Bibliosphere News

Murdoch University Library Toolbar (LibX Murdoch)

2008-07-06T22:03:00.001+10:00

Christmas Wishes to Everyone!

2007-12-19T22:25:00.001+11:00

Special Christmas greetings to all the readers of Bibliosphere News.

We wish you a safe, happy and Holy Christmas and trust that 2008 is a good year for you and your school library.

This is also the last post for this blog..which started in May 2006 as a way to connect with Teacher Librarians in the Parramatta Diocese. The audience of the blog grew; others joined me in writing items of interest or reporting on events and happenings; and we acquired a world-wide audience. That's the magic of the Web 2.0 world!!

We've enjoyed writing, and we've enjoyed your company. Thank you.

As our system of schools will no longer have a specialist Education Officer dedicated to supporting school libraries in 2008 and beyond, Bibliosphere News is now officially closed!

I will continue to write and comment on all things Library and Web 2.0 on my own professional blog at Heyjude.

I would like to particularly thank Marita Thomson, Jan Radford and Lisa Nash who each helped contribute to Bibliosphere News in 2007 - they are true Library 2.0 librarians! Keep the passion girls!

May the peace of the new-born Christ empower and inspire all that you do in 2008.

Goodbye!

Leading Learning Through the School Library

2007-11-27T23:26:00.000+11:00

Ross Todd presented this full day seminar, Leading learning through the school library: Part 11: Transforming information into deep knowledge and did not disappoint. Syba Signs has done a great job of facilitating leading edge events over the last year. Long may they continue.

For the full story go to CISSL where you can link through to Guided Inquiry, and get details of Carol Kuhlthau's new book. But here are a few of the thoughts from the day that stayed with me. Apologies if I am miss quoting Ross here, but there are some lines that I know I can't have got wrong as he repeated them so often:

Have a vision for your library. What can you see? Practice stems from vision.

Position yourself in the knowledge commons.

Do not be accomplices to mediocrity.

Engage with disciplinary knowledge.

Do not water rocks.

At the end of the day Teacher Librarian Lee Fitzgerald of Loreto Kirribilli gave an excellent overview of Guided Inquiry as practiced in her school this year. Practice is the proof of the pudding and the place to really learn about this process for us all. For a taste of this see the article Guided Inquiry the KISS Way in aisNSW Teacher librarian Newsletter, Term 4, 2007

Finally, those promised pics.

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Standards for the 21st Century Learner

2007-11-27T22:25:00.000+11:00

Ross Todd referred to this document at last week's Syba Signs Seminar Leading Learning Through the School Library Part II. Launched last month by the American Association of School Librarians, Standards for the 21st Century Learner starts with nine common beliefs:

Reading is a window to the world.
Inquiry provides a framework for learning.
Ethical behavior in the use of information must be taught.
Technology skills are crucial for future employment needs.
Equitable access is a key component for education.
The definition of information literacy has become more complex as resources and technologies have changed.
The continuing expansion of information demands that all individuals acquire the thinking skills that will enable them to learn on their own.
Learning has a social context.
School libraries are essential to the development of learning skills.

You can download an eight page colour version of the Standards (link above). Well worth reading.

And whilst looking for a link to Ross I came across this fabulous School Library Journal cover and article: Ross to the Rescue! about the quest to renew school libraries. It is by SLJ's Editor in Chief Brian Kenney from April, 2006.

Life After powerpoint – 50 Ways

2007-11-19T19:48:00.000+11:00

If you are weary of seeing student tasks presented in PowerPoint then I am with you. This is not to say that kids aren't pretty good at using the software. I have seen lots of student engagement working on PPT presentations, plenty of scope for peer learning and real experience of design principles - usually implicit. But there are plenty of other fun ways of presenting in our Web 2.0 world and Alan Levine has tried 50 of them.

Linked to another K12Online07 presentation, Alan has had a go at telling the same story in 50 different ways and the result, Dominoe 50 Ways, is a ready made menu for you to sample. If you prefer to start another way you could go a classified list of names and descriptions of the Story Tools. This also has a few examples of each. For a more guided narrative experience take yourself (and maybe a friend) through Alan's workshop 50 Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story.

Now, all tools are not created equal, but part of the learning is about finding the right one for your purpose. Explore and enjoy, and try letting some kids lose with this list. Below is my own first attempt at using Animoto:

This blog's reading level is...

2007-11-16T19:53:00.000+11:00

Now this may rank with those surveys you do in magazines that you claim not to buy, or it might be based on an authentic readability formula, but it is lots of fun regardless. And particularly because this blog is apparently awesome ...or just very difficult to read.

Find it here. It also works on Livejournal, Facebook, Myspace profiles and most websites, apparently. I saw it at bookboy, which is a nice blog to follow.

Voices around the world

2007-11-12T14:48:00.000+11:00

Sometimes it is interesting to know how we find stuff.
Judy posted in HeyJude about an mp3 creator and mentioned the sound was better in Voki. So I checked out Voki. There, in the bottom right corner was the image below, referring to the September task. Well I just HAD to go there, didn't I! And then I found the other tasks. So, thank you Judy!

Voices around the world is a class project from students at Dundee High School in Scotland. Each month they set a different project, using different Web 2.0 appplications. I loved the national anthems last month, and the month before they used Voki to record messages to hear each other's languages.
Have a look - It brought a smile to my face and although it is a HS project, the contributors are from Grade 1 up.
This time they are using Onetruemedia to create a slideshow.

Have fun! Let us know if you contribute.

Jan, who will be back at Delany next Monday!

A Mirror to Practice - K12Online2007

2007-10-31T22:49:00.000+11:00

Well, the K12 Online Conference has finished for another year, and I didn't get very involved for all the usual reasons/excuses. But all is not lost if you have the slightest clue how to use iTunes - yes, it is on your computer so just open it. Then go to the store and search for k12online07. This will take you straight to the download page for both audio and video podcasts from the conference. I recommend subscribing to both if you use an mp3 player as you can sample the sessions that look promising via audio and later watch presentations which are of special interest.

The K12 Online 2007 Blog will provide you with information about each session. Browse the categories on the sidebar or search for what you are seeking. You can bypass iTunes by listening/viewing straight from the blog, and check out any related links.

My first recommendation is NZer Derek Wenmoth's keynote Holding a Mirror to Professional Practice. Derek is a teacher educator and gives a fine presentation about his research into the connection between teacher beliefs, intentions and professional practice in the use of ICT. They have some interesting programs going which are worth hearing about, but the absolute best thing is their EPS - Educational Positioning System. This is a free to use online tool which takes you through a series of reflections on your teaching practice with ICT.

The result is a map of various elements - beliefs about teaching, use of ICT, relative success in achieving outcomes and obstacles to practice. My map is below, along with my hastily written reflection. In fact I think my practice looks better in the map than it really is, but it was completing the EPS that alerted me to many of the flaws in what I was doing. These included fairly tenuous links between technology used and outcomes, and a sad lack of opportunity for students to really be creative (represented by those stunted yellow shrubs). I completely mucked up the questions about infrastructure impediments so have no rocky passages in my river of practice.

I learned a lot from this and will go back to it when I think I have worked on some of the issues. But do watch Derek's presentation. It is well done, moves along at pace and will explain much better than I have about the EPS.

Travelling Librarian

2007-10-21T18:19:00.000+10:00

Hyperactive Parramatta Diocese TL (and Bibliosphere News contributor) Jan Radford from Delany College, has not been content to develop a range of traditional and Web 2.0 services in her library. Now she has become the virtual librarian, for a few weeks anyway, as she visits the world, and a good few school libraries along the way.

You can follow Jan's progress via blog - Delany Library News - or listen to her voice messages on the Library Home Page. Make sure you check out Library Thing (I've linked to the cover view), Delicious, the Book Club Blog and other great things going on at Delany Library.

New Imagery for Schools and Schooling: ACEL 2007

2007-10-16T20:49:00.000+10:00

I was lucky enough to attend this Australian Council for Educational Leaders Conference in Sydney last week with several colleagues from my school, and also met up with a bunch of Teacher Librarians from other Sydney schools. It was a most stimulating event with a few items seeming to resonate from multiple voices amongst presenters.

Perhaps the highlight was the much anticipated dual presentation from Andy Hargreaves and Michael Fullen. I think Andy hit the nail on the head when he noted having heard Kevin Rudd the day before pledge a Rudd Government to an agenda of improved literacy as a priority. Now literacy is of course A GOOD THING, but Hargreaves points out that Australia is second only to Finland in literacy, according to latest OECD Pisa results. So why is it that this is always the cry of the politicians and the media?

What is it that any Australian Government should be making a priority in education? My answer would be science (we do fairly well in scientific literacy in Pisa as well, but this doesn't transfer to science graduates), or perhaps technology infrastructure for schools, but presumably these would take a little more work to sell. What would be your educational priority?

Other high points for me included the presentations of Michael Furdyk - an inspiring keynote from a 25 year old Canadian entrepreneur; Peter Senge via video link from Boston; Heidi Hayes Jacobs from the US on curriculum mapping; Andrew Fraser from Parramatta Diocese on innovation in schools; and TLs Di Laycock and Linda Gibson Langford on teacher collaboration and online community building, particularly with reference to their coordination of CAR-TL for ASLA NSW.

To view many of the presentations go to the ACEL 2007 Conference Website.

The Connected Library: A Handbook for Engaging Users

2007-10-16T20:36:00.000+10:00

This timely book by Suzette Boyd is a must read for all library staff. Slim enough to be manageable in these days of information overload, I found this book affirmed many of my current practices but more importantly inspired me to reach a bit further. There are first all those things I always meant to do but didn't quite get to and then the more difficult area of taking a few risks. I think what is obvious or correct or a risk will vary from one library to another, but Suzette's book is an excellent place to find your next project.

To be a bit more specific, I like the suggestions for reading programs and promotion and the very good advice on going about improving (or inventing) your web site. But there is also lots to absorb about planning, research into practice, and knowing your stakeholders.

This book is good reading and very manageable. Go on, order it today, or borrow a copy. Your local public library will probably buy it if you ask.

INKYS shortlists announced 24/9

2007-09-28T20:35:00.000+10:00

Here is an ideal Term 4 promotion -
Ideal because there are only 6 books at the tail end of the budget year
Ideal because the books are all very attractive to students - they picked them after all.
Ideal because students get to do it - does not need a lot of input once it is up and running
Ideal because the books appeal across the years
And at last students get to vote for international books as well.....

At Delany the Book Club is promoting the INKYS and they have a jar - register your vote online and also in the Library jar. How else will we know what our readers liked?
Jan

New resources @ TLRU

2007-09-14T15:14:00.000+10:00

The Design Way : intentional change in an unpredictable world : foundations and fundamentals of design competence.
by Harold G. Nelson & Erik Stolterman
Educational Technology Publications (December 2002)
745.401 NEL

Developing the new learning environment : the changing role of the academic librarian.
edited by Phillipa Levy and Sue Roberts
London : Facet Publishing, 2005.
Summary:
"This key text captures and critically discusses the librarian's changing learning support role in an educational context, providing guidance and practical support. Written by acknowledged experts across a broad range of roles in the new academic environment, it challenges thinking in this area as well as offering practice-based advice." "This book is essential reading for practitioners at every level within the higher education and further education sectors, including information specialists, learning support professionals, academic liaison coordinators and subject specialists, academic service managers and heads of library and information services. It is also a valuable resource for all other professionals involved in the delivery of learning support, and for students of LIS and of education."
Contents:
Introduction. The challenge for the academic librarian / Philippa Levy and Sue Roberts -- 1. The policy framework: a critical review / Peter Brophy -- 2. Pedagogy in a changing environment / Philippa Levy -- 3. Literacies and learning / Dorothy Williams -- 4. Key issues in the design and delivery of technology-enhanced learning / Allison Littlejohn -- 5. New professional identities and practices for learner support / Sue Roberts -- 6. New academic teams / Sue Roberts, Mark Schofield and Ruth Wilson -- 7. Responding to the e-learning imperative / Susannah Quinsee -- 8. Information literacy education in practice / Judith Peacock -- 9. The inclusion agenda and its impact on practice / Joan Chapman, Gail McFarlane and Stuart Macwilliam -- 10. A kaleidoscope of change: how library management can support the development of new learning environments / Philip Payne -- 11. (E)merging professional identities and practices / Sue Roberts and Philippa Levy.
027.7 DEV

Luke: Storyteller, Interpreter, Evangelist (Paperback)
by Mikeal C. Parsons
Educational Technology Publications (December 2002)
226.406 PAR

The Inkys! A teenage book choice award

2007-09-10T20:43:00.000+10:00

Insideadog website from the State Library of Victoria is a great literature resource for your school or public library - and now the Inkys have just made it even better!

The Inkys are Australia's first teenage choice book award.

There are two awards - the Golden Inky for an Australian book, and the Silver Inky for an International book.

It all starts with the longlist - 10 Australian books and 10 International. Then the panel of 6 judges will whittle it down to a shortlist of 3 Australian and 3 international books.

Information for teachers and teacher librarians is also available.

Don't forget to vote.

Write-A-Book-In-A-Day - Amazing!

2007-09-03T14:54:00.000+10:00

Write-a-Book-in-a-Day is a fundraising initiative of the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers Centre and Princess Margaret Hospital Foundation. Write-a-Book-in-a-Day is a one-day writing marathon where sponsored teams will write a children's book in a day, raising funds equally for KSPWC and Children's Hospitals in each Australian State. Additionally a copy of each finished book will be donated to the hospital library.

This fabulous initiative, Write-A-Book-In-A-Day, resulted in incredible collaboration amongst students in Australian schools as they met the challenge to create an imaginative fully illustrated book - all in one day!!

Several schools in the Parramatta Dioese joined the competition this year as their way of celebrating Australia's Book Week.

Take the opportunity to check out the fabulous examples of the work at the Marian College Learning and Resource Centre.

They have made their books available to download and enjoy - you will be amazed at the quality, variety, and completeness of these final products developed totally in one day! Other books from around the country are being added to the

No time?

Then just spend a few minutes looking at and listening to the students Write-a-Book-In-A-Day VoiceThread which you will find at the bottom of the page. Press play and listen to their Voice Thread!!

Future Teaching Today

2007-08-25T21:08:00.000+10:00

Last week over 180 teachers from Catholic schools in the Diocese of Lismore gathered at St Augustine’s Primary School in Coffs Harbour for a ground breaking conference on interactivity in the classroom.

Dr Anne Wenham, Director of Catholic Schools believes, “This conference is the first of its kind and a great testament to the existing skill base in our school. This technology has enormous potential to improve classroom learning and student engagement. We are proud of our staff and feel that these changes will gather momentum.”

The conference used the skills of over 20 teachers employed in local Catholic schools plus two invited keynote speakers, Dr Renata Phelps (Southern Cross University) and Judy O’Connell (Parramatta CEO) both known for their expertise in this area.

Conducted over two days and using classrooms with students present, this conference took on a very different approach to usual professional gatherings. Teachers participated in a variety of workshops on movie making, using Google in classrooms, Learning Objects, school intranet sites, Flash presentations, data projectors, podcasting and how to set up and use blogs and wikis. The classroom focus involved SMART, Promethean and Interwrite boards.

A wiki has been set up for follow up comments and ideas. Evaluations of the two days were extremely positive. Many teachers commented that this was the best professional development they had received. Already teachers are asking about next year’s conference. We would recommend this model of professional development to other school systems. If you are interested in more specific details of the conference please do not hesitate to contact us.

One Shot World Tour: Australia

2007-08-20T21:25:00.000+10:00

"Best read with Vegemite......."

Get a different perspective on Australian literature through this great initiative from a bunch of non-oz bloggers. Along the way you will be taking your own One Shot World Tour of fantastic literature blogs.

Nick Earls by Colleen at Chasing Ray .

Margo Lanagan interviewed at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast.

Melina Marchetta at Writing and Ruminating.

Anna Feinberg and her Tashi series at Big A, little a .

Simmone Howell interviewed by Jenn at Not Your Mother's Bookclub.

Kathy Hoopmann's award winning All Cats Have Asperger Syndrome reviewed at Chicken Spaghetti.

How Sassy Changed My Life, The Red Shoe by Ursula Dubosarsky and more Margo Lanagan
by Gwenda at Shaken and Stirred.

John Marsden's Tomorrow series is discussed at Jen Robinson's Book Page

Jaclyn Moriarty and Penni Russon's Undine feature at Finding Wonderland

Alyssa Brugman's Finding Grace discussed by Little Willow at Bildungsroman.

Catherine Jinks and her four "Pagan" books by Liz at A Chair, a Fireplace & a Tea Cozy.

Does My Head Look Big in This? and John Flanagan's The Icebound Land feature at Interactive Reader

Queenie Chan interviewed by the YA YA YAs

Hot Men of Children's Literature: Australian Edition and John Marsden and "The Rabbits" (Part Two) (Part Three) at A Fuse #8 Production

Peter Temple interviewed at Light Reading

Am I Right or Am I Right? by Barry Jonsberg at Mother Reader .

Photo by Los Cardinalos

Be Cybersmart: Researching the Internet Wisely

2007-08-11T13:12:00.000+10:00

This video comes from a series produced by The Mid-Atlantic Regional Technology in Education Consortium (MAR*TEC) at Temple University in partnership with The CyberSmart!® Education Company. In this video Joyce Valenza (internationally known teacher librarian) provides a great overview of the issues to consider in researching the internet wisely. Show it to students, staff meetings, or parent information sessions.

The purpose of these videos is to introduce the "new literacies" to educators — the challenges of safe, ethical, and effective technology use in support of teaching, learning, and living in the 21st Century. Further videos on Internet Safety, Social & ethical issues, and more are available here.

In2Edu - Education treasure trove!

2007-08-11T10:09:00.001+10:00

"I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right." Albert Einstein

The In2Edu site provides an astonishingly comprehensive range of approches and resources for teachers - including fabulous support information literacy learning in schools.

The site features an information literacy programme/model called STEPS, born of a desire to help pupils make sense of and be creative with information. What makes STEPS unique is the range of variations that enable you to adapt it to different curriculum areas and different ages.

All 5000 best education links/favourites/favorites on this site were updated/verified July 2007.

They have developed a full information literacy programme similar to BIG 6/ SAUCE etc. It is supported with a range of downloadable resources and online activities to practise skills. Materials, posters, teaching tools and ideas are available across many curriculum areas. In fact, it takes ages to navigate all the dropdown menus and links to discover the wealth of information available. Rich tasks and deep thinking is included, and Blooms taxonomy underpins the rubrics.

Check out the downloads available, or navigate to the 'rich topic' curriculum choices below.

Discover Information Literacy

2007-08-11T09:09:00.000+10:00

Audio Books @ Delany

2007-07-21T23:30:00.000+10:00

I have been buzzing all week after the great input Jan shared at the Literacy Conference at Delany. The information was both very practical and thought provoking.

Jan gave details as to how to set up the system in the Library as well as very sound reasons as to why we should be exploring such systems to improve student outcomes, especially in Literacy areas. The staff at my school have had me quoting Jan every day at every opportunity ALL WEEK! What a great session!

I have since thought about how to take advantage of the concept in a Primary School Library, considering limited budgets and resources. I was thinking of 'taking on' the challenge to conduct a Professional Action Research Project on this topic this term. I'd love to get some input from the collective wisdom of our group. Feel free to give any advice...and as much as possible...!! If there is anyone who would like to join me for a group effort that would be great too!
Frances

Joining the blog

2007-07-12T10:45:00.000+10:00

Hi, I am Suzanne Singleton-Brown . I work as a Teacher Librarian for three days at Wakehurst Public School and .3 days at Our Lady of Perpetual Succour Primary school. In a week I connect with 500 students through the two schools. Originally I was a Science Teacher ,so changing to being a Teacher-Librarian was an exciting learning experience. My initial experiences were mainly in reorganising both libraries to make them more user friendly. One is housed in a huge space while the other is in a tiny classroom. Both spaces now provide areas for children as they move through their school life, having separate beginning, intermediate and senior reading and research sections. Resources are nearly all computerised and we have experienced three different computer systems Oasis, Alice and Athena. This term I am going onto Client in the State system so my transition from Science Teacher to Librarian has certainly offered me challenges.

VoiceThreads in the Classroom

2007-06-30T21:11:00.000+10:00

I have just been exploring the possibilities of VoiceThread. This website allows you to upload photos and add an oral commentary to a photo. If you don’t wish to record audio you can add text instead. Clear video instructions are given to set up a microphone for both Mac and Windows XP. VoiceThread is free for educators and students.
What a great place to store book reviews for your school!

What for....?

2007-06-30T15:14:00.000+10:00

During the week I had a really grounding experience in relation to my use of Web2.0 tools and the reasoning behind it. I thought it would be worth mentioning, as I read with interest the comments earlier in the term about the use of the Bibliosphere Blog. I am also an avid reader of different blogs and articles on the use of Web2.0 tools in education…and how we, as educators need to keep up with the ‘digital natives’.

Here is ‘my story’! I had just finished a lesson with some six year olds where we had made a wiki about animal homes .We put the work in a wiki, to show their parents, all the things they had learnt, (skills & ‘content’). We also discussed how the students could look at that work in the classroom or over the holidays…etc etc. After the lesson I had another student bring me some work on ‘Dragons’ he had done on his own. As a reward, I offered to help him put the work on a special site on the Internet so that his parents could see it (I ran off all the ideas we had listed in the previous lesson with the six year olds.)

He simply said “What for…” & that statement ended up haunting me for the rest of the day!

“What for…” Are we asking these questions BEFORE we enthusiastically ‘embrace’ these tools in the classroom? Don’t get me wrong, I fully support their use and will continue to do so……

But are we being discriminative in our use?
Are we really using the best tool at the time for the intended audience?
Who are we anticipating IS our audience?
Who is meant to be using the social networking sites we construct and how do we set these up so that they ARE exploited to their fullest potential?
Why are we using these tools in particular educational contexts, is there a real purpose in that they will enhance student outcomes?
....Are we starting from the ‘right’ perspective?

I know I have a great looking library blog that has never had a comment, (although our parents do view it as they mention this to me). I also set up, with a Year 6 teacher, a Blog for the class where the intention was simply to give them a forum to have a voice. The Year 6 blog is used all the time. One student even made a comment one Saturday night within minutes of me posting! Do we simply accept that different blogs/Web2.0 developed sites have different purposes and leave it as that?

…..I posted a quote from a blog entry called 'A Problem with Blogs' on our staff blog. I’d like to hear what other TLs think! As TL's we often lead our staff in adopting new technologies, do others experience these moments?

Maybe we could start ‘a conversation……’ about it!
-Frances

Medieval helpdesk with English subtitles

2007-06-28T23:21:00.001+10:00

I thought I'd introduce myself with this great video. Liblogger is my blog name-I'm Frances Manning a Primary Teacher Librarian. My Blogs are INFOZONE and hfsconversations and I am involved with a few class blog projects. I believe in our job you've got to have a sense of humour....this video really spoke to me! How do others feel about the message?

Love letter to a favourite book

2007-06-27T22:12:00.000+10:00

Whilst searching for a picture book activity on Read Write Think today I made a couple of happy discoveries. The first was an activity which involved making a book which was an artwork in itself and came from Susan Kapuscinski Gaylord's Making Books With Children site. There are several beautiful free projects to run with there as well as books to buy with more ideas.

Susan also has a blog and this is where I read about a project she was involved in earlier this year called Love Letters to Our Favourite Books. The Newburyport Literary Festival ran this last April with an exhibition of hundreds of these love letters, mostly from children and through several local libraries and schools. The idea is to use an A4 or letter sized sheet of paper and present a tribute to a favourite book. Original text, quotes, drawings and all manner of art work can be used. It is feeling and imagination that reign supreme in the final product.

Read more about the project and see examples of the Love Letters in this PDF flyer from the Literary Festival. This is a very elegant activity which could be tailored to a number of celebrations for a wide age range.

Photo by Bellah

Pandia powersearch not to be missed!

2007-06-25T21:31:00.000+10:00

Pandia Powersearch is an extraordinary all-in-one list of search engines and directories.

Search the Web using the search window (with a dropdown set of choices), or select from extensive list of the best Internet search tools found by Pandia. Search for files, images, music, video, online reference, dictionaries, books and more!

Pandia Powersearch is a search service from Pandia Search Central.

"Kill the Vampires"

2007-06-25T10:17:00.000+10:00

Reading Matters is one of those events that one always hears the best things about. It is a youth literature conference for professionals and young people organised by the Victorian Centre for Youth Literature. They get an amazing range of YA authors together each year, and this year I heard great things about David Levithan's contribution.

The good news is that there is now a ten minute podcast of Levithan from a panel called "Let's Talk About Sex". He is asking us to vanquish those voices in our heads telling us what our bosses, parents and others might think of the books we put in our libraries. His reflections on the Australian YA literature environment are interesting as is his no nonsense attitude to that last "acceptable prejudice", homophobia. As Read Alert says:

It’s a moving, provocative and inspiring talk about getting the right books to the teens who really need them........ And you need to do more than hear it. You need to copy it, you need to put it on your blog, you need to tell people about it, talk about it, think about it. It has a Creative Commons license, so use it as you will.

Listen and share: David Levithan:Kill the Vampires

It is also worth mentioning a review of Levithan's Boy Meets Boy by Chris Wheat in Viewpoint, Vol 13, No 3, Spring 2005 (links to the journal but not the article). More than a review, this is a heartfelt plea for this book to be in your library.

New Contributor

2007-06-21T21:10:00.000+10:00

My name is Sharon Brennan and I am the teacher librarian at St Augustine’s Primary School in Coffs Harbour, NSW. We have 620 students in 23 classes. Our school is part of the Diocese of Lismore. It is my pleasure to be a contributor to this blog. I began a library blog (Reading Rules) late last year and it is proving popular with our students. I am now encouraging other staff members to begin a blog with their class. I've just tried to link to my blog but have discovered that Safari does not support the formatting and hyperlink buttons on the posting screen. When the link becomes active, you'll know I have logged on using a supported browser.

Designing the 21st Century Library

2007-06-16T19:38:00.000+10:00

Flickr image: ‘deliciouslibrary OMG” by petit hiboux

You can often find great examples of libraries who have already redesigned and reformulated themselves for the digital world. However there is not always a lot written about the processes involved in undertaking this change.

An excellent Australian paper A Prototype 21^st Century University Library: a case study of change at the University of New South Wales focuses on the organizational change involved in a library involved in constructing a new future for itself. It has added relevance for our libraries as it focuses on an academic library that needs to support teaching and learning activities much in the same way that we need to.

Building the Ubiquitous Library in the 21^st Century from the World Library and Information congress in August 2006 provides a “road map" for information professionals to utilize emerging technologies to “design, develop, integrate, enhance and implement ubiquitous library services and projects in the 21^st century”.

Lastly ‘Is todays library the new mall” discusses how emerging technologies and the change in how we think about learning is driving library design that engage library users in more experiential learning environments.

REFUGEE WEEK 2007 - June 17-23 Theme: The Voices of Young Refugees

2007-06-08T17:18:00.000+10:00

In preparation for this special week Jenn Martin (from the aliaREAD list) has put together a junior reading list on Library Thing, as well as adding suggestions from others on the list. A great use of this social network. For lots of other ideas for celebrating see the Refugee Council of Australia

David Goldie's interactive documentary Long Journey, Young Lives is perfect for the theme, as is Médecins Sans Frontières' Virtual Refugee Camp. This is less interactive but combines great photos and relevant text to give a realistic picture of the experience of living in a camp. Then there is Cuc Lam's Suitcase, a 4-5 minute video in a series called National Treasures, telling the story of a refugee couple who came from Vietnam with just one possession - now displayed in Melbourne's Immigration Museum.

For more drop in to Blinkx and find another video or two!

Video-streaming resources

2007-06-07T22:28:00.000+10:00

In addition to YouTube and TeacherTube, there are many other sources of videos from traditional news sources and educational sites. How can you find them all?

Hurray! To the rescue comes Blinkx... a video (and audio) search engine. You can put in your search term and get a list of videos from over 130 sources. You can then select the appropriate ones for your needs and can usually play them without additional software or other technology.

The Information Literacy Game

2007-05-25T15:36:00.000+10:00

I was asked to source some engaging resources for teaching HSC All My Own Work after a recent assault on our Year 11s. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far. Your ideas welcome.

The Information Literacy Game is a bright idea you can try online courtesy of the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, but better still they offer it for download with tips for customising to your own library or school.

Topics covered include plagiarism, referencing systems, choosing resource formats, search skills and specific local information, like library hours and services. Although the game uses all the same dry information as your typical info lit overview it injects some fun, competition and immediate reinforcement. You can play alone or in a group and actually learn as you go.

This type of material also has potential as a board game, a la trivial pursuit, and The Fletcher Library at the University of Arizona has developed such a game as a precursor to a computer game. Can’t access the game itself but check out this presentation Game On! Developing a Game for Library Instruction (PPT) Even more powerful would be if it was the students who wrote the questions and designed the game. (Although it could be a great one day project for a group of TLs and/or teachers.)

For another excellent resource which concentrates on plagiarism try What is Plagiarism at Indiana University? In spite of the title this is a very portable resource. It is described as a brief quiz and concept lesson by Ted Frick and uses specific examples with source and student work side by side. A great learning tool which reinforces concepts as it goes with immediate feedback. Not fancy but very clear.

Lastly, but in no way a lesser resource, is Alan November's page of resources: Grammar of the Internet. The eight resources here include a short quiz, detailed answers and specific activities which take the quiz items in more depth. It is addressed to teachers and includes specific web resources of interest in learning to evaluate - like hoax pages and those which intentionally mislead. Great material for teacher PD and then selectively for students as appropriate to your audience.

The next step is to road test some of these ideas on our kids (and teachers?) Who’s game?

Podbean podcasting at Marian College

2007-05-24T16:17:00.000+10:00

Thanks to Joan for pointing us to this excellent and easy way to manage and deliver podcasts for our learning environment. Terrific!

What I particularly like about this is that I can grab and embedd the podcast here for you to sample! Even better, it looks as if I can use the same 'container' to deliver a podast collection - a bit like vodpod, which I put onto the ParraCoordinators Conference blog to deliver videos!

Cool Co-ordinator's Conference Handout!

2007-05-17T22:59:00.000+10:00

What is a Blog? What is Web 2.0?

The journey into Web 2.0 is just like this...one step at a time. This is the message that Jamie Wahab and I reiterated at our workshop on blogging and Web 2.0 at the Primary Coordinators Conference.

Hats off to Jamie for a fabulous presentation of work being undertaking at Good Shepherd, and his ongoing enthusiasm for Web 2.0. We put together a blog as a 'digital handout' for those who attended the workshop - but of course it is public, and anyone can access it. You might find the compilation of help to you.

I liked two things. First, we created a delicious account to support the digital handout. Then I created a VodPod to make it easy for people to get the videos related to the topic.

Visit the Parra Co-ordinators Conference Spot, and enjoy.

Caroline Chisholm College

2007-05-17T08:49:00.000+10:00

I spent a wonderful day at Caroline Chisholm, to see what Michael Stevenson and other super teachers are doing with Web 2.0 and CeNet for learning, and to talk about how to continue to improve on and extend the blend of Web 2.0 and CeNet.

Overall some absolutely inspiring work by teachers, particularly the Year 7 Visual Literacy unit, Year 8 music, and Year 12 - all using technology tools, online learning, and heaps of creativity. But best of all was the depth of comments from students and their obvious engagement with learning.

How easy!

2007-05-16T00:06:00.000+10:00

All I did was drop a single photo collection from my Flickr account into www.slide.com - and look what I got!

There are lots of other things you can do to to create slideshows online. This was a 30 second job!....but I do use my Flickr account all the time, which is why it was so easy.

Scholarly vs Popular Journals at YouTube

2007-05-12T09:16:00.000+10:00

I like the idea of preparing short videos as explanatory guides. Here is one that we could use. But wouldn't it be better if we could start creating our own, or better still, get the students to create short videos as part of their learning and assessment processes?

Anyway, we need more creative ways to reach out to our learners - don't you think?

EdTech: Focus on K-12

2007-05-05T15:49:00.000+10:00

The cover story of the April/May 2007 issue of EdTech magazine addresses the important issue of cybersaftey.

Other articles discuss the growing popularity of podcasts in education, learning with the use of Web 2.0, and optimal classroom layout for use with one-to-one notebook programmes.

EDTECH: Focus On K-12 - April/May 2007

Also included are teaching ideas for 21st century learning. My favourite comes from Vicki Davis (key leader in the Horizon Project 2007) on Introduction to Wikis. In her 10th-grade class, students make movies and learn online safety through a class wiki.

EDTECH: Focus On K-12 - Lesson Plans II
Archives of previous issues are available also.

Library Design at Broadgreen

2007-05-02T11:24:00.000+10:00

I was really inspired by a school visit in New Zealand. Broadgreen Intermediate in Nelson, hosted an evening cocktail party for the attendees at the recent SLANZA/LIANZA workshop in NewZealand.

The library is inspired by New Zealand art work, on loan from various museums. The Principal, Roger Brodie, has been behind the re-creation of a the new library for the school. The students came up with much of the interior design, and that first year of students is represented by a large photo mural near the circulation desk.

All the books are shelved in 'bins' facing outwards - and the Principal, who has a strong focus on literacy and getting the kids to read - says that circulation of books increased threefold with the new design.

There were lots of interesting design features - but the one that particularly caught my eye were the chairs. There is a Nelson company that takes old furniture and remakes it in the checkered and coloured designs that you see on the library furniture. That's the best part really, and the easiest for anyone to replicate!

Enjoy the photos, and think of what you might do!

Capturing the vision... in New Zealand!

2007-05-01T13:34:00.000+10:00

I was very honoured to have the opportunity to work with my librarian colleagues in New Zealand, and to hear about the many initiatives there, and the particular challenges that they are facing and embracing! I am particularly impressed with the strong relationship with the National Library of New Zealand, and it's extension services to schools.

I am preparing and sharing information from that event with my New Zealand colleagues, located on their PD blog here. Included on that blog is the post Workshop Time that has the information used for the Workshops, and for follow-up afterwards. There may be material there that is useful for you.

I also wanted to share an edited version of the slideshow of the Presentation, as it will give you access to links and videos that I used.

Carnegie of Carnegies

2007-04-30T21:43:00.000+10:00

It is the 70th anniversary of the Carnegie Medal and the 50th of the Kate Greenaway Medal and they are celebrating in style. Last year the public was asked to vote for their favourite winners of the past and a week or so ago the shortlists were published for a final vote coming up.

Meanwhile there is also a living archive of the winners. What a great way to remember Each Peach Pear Plum, Charles Keeping's The Highwayman or Gorilla. If you've been around long enough you are sure to find an old favourite or two in the top ten lists (mine is Alan Garner's The Owl Service).

And don't forget this year's shortlists for the Carnegie and Greenaway.

Now, this could be quite a good way into READiscovering for Book Week 2007. This year's Children's Book Council of Australia Awards Shortlist is also out, as is the more useful Notables. Perhaps we should be trawling through our own children's award favourites. I have strong memories of Ivan Southall's Ash Road which won the year I was in 6th Grade. Southall also won the Carnegie in 1971 with Josh.

The Carnegie/Greenaway site has some images to download (including a bookmark sheet on PDF) if you want to share the joy.

A vision for digital libraries

2007-04-28T19:40:00.000+10:00

Most of us have probably heard about Google’s Digitization project. Here is another from Internet Archive. The Internet Archive aims to provide permanent access for researchers, historians, and scholars to historical collections that exist in digital format. Founded in 1996 the Archive has been receiving data donations from Alexa Internet and others. In late 1999, the organization started to grow to include more well-rounded collections. Now the Internet Archive includes texts, audio, moving images and software as well as archived web pages.

The Director of Internet Archive, Brewster Kahle has a vision for digital libraries. In a Chronicle of Higher Education podcast interview titled How digital book collections will change acadame he discusses this vision and the differences between the Internet Archives project and Google’s project, as well as the challenges of copyright in the area of digitisation.

2020 Vision - what it's all about!

2007-04-24T07:28:00.000+10:00

Of course!
This video from Karl Fisch, reminds us of the futures of our students. I thought I would share this, as 2020 Vision is the topic of my NewZealand presentation.

Why let student's blog?

2007-04-23T21:37:00.000+10:00

I'm heading to Nelson, New Zealand this Friday to do a Keynote presentation, plus workshops for LIANZA (Library & Information Association New Zealand Aotearoa) in association with SLANZA (the school library folk), for their 2007 Weekend School on "Technology without Tears".

With a bit of serendipity I was led to this great video from Rachel Boyd , a teacher in Nelson, New Zealand!! [via Kerrie Smith]

Museum of Modern Betas

2007-04-23T07:45:00.000+10:00

I have been busy playing with Twitter these last few days. Those who Ning! also like to Twitter!

The MoMB just crossed the 3000 betas mark (the 3000th application added was the super sharp twittervision)

Twitter: Heyjudeonline

23 Learning 2.0 Things

2007-04-12T14:03:00.000+10:00

Numerous sites have linked to this, but it’s worth highlighting - 23 Learning 2.0 Things. Once you’ve completed the list, you'll be cool!

Wetpaint enables private messaging!

2007-04-11T11:20:00.000+10:00

Wetpaint, the online wiki community builder (that we have previously previewed), has released a major new feature, which is (surprisingly) about social networking (and communicating)! Teachers are finding Wetpaint a good tool to use - so this new enhancement lends itself to adaptation for education.

Wetpaint users can now send private messages to other users. The demand for a private messaging system became overwhelming for Wetpaint, and they’re happy to announce that messages can be sent from one user to another, from one user to many users, and from many users to many users. This is the first wiki of its kind to bring about this level of communication, and further blurs the lines between social networking and wikis. Many features are overlapping from various realms of communication tools, from widgets becoming available on social networks (and WetPaint wikis) to mainstream services incorporating social networking components.

Bringing in private messaging options for Wetpaint users really brings their community aspects full circle.

From: Mashable! - the Social Networking Blog.

If you want to keep in touch with the changes and developments in Web 2.0 tools, or want some of the latest code!, then take out an email feed from Mashable, or add it too your RSS reader. Mashable is the world's largest blog focused exclusively on social networks.

Online Learning

2007-04-05T16:48:00.000+10:00

The motivation of online activities for our primary school students was once again reiterated – two of our year 6 classes have been involved in a competition created by NSW Country Area Program related to their unit of study, Australian Identity. Their enthusiasm was transparent because the activity was real. Whilst the classes did not win, our students remained engaged and excited to see their peers’ movie file and word file online. Participating in simple and straightforward online activities is a useful strategy to involve teachers who have limited access to multiple computers. Their students are motivated, meet success and we all move ahead: “From little things big things grow” [Paul Kelly] –digital immigrants who start ‘small’ and are successful are more likely to engage in the next level of read-write online environments.

School 2.0

2007-04-05T07:39:00.000+10:00

More about Digital Books

2007-04-04T16:56:00.000+10:00

Just to keep the options going, here is another interesting service for getting digital audio resources for your school.

Simply Audiobooks has the option to rent, buy, download, and listen! What I particularly liked is the option to collect yourself a FREE download each month.

I grabbed free download of The Art of War, just to test the quality of this service out. I found quite a few relevant resources, though pricing is always a big question.

Managing the copyright labyrinth seems easy with this supplier.

Another interesting article is Downloading Books with iPods, from TechLearning.

Google Librarian

2007-04-02T13:12:00.000+10:00

Have a look at Google Librarian Newsletter. It has useful links to a variety of tips and hints as well as providing product updates, how-tos, and news relevant to the library community. In conjunction with the newsletter Google has now added a Google Librarian blog called Google Librarian Central.

One of the most useful links is to the Google posters available at Google Librarian Tools
The posters portray a variety of information relating to searching. The best part is that Google are allowing the free distribution of these posters.

Guided Inquiry – Ross Todd in Sydney, March 2007

2007-03-30T00:04:00.000+10:00

Syba Signs held its second very successful seminar day this month with Dr Ross Todd attracting a crowd of over 200 (a large number of whom he seemed to know by first name). A good representation was in attendance from Parramatta Diocese TLs and we had a very stimulating day with immediate practical value to our work. We were also stirred by his questioning some of our long practiced mantras. Ross is perhaps the only person who could challenge us this way and live to tell the tale.

For the fuller story go to CISSL – The Center For International Scholarship in School Libraries at Rutgers University, particularly: Guided Inquiry. For some of our impressions of the day see below:

The conference provided us with an opportunity to look, think and question what
we teach in the library. The teaching of information literacy through the information skills process still has a place but it should not be the only way we approach a learning task with our students. This linear approach is not how our students learn and the "getting stuff" fix that it tends to impose is not useful to what Ross would like to see our students take from a research task. He asserts thats deep knowledge and deep understanding can only come when students are fully immersed in the task not simply plagiarising from 'stuff' that they locate during a library lesson. We need to have a lot more than the skills process in our 'bag of teaching tricks' if we want to achieve this outcome. - Joan Denahy

I was really impressed with the way he asked us to embrace the outcomes and
guide our teaching towards them. It is something that I think most primary school teachers do especially when working co-operatively with classroom teachers. Being knowledgeable about the various KLA outcomes and indicators and addressing them while still teaching the information skills gives us credibility as educators and keeps us focused on the learning that the classroom teacher is concerned with while leading the children towards the development of information skills they will need forever especially to become critically literate in a society of multiple literacies. Ross as usual was well prepared and was very concerned with the student as learner and the best ways to enhance that learning. His worksheets provided great ideas for use in the classroom and his overall presentation stimulated me to get back to the library and try out some of his ideas. - Mary Anne Cartwright

I really liked the way Ross challenged us on some of our "holy grail" stuff - the relevance of the information process, for instance. We know that he knows what he is talking about here, so it really gave pause for thought. He also talked about immersing kids in a topic before asking them to find a question, and this was very relevant to some work I was in the middle of at the time: trying to liven up a regular junior research assignment which was looking stale. This links in to LaneClark's idea of taking kids on the fieldtrip first, rather than last. There is also some good stuff on the English Teachers' Association website about "frontloading". The example given is a study of Macbeth* which was preceded by investigating castles, amongst other things, to engage students in the world of the play. All immersion experiences. Another highlight for me was the handout using a spot the difference picture as stimulus for practicing categorising, notetaking and synthesis. - Marita Thomson

I've longed for us to move on and get to how do we get the kids using the info
or even reading the info to get the relevant bits. I've just taken year 12 to the Australian Museum in a sort of immersion process. The boys liked the parts that they knew something about and found the part that was really leading into stuff they are yet to do "Boring" i.e. too hard - not relevant - where's it all fit in etc. So just immersion needs background as well so they can connect later on in some areas, especially at senior level. However I'm now teaching backward which is a new experience and could be a really good way to go for them so I'm not too worried about the "boring" attitude as the lights will go on, I hope, as we use the experience. - Lyndal Dennis

*Gerardu, Viviane; Duggan, Fiona. "Frontloading Macbeth." Activate: the Journal of the ACT Association for the Teaching of English 18, no. 1 (2003): 40-46. – This is available in the members area of English Teachers’ Association , Frontloading Macbeth PDF

STOP PRESS! Syba Signs has invited Ross back in November, so don’t spend all your budget before Term 4.

Ning - Create your own social network

2007-03-27T23:18:00.000+10:00

Have a look at Steve Hargadon’s School 2.0 social network and see a social network in the making.
He’s using Ning, a social network builder, and then look at Bill Drew's very active Library 2.0 network (includes school libraries but not confined to education).

'Library 2.0' got the familiar look of the social networks that our students frequent, with the welcome of our own professional community. Almost all the 700 members are from the USA, but there are people from Sydney and China and almost every part of the globe amongst the membership. Once you join, you automatically have a personal space. Some are personalised, well developed and interactive spaces and others are very basic.

Consider it a sandbox to experience the social network world.

In a Diocese where there is a focus on Web 2.0 technologies, maybe there is a place for us to actually model it with a Library 2.0 community.

And its free!

Jan

Digital (book) Listening! and more...

2007-03-21T15:16:00.000+11:00

So you want to introduce or add to the audio-books in your school?
Wondering where to find digital books for use on electronic devices?

Here are locations where you can purchase podcasts and audio-book materials online.

Audible.com is the dominant audiobook and commercial-podcast-content vendor on the WWW. Audible's principal role is to supply audiobooks in MP3 format for users to listen to on their favourite MP3 players, iPods, or desktop media players.

Audio Book Club is an online book club that specializes in audiobooks of all kinds, including downloadable podcast-type books.

Audiobooks Online sells MP3 of classic books - but they are shipped on CD!

Blackstone Audiobooks is unique in that it is an actual producer of audiobook content. Fair amount of crossover with Audible.com. Available for immediate download to your digital media player.

iTunes Music Store - of course!

AudioBooksForFree.com is a place where you can grab audiobooks in MP3 format for absolutely no cost. All books that have expired copyright - but the quality is variable as it is a community operation - bit like Wikipedia.

LibriVox provides free audiobooks from the public domain. There are several options for listening. Another voluntary operation.

Soundbooks : Audiobooks Australia - an Australian resource!

Gutenberg: The Audio Books Project has audio eBooks available for some of the same great literature available in plain text. Listings are divided into two categories: Human-read and computer-generated audio books.

Free Classic Audiobooks in either mp3 format or m4b audio book format for iTunes and the iPod. Some of our audio books are human narrated Librivox recordings and others are narrated using the latest high quality text to speech voices.

There are many more - perhaps you can share your favourite resource!

Wondering about e-Books? Grab this excellent document in pdf format from Educause:
"7 things you should know about E-Books".

Build Your Own (Google) Search Engine

2007-03-19T10:44:00.000+11:00

I’ve had fun putting together 40 teen and children’s book sites to search at once for reviews and author information. My search engine is called Book Review Finder and I have also embedded it on Book Bites. It is open to volunteer contributors if you have sites you think could be added.

The possibilities for using search engine building in "guided research interventions" (to borrow some terminology from Ross Todd – more on that for another post) with students are many. What about having the kids select the sites and then questioning search results to understand how a search engine works?

To experiment click on "Create your own custom search engine" at the bottom of Book Review Finder.

Widgets, blidgets and gadgets

2007-03-19T09:42:00.000+11:00

"Where are you going and what do you wish” asked the old moon of Winken Blinken and Nod.

I've been experimenting with Pageflakes, my personalized start page, and came across some fun little widgets. Widgets are mini web applications you can plug into any webpage. One was a little calorie counter from a site called Labpixies. You input your weight, height and age and then the widget will give you your daily calorie allowance. You can then use the widget to track your diet for the day. Labpixies also have a clock with faces that can be customised with a wide range of images such as scenery, soccer balls etc. With Pageflakes I could quite easily insert these widgets. However I was wondering how I could use these widgets in my blog. A conversation with Judy put me on the right track. In blogger templates, add page element, you can copy the HTML script from the widget into the HTML page element and it will be inserted into your blog.

This made me wonder what other useful widgets were out there in wide wonderful web. A quick search found a site called Widgetbox. Widgetbox has hundreds of widgets that you can use searchable by type and subject. Like blogger you need to sign up to widgetbox and it gives you step by step instructions of how to chose and then insert you widgets into your blog or website. Some of the widgets have been thoroughly tested and rated while others have not, so some may work better than others. For example there was a widget for an information request form. I though this would be a useful addition to the library’s Edlib blog. However, while I could insert it succesfuly in my blog the submit button of the request form doesn’t appear to work. So, I'll be continuing my exploration.

Google has a site also called Google gadgets where you can again find a myriad of gadgets that you can plug into your webpage or blog.

So what is the difference between a widget and a gadget? Widgets and gadgets do the same thing but Google has called theirs gadgets. But you ask - "what is a blidget". A blidget is short for "blog widgets" - a quick way to turn your blog's RSS feed into a widget. But blidgets don't just convert RSS to widgets: they also allow you to add photos, post links, images and audio clips. What's more, you can customize the look of the widget to better suit your blog.

Like Winken Blinken and Nod enjoy your sail through the sea of Widgets, Blidgets and Gadgets

Flickr photo 'New widgets' by Chegs

PowerPoint Extreme Makeover

2007-03-17T20:28:00.001+11:00

Take a look at this YouTube video Extreme Makeover: PowerPoint Edition by Dean Shareski. It's a great video that makes some excellent points about how to use (and how NOT to use) PowerPoint effectively.

Using 'librarything' for book talks

2007-03-11T15:04:00.000+11:00

This was posted on LM_NET today. I have been using Librarything to display sets of books for the students, but I really think this is a good one because we can both tag and store book talks, but we can also share with each other.

'I'm excited to share that LibraryThing http://www.librarything.com/ has become a useful tool for me to catalog my book talks. I type the book talk in the comments field. I'm also able to tag a book according to the grade levels I would talk to about it. So, for example, if a teacher asks me to do book talks for her 6th grade classes, I can click on the tag cloud for 6th grade and see only those books. LibraryThing, which is free, provides many ways to customize and organize your collection (or book talks). If you'd like to get an idea of how this works, here is the link to the booktalks I have cataloged so far. I'm still in the process of entering them. http://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?view=Davinna (Click on Display Style 'D' if you aren't seeing the Comments/book talks)'

(Davinna Artibey is TL at Denver Center for International StudiesDenver Public Schools, CO)

Enjoy. Jan

Blogging and RSS

2007-03-08T14:32:00.000+11:00

Many of us are already using Blogging and RSS to gather and disseminate information in a more efficent way. For those who have yet to explore Blogging or RSS the following resources are a good place to start.

Blogging and RSS: a librarian's guide

Michael P. Sauers; Medford, Information Today, 2006

Available from the Catholic Education Library Parramatta

Phone 9840 5737 or email Lisa Nash

RSS for Non-techie librarians

Stephen M. Cohen, Lw Library Resource Exchange, 2002

Mosman Library ideas

2007-03-07T09:51:00.000+11:00

Good blogging! - check these out!

It's World Book Day!

2007-03-03T11:13:00.000+11:00

Well, it was.....on March 01!

Even though we missed noting it, perhaps it's still worth celebrating World Book Day by exploring the list of top 10 books, and top 100 books. It's the 10th anniversary of this listing.

Here are the top 10 books:

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
The Bible
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

The full Top 100 list is shown in the UK Telegraph

And for more information about World Book Day, visit http://www.worldbookday.com/

17 Tips for a Creative, Life-Long Learning Journey

2007-02-27T23:36:00.000+11:00

Need a little creativity boost? Peter Reynolds is an illustrator and multimedia designer who believes that art is a powerful tool for learning. 17 Tips is an inspiring little electronic book which you can view here in small format, and download for free to share full screen. A selection:

Tip #1 Relax. Make some tea.

Tip #6 Imagine your classroom as a studio, as a research centre, as a publishing house.

Tip #8 Celebrate the blank page. Use programs that allow the user to supply the content.

Tip #15 Encourage strategies for personal achievement.

It won't change your life, but it may make you smile. Peter is also generous with his beautiful clip art and a few of his children's books which can be viewed and heard online.

FableVision artwork in this post copyright by Peter Reynolds/ FableVision

21st century thinking at OLQP!

2007-02-23T09:20:00.000+11:00

The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century is a best sellig book by Thomas L. Friedman analyzing the progress of globalization with an emphasis on the early 21st century. It was first released in 2005 and was later released as an "updated and expanded" edition in 2006.

Wow!

He says in his introduction:

It is now possible for more people than ever to collaborate and compete in real time with more other people on more different kinds of work from more different corners of the planet and on a more equal footing than at any previous time in the history of the world - using computers, e=mail, fiber-optic networks, teleconferencing, and dynamic new software.

It is not surprising that our schools are embracing the need to 'think globally' and adopt 21st century thinking in order to transform the learning experience for our students.

I was fortunate to spend a day working with the Year 4 team and the teacher librarians at Our Lady Queen of Peace primary, who are working hard to make significant 'digital shifts' in their pedagogy.

Human knowledge is complex and requires deep thinking - and sometimes a deep capacity to search, find, sort and synthesise information, viewpoints and knowledge. 21st century wisdom builds on all that came before. Our teachers are working to ensure that our students develop the capacity for 'enduring understanding' for 21st century wisdom.

An enduring understanding is a big idea that resides at the heart of a discipline and has lasting value outside the classroom. The teaching point for us is to ask to what extent the content standards and topics we are working with in our programs has learning opportunities for our students that are enduring and transferable big ideas, having value beyond the classroom?

Don't they say that a picture tells a thousand words?

Classroom Blogging

2007-02-21T21:54:00.000+11:00

If you are thinking about launching into classroom blogging, and wondering about strategies to use, you will be happy to explore the Classroom Blogging Wiki from experienced Scottish educators.

Classroom blogging also provides ideas for Classroom Organisation in primary classrooms.

Welcome to the CEO Library Blog!

2007-02-19T16:19:00.000+11:00

Keeping things moving - that's our motto! Lisa Nash, CEO Librarian, came to a blogging workshop last year - and hasn't looked back since then.

After doing lots of great things in her community with blogs, she has now launched Edlib, the CEO library blog.

She will be running this through blogger, until our BlogEd platform can be expanded to add other important blogs, such as this one. As Lisa explains - when she has an internal CEO blog, she will be able to point us directly to resources in the journal databases! That will be cool!

But for now, she has plenty to offer us, including her personal feedback from ALIA's Information Online Conference held in Darling Harbour at the end of January. Papers and presentations from Information Online are available now.

Bouquets to you Lisa!

We'll enjoy EdLib and the great information focus that you can bring to this blog.

Want to start a Wiki? Go Wet Paint today!

2007-02-18T10:45:00.000+11:00

Want to start a Wiki? Then this recommendation from Di Laycock (Fully Booked) will appeal to you!

WetPaint seems to have that nice graphic appeal that our students want, as well as the functionality that we want for encouraging good Web 2.0 work!

Check out WetPaint details - then take a look at WikiFido to see how nice it can look!!

Looks good, but does it have the option not to carry advertising the way Wikispaces has? Can you create a private space? One of you experimenters 'out there' can let us know!

Web 2.0 - Catch the Wave

2007-02-15T22:30:00.001+11:00

New to Web 2.0? Then this 9-minute video will introduce you to the concept, ideas and applications available in a Web 2.0 world.

No-Tech, Recycled Bookmarks

2007-02-12T21:29:00.000+11:00

Having carried around for the last few weeks (in the boot of my car) a large number of unwanted but beautiful magazines I was at the point of putting them in the recycling tonight when I had an idea. Tearing out a few of the more attractive pages I tri-folded them, sticking the open edge closed with a gluestick. The results, some pictured above, are pretty nice bookmarks. We go through hundreds each year and I haven't had a chance to print new ones since starting back at school, so these will go on the circ desk tomorrow. And I had fun making them!

...............................................

UPDATE: Highlights of the week have included a boy taking some time choosing a bookmark which suited his book (Soldier Boy) and another dismissing them as there were no cricket ones. That night I took to our ABC Cricket guide and the Kingsgrove Sports catalogue to produce the required bookmarks, the best of which went the next day.

Manga for your library?

2007-02-10T23:19:00.000+11:00

Are you adding manga to your graphic novel collections? If so, you might find The Librarian's Guide to Manga and Anime a useful overview and general guide.

Last updated in July 2006, this guide for public librarians works very well for schools too. Drill down to find title and author lists, books and periodicals, and even some teacher's guides.

Hopping Into Library 2.0 & Millenial Disconnects

2007-02-07T23:43:00.000+11:00

This week I participated in my first and second online seminars. I especially liked sitting at my desk eating lunch as I watched the seating plan fill for the SirsiDynix Institute web seminar Hopping Into Library 2.0. Podcast and slides should be up within the week for this. It was great to hear an Australian Library (Yarra Plenty) share their experiences with the world. Over sixty people were in attendance, 20 or more from Australia. There were just a few schools participating, but I think this program could be profitably rejigged for schools. Not only lifelong learning but also play was emphasised in the Yarra Plenty program - as you can see from this pic from their Flickr collection.

I couldn't resist the opportunity of another online event at 7am Wednesday. There were close to 300 participants in this and a chat window going the whole time. Discussing the Disconnects Between Library Culture and Millennial Generation Values was presented by the Learning Times Network, and will also be available for podcasting soon. This article by Robert McDonald and Chuck Thomas was an excellent lead in to their presentation. There are some challenging ideas for libraries to deal with, but deal we must. As the authors conclude:

Finding the right way to achieve balance between traditional library values and the expectations and habits of coming generations will determine whether libraries remain relevant in the social, educational, and personal contexts of the Information Age.

Web 2.0 at Delany - progress report

2007-02-05T23:51:00.000+11:00

My reaction to things Web 2.0 has always been to try and test. Which services have value to students? How can we test these services and explore them with our students? If we model them we have something to show community members. What limitations are there?

So the library website has blogs here and social bookmarking here. Our new Year 11s all created their delicious accounts at the end of last year and they are already using them in Physics. It is difficult to recognise usernames in Delicious, so we asked the students to preceded their usernames with DC. It was especially gratifying to work with a teacher on this and to hear such enthusiasm for social bookmarking. We use social networking sites for photos and books, and we have built a frappr map of where our webpage visitors come from (currently offline for admin reasons).
You may like to check the progress on our "What do I read now?" page and our LibraryThing collection : our username is DCLibrary. It grows. There are students maintaining this now. I think we will be getting a 'Test drive' link next, and we can get students to test services.It will be interesting to see where it goes. It seems to me that if we model student usage of these services, we give our students the gift that comes through networking. Powerful stuff!

All this requires a fearless acceptance of tagging for retrieval and sharing. Tagging has been in the news recently and this PEW Report looks at tagging from a library point of view. Personally most of us tagged when we added keywords in OASIS, and many bemoan the lack of flexibility currently.
I am a tagger. I have a basic structure, and after that - every tag is a personal and spontaneous response to an item. This structure works fine with small and personal collections, but how will tagging stand up when it is used by 600 people? We will find out!
But we havent got a wiki!
Who has built a wiki? Would you like to share your experiences of wiki-building with us all?

Back to testing!
Jan

Robots

2007-02-05T21:31:00.000+11:00

Check this out! ROBOTS! From Film Education.

A nice resource for Australian teachers, complete with:
Assembly Room
Electronics Laboratory
PDF Sheets
Teacher Notes
Australian Resources.

Make