times can you subtract 7 from 83, and what is left afterwards?  You can subtract it as many times as you want, and it leaves 76 every time.  ~Author Unknown


To most outsiders, modern mathematics is unknown territory.  Its borders are protected by dense thickets of technical terms; its landscapes are a mass of indecipherable equations and incomprehensible concepts.  Few realize that the world of modern mathematics is rich with vivid images and provocative ideas.  ~Ivars Peterson


With my full philosophical rucksack I can only climb slowly up the mountain of mathematics.  ~Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value


But mathematics is the sister, as well as the servant, of the arts and is touched with the same madness and genius.  ~Harold Marston Morse


Still more astonishing is that world of rigorous fantasy we call mathematics.  ~Gregory Bateson


Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human.  At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house.  ~Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love


You may be an engineer if your idea of good interpersonal communication means getting the decimal point in the right place.  ~Author Unknown


The trouble with integers is that we have examined only the very small ones.  Maybe all the exciting stuff happens at really big numbers, ones we can't even begin to think about in any very definite way.  Our brains have evolved to get us out of the rain, find where the berries are, and keep us from getting killed.  Our brains did not evolve to help us grasp really large numbers or to look at things in a hundred thousand dimensions.  ~Ronald L. Graham


We could use up two Eternities in learning all that is to be learned about our own world and the thousands of nations that have arisen and flourished and vanished from it.  Mathematics alone would occupy me eight million years.  ~Mark Twain


Can you do Division?  Divide a loaf by a knife - what's the answer to that?  ~Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass


Mathematics is the supreme judge; from its decisions there is no appeal.  ~Tobias Dantzig


Although he may not always recognize his bondage, modern man lives under a tyranny of numbers.  ~Nicholas Eberstadt, The Tyranny of Numbers: Mismeasurement and Misrule


The mathematics are usually considered as being the very antipodes of Poesy.  Yet Mathesis and Poesy are of the closest kindred, for they are both works of the imagination.  ~Thomas Hill


The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed.  Our authority is Isaiah 30:26, "Moreover, the light of the Moon shall be as the light of the Sun and the light of the Sun shall be sevenfold, as the light of seven days."  Thus Heaven receives from the Moon as much radiation as we do from the Sun, and in addition 7*7 (49) times as much as the Earth does from the Sun, or 50 times in all.  The light we receive from the Moon is one 1/10,000 of the light we receive from the Sun, so we can ignore that....  The radiation falling on Heaven will heat it to the point where the heat lost by radiation is just equal to the heat received by radiation, i.e., Heaven loses 50 times as much heat as the Earth by radiation.  Using the Stefan-Boltzmann law for radiation, (H/E) temperature of the earth (-300K), gives H as 798K (525C).  The exact temperature of Hell cannot be computed....  [However] Revelations 21:8 says "But the fearful, and unbelieving...shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone."  A lake of molten brimstone means that its temperature must be at or below the boiling point, 444.6C.  We have, then, that Heaven, at 525C is hotter than Hell at 445C.  ~From Applied Optics, vol. 11, A14, 1972


I used to love mathematics for its own sake, and I still do, because it allows for no hypocrisy and no vagueness.... ~Stendhal (Henri Beyle), The Life of Henri Brulard


As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.  ~Albert Einstein, Sidelights on Relativity


God does not care about our mathematical difficulties; He integrates empirically.  ~Albert Einstein


If there is a God, he's a great mathematician.  ~Paul Dirac


To all of us who hold the Christian belief that God is truth, anything that is true is a fact about God, and mathematics is a branch of theology.  ~Hilda Phoebe Hudson


[T]he different branches of Arithmetic - Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.  ~Lewis Carroll


[G]eometry is not true, it is advantageous.  ~Henri Poincaré


Infinity is a floorless room without walls or ceiling.  ~Author Unknown


Physics is mathematical not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so little; it is only its mathematical properties that we can discover.  ~Bertrand Russell


God is real, unless declared integer.  ~Author Unknown


If a healthy minded person takes an interest in science, he gets busy with his mathematics and haunts the laboratory.  ~W.S. Franklin


Proof is an idol before whom the pure mathematician tortures himself.  ~Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World


There was a young man from Trinity,
Who solved the square root of infinity.
While counting the digits,
He was seized by the fidgets,
Dropped science, and took up divinity.
~Author Unknown


One cannot escape the feeling that these mathematical formulas have an independent existence and an intelligence of their own, that they are wiser than we are, wiser even than their discoverers...  ~Heinrich Hertz


In the binary system we count on our fists instead of on our fingers.  ~Author Unknown


There are 10 types of people in this world:  those who understand binary and those who don't.  ~Author Unknown


The laws of nature are but the mathematical thoughts of God.  ~Euclid


In most sciences one generation tears down what another has built and what one has established another undoes.  In mathematics alone each generations adds a new story to the old structure.  ~Hermann Hankel


Twice two makes four seems to me simply a piece of insolence.  Twice two makes four is a pert coxcomb who stands with arms akimbo barring your path and spitting.  I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too.  ~Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky


I know that two and two make four - & should be glad to prove it too if I could - though I must say if by any sort of process I could convert 2 & 2 into five it would give me much greater pleasure.  ~George Gordon, Lord Byron


Mathematics may be defined as the economy of counting.  There is no problem in the whole of mathematics which cannot be solved by direct counting.  ~Ernst Mach


Nature does not count nor do integers occur in nature.  Man made them all, integers and all the rest, Kronecker to the contrary notwithstanding.  ~Percy William Bridgman, The Way Things Are


A man has one hundred dollars and you leave him with two dollars.  That's subtraction.  ~Mae West


I've dealt with numbers all my life, of course, and after a while you begin to feel that each number has a personality of its own.  A twelve is very different from a thirteen, for example.  Twelve is upright, conscientious, intelligent, whereas thirteen is a loner, a shady character who won't think twice about breaking the law to get what he wants.  Eleven is tough, an outdoorsman who likes tramping through woods and scaling mountains; ten is rather simpleminded, a bland figure who always does what he's told; nine is deep and mystical, a Buddha of contemplation....  ~Paul Auster, The Music of Chance


Why do we believe that in all matters the odd numbers are more powerful?  ~Pliny the Elder, Natural History


Uneven numbers are the gods' delight.  ~Virgil, The Eclogues


One of the endlessly alluring aspects of mathematics is that its thorniest paradoxes have a way of blooming into beautiful theories.  ~Philip J. Davis


Pure mathematics is the world's best game.  It is more absorbing than chess, more of a gamble than poker, and lasts longer than Monopoly.  It's free.  It can be played anywhere - Archimedes did it in a bathtub.  ~Richard J. Trudeau, Dots and Lines


I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe - because like Spinoza's God, it won't love us in return.  ~Bertrand Russell, 1912


The man ignorant of mathematics will be increasingly limited in his grasp of the main forces of civilization.  ~John Kemeny


Although I am almost illiterate mathematically, I grasped very early in life that any one who can count to ten can count upward indefinitely if he is fool enough to do so.  ~Robertson Davies, "Of the Conservation of Youth," The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks


A million thanks to Norm & Andy for submitting some of these quotes!

SCHOOL LIBRARY MEDIA SPECIALIST

'The financial plan tells your money where to go so that you don’t have to spend your time finding out where it went.' - Peter Drucker
Budgeting is a major concern of a learning community. Although you may be in charge of a single budget, it's essential that the teacher librarian understand the finances of the entire school. As part of the larger learning community, it's also essential to build relationships with others who deal with financial issues. Whether brainstorming ways to buy data projectors or seeking ideas for funding literature circle projects, the media specialist must be both frugal and flexible.
This section of the course contains the following related topics you'll want to investigate:
Budget Planning
Acquisition
Accounting
Funding Sources

Read Miller, Pat (Jan 2003). Establishing a Budget (Access requires login). School Library Media Activities Monthly; 19(5), 37-38. Retrieved from Education Full Text database.
Advice for library media specialists on establishing a budget is provided.

"Publicly financed libraries in schools, cities, and universities are basically supported through some combination of sales tax, properly tax, and state income tax. Welcome to the triple whammy of declining retail sales, diminishing real estate values, and rising unemployment. You can't get blood out of a rock. I know this sounds defeatist and pessimistic and it's not politically correct, but it is what it is. Wishing will not make it so."

Excerpted from Manley, Will (Jun / Jul 2010). Winning the Budget Wars (Access requires login). American Libraries: 41(6/7); 96. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier database.

Read a 5-part series of postings / brief articles by Doug Johnson at his Blue Skunk Blog site:
Budgeting for Mean, Lean Times Part 1 (Dec 2009)
Budgeting for Mean, Lean Times Part 2 (Dec 2009)
Budgeting for Mean, Lean Times Part 3 (Dec 2009)
Budgeting for Mean, Lean Times Part 4 (Dec 2009)
Budgeting for Mean, Lean Times Part 4 (Dec 2009)

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What's involved with managing a budget?

Think about the information your gather as you walk into a school library or media center for the first time. Immediately, you begin to sense the investment that has been made and sustained. It takes money to build a school library. Does it look inviting, comfortable? Is it drab, dusty, and disintegrating? Is it a place that you want to spend some time? Are there things here that you would like to have time to look at and explore? Does it draw you in?

In most cases, the amount of money spent to establish and maintain a library media center is cumulatively, very large. However if the initial expenditures made to design, build, and operate the learning center are allowed to irresponsibly languish, then its current value can also quickly diminish. In order to maintain or turn-around the facility’s trend, a library administrator must effectively and sometimes creatively manage and lead in the budget processes. It takes money to keep the library a viable component of the learning community.
Read Piemmons, Andy (Mar 2010). Student Voice, Student Choice: Students as Part of the Budgeting Process. Georgia Library Media Association.
A good budget manager doesn't need to be a math whiz. Instead the person must be a collaborator, steward, and thinker.
Collaborator. More than anything else, effectively administering budgets for a school library program does not begin with things or money - - it begins with your community of people. To effectively secure and allocate budget monies, you must collaborate with your students, fellow teachers, your administration and other community members; i.e., staff, school board members, parents, etc.
Steward. Establish yourself as a excellent steward; a leader seeking a wide array of input, basing purchase recommendations and choices on sound needs identification, carefully monitoring and accounting for all expenditures, implementing and assessing the results, and communicating to the learning community. Establish yourself as a credible budget administrator.
Thinker. Among varied job locations, the amount or degree of the school library media specialist’s involvement in the budget process can range from being very slight to being integrally involved at almost every level. For example, in some buildings the SLMS may have input on the development of the budget, making suggestions to their principal and/or central office administrator(s). In other cases, they may be notified of monies available for spending in specific categories at a given time in the fiscal year.
The expression, “make the most of what is available” comes to mind. Sometimes that means not only carefully utilizing the monies directly allocated to the school library media program, but also looking for additional funding from other sources and helping others spend their monies for media materials and equipment.
Unfortunately, the money isn't always available where it's needed.

Read (May 2008). More Love; Less Money (Access requires login). School Library Journal; 54(5), 14. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier database.
Discusses a study report from the American Association of School Librarians. A link is provided to the full study report: The State of America's Libraries that includes a section on school libraries.

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What are the budget responsibilities?

Taking into account the evidence that school library media programs do have a positive effect on student achievement and a schools overall effectiveness, the funding and expenditures for the school library media center are directly related to student achievement. Therefore the school library media administrator makes important decisions on the use of those budgeted monies.
Teacher librarians are typically in charge of specific lines in the budget. However, media specialists can often influence other budgets by collaborating with teachers and administrators.
Typical Areas. Monies spent by school library media specialists are sometimes limited to the following main categories of budget expenditures:

• salaries and benefits for professionals and staff
• facilities and their operations and maintenance
• capital items such as new and replacement equipment and furniture
• materials (books, periodicals, & multimedia resources)

Related Areas. In many schools, the library media specialist is directly involved in the decision-making and spending of ESEA Title I funds or other allocated funding such as government monies that must be spent in specific categories. If the principal has not asked you to particular in budget discussions, explore ways to get involved. For example, collaborate with Title I teachers on other projects as a way to begin budget discussions.
The library media specialist is in the unique situation of being able to see the "big picture" of the school's information needs. Multiple budgets can sometimes be used to fund large-scale projects. In some cases, money can be pooled and resources shared among departments through the library media center.
For example, if each department were to contribute money, it might be possible to purchase laptop computers that could be checked out from the library.
Read Schmidt, Cindy (Oct 2007). Whine or Woo - - Which Describes You? (And Be Honest with Yourself) (Access requires login). Teacher Librarian; 35(1), 73-74. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier database.
The author recommends several possible sources of money for school libraries including curriculum funding, grants and technology funds.

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How are collection development and curriculum development tied to budgeting?

All three of these activities must constantly be on the mind of a library media specialist. In order to purchase the materials needed to support the curriculum, funding is needed. Because student learning occurs throughout the school, there are often many budgets involved with a single learning experience.
The teacher librarian must develop partnerships with classroom teachers and administrators to build authentic, information inquiry learning experiences for students.
Example - the second grade teacher and library media specialist design a unit focusing on community workers. The project involves a field trip funded by the PTA; a set of books acquired with Title I money; two new DVDs, 4 fiction books, and 8 nonfiction books from the library budget; and a communities clip art package funded by the technology club.
Example - a high school teacher and the library media specialist team on the development of a new globalization course. The local Lion's Club provides a mini-grant to purchase a class set of The Lexus and the Olive Tree by Thomas Friedman; the library subscribes to an online global perspectives magazine, purchases five new books, and a DVD; the technology department establishes Blackboard space for a book discussion between Lion's Club members and students.
In each case, various funding sources were used to accomplish an important curriculum-related activity.

Read Key Instructional Word: Collection Development - Budget by Daniel Callison from SLMAM, 2003. (PDF document)

Examine a Fourth Grade Economics Inquiry Project (PDF document) and the Inquiry Budget Template (Word document).

"Given the freedom to choose resources for assignments, students used the Web exclusively, unless a print source was required by the assignment. Since the library was valued as a social space and for its access to the digital world via our computers and students' mobile devices, I made the decision to spend the majority of my budget on databases, eBooks, and films (videos)."

Excerpted from Waite, Mary Jane (Mar / Apr 2010). A Room With a View (Access requires login). Knowledge Quest: 38(4), 58-61. Retrieved from Education Full Text database.

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What's the basis of school library media budgets?

Read Franklin, Pat and Stephens, Claire (Jan 2006). It'$ time to Write a Budget! (Access requires login). School Library Media Activities Monthly; 22(5), 46-47. Retrieved from Education Full Text database.
Authors provide insights for school library media specialists on drafting a budget for media centers.

School library media budgets are usually based on one of the following wants/needs (Callison, 2003):

• format
• services
• circulation
• curriculum

School fund accounts are often categorized by information format: books, periodicals, nonprint, computer software, computer equipment, etc. Budgets based upon services are categorized/grouped under headings such as curriculum resources, recreational reading, general reference, management costs, special projects, etc.
These budget divisions often place varied outcomes in competition with each other for available monies. Some teacher librarians and administrators maintain that budgets for their library media collections should be based upon “evidence of use.” Hence circulation data would be gathered to find distribution shifts and budget allocations would shift accordingly. Those areas showing more use or demand would receive an expanding budget portion.

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Check Your Understanding

Information Power: Program Administration - Principle 7.

Sufficient funding is fundamental to the success of the library media program. (p. 100, 109)

Read Key Instructional Word: Collection Development - Budget (PDF document) by Daniel Callison from SLMAM, 2003. Then examine a Fourth Grade Economics Inquiry Project (PDF file) and the Inquiry Budget Template (Word document).
Complete the template for your own collaborative inquiry project. Then, develop a spreadsheet with the specifications for each item to be purchased with library funds.

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Make It Real

Identify and discuss the budgetary aspects of a specific library media center.
Visit a teacher librarian. Interview this person regarding issues related to financial procedures including creating purchase orders, budget reports, and other documents.
Use the following questions for guidance:

General Budget Questions

• Do you have a standard procedure for acquiring materials? Is it written down?
• What are the accounting procedures? Who is involved?
• Do you have standard forms that are required from your district?
• Do you have a printed budget that is supplied by the district, or do you submit a budget for approval? What are the line items you spend from?
• How do you keep track of money that is being spent? Do you keep a spreadsheet or ledger?
• How do you keep track of what is ordered, what has come in, what hasn’t come in, money in particular accounts, and end of year purchases?
• Do you sometimes get additional midyear?
• What is the procedure for requesting additional money for special needs such as an automation system or encyclopedia set.
• Do you have any fundraising activities?
• Have you written grant proposals for outside funding?
• Have you been able to use other monies outside your budget accounts?

Print Materials

• How are books purchased? Is a jobber used? Which one(s)?
• How are purchase orders prepared-typed/computer? What information is required?
• How are lists of books generated? Is a database used in this process?
• Are books purchased directly from publishers?
• Does this process differ any from the jobber process? How?
• Are card catalog cards, bar codes, or MARC records purchased?

Periodicals

• How many print magazines are ordered? How are magazines ordered? From a jobber? Which jobber? What happens when magazines do not arrive?

Electronic Materials and Other Nonprint Materials

• What is the process for ordering nonprint materials? Are they ordered on approval? What companies are used?

Hardware and Equipment

• What’s the process for ordering hardware/equipment? What vendors are used? Does the district participate in a county/regional cooperative purchasing program? How is this done?

Supplies / Repairs

• What is the process for ordering library and audiovisual supplies? Do you order locally? Do you have any favorite suppliers?
• How are maintenance and repairs handled?

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Read More About It

Accounts Available for Media Centers from Alpine School District, Utah
Summary of budget accounts.
Budget and Inventory from the Canadian Library Association
Computers for Schools
National non-profit dedicated to providing a low cost alternative for achieving technology in the classroom.
Cox, Marge (Jan. 2008). 10 Tips for Budgeting (Access requires login). Library Media Connection; 26(4), 24-25.
Miller, Pat (Feb 2003). Budget-Stretching Ideas. School Library Media Activities Monthly; 19(6), 38, 46. Retrieved from Education Full Text database.
The ideas relate to acquiring free or low-cost books and software, decorating the library media center with free posters and other promotional materials, obtaining funding for author visits, applying for professional training grants, and converting talent into funding.

Tech Soup
Offers nonprofits a one-stop resource for technology needs by providing free information, resources, and support.

Russian Startup Develops Smart Motorcycle Helmet

A team over at one of Russia’s many startups, Livemap, has developed a unique motorcycle helmet. In fact, it is a one of a kind piece of kit that will assist all kinds of bikers. The Livemap Smart Helmet will come equipped with voice control whilst at the same time delivering GPS navigation directly inline with the wearers field of vision. This coupled with some augmented reality will make the Livemap Smart Helmet a great use of tech.

As you ride you will be able to see your directions in your helmet’s display, without having to mess around with another device, or even take your eyes away from the road ahead of you.

Way back in January of 2014, the Livemap team demonstrated an preliminary version of their display, which at the time proved to be transparent enough that it was able to display a map without becoming too much of a distraction, thereby obscuring the road ahead. Obviously this is the most important safety feature.

Throughout this year, most of the work that was accomplished was to build the pre-production prototype of Livemap’s optics. This will be made up entirely of aspheric lenses that will enable the helmet to be “smaller and lighter and sometimes cheaper than the multi-lens design.”

Live map is planning to roll out the prototype of the Livemap Smart Helmet in the spring of this year. The final product is then set for shipping and sales in the US some time in the summer. The US is not the only market that will see the Smart Helmet for sale and other areas are going to be added throughout the year. The pricing structure for the product has yet to be finalised. The initial price is $2000, but we would hope for a more sensible price to match this great use of tech. 

[Image via wordlesstech]

SOURCE: http://www.ubergizmo.com/2014/12/livemap-of-russia-develops-smart-motorcycle-helmet/?utm_source=mobilerepublic

This Power Pen Writes & Charges Your Phone!

It seems like I’m going through my iPhone battery a lot faster than usual as of late, and I’m not sure why. I’m not doing anything out of the ordinary, and it seems like whenever I need to charge my phone I’m not in a convenient place to do it, or I’ve forgotten my charger at home. I’m sure many reading this can relate to my situation with their own smartphone battery dilemmas, and while smartphones have continually advanced over the years, the method that powers them hasn’t really advanced all that much. That’s right, I’m talking about charging them. You plug a tiny cord into the phone’s charging port and make sure it’s plugged into a power source – that’s all there is to it. As I said earlier, though, it doesn’t work when you leave the cord at home. So why not make it easier? Why not combine a charger with something you use every day at work, like, a pen? (I realize pens might become a minority in the workplace with most things going digital, but for now, many people still use the old-fashioned writing utensil). That’s exactly what the Power Pen tries to do – it will write whatever you need it to, and it will also give some much-needed juice to your dying smartphone. (Or tablet, etc.) Oh, I forgot to mention – it’s also a stylus, as well.

I should probably add that it won’t completely charge your phone – but it’ll get it a third of the way there. It works with Apple as well as Android devices, and you can preorder it from Firebox for $39.99.
What do you think? I’d definitely give the Power Pen a go. Let us know your own thoughts in the comments section below! (If you forget your charger and your Power Pen, though, you might be out of luck).
[Image via Slash Gear]
SOURCE: Gizmodo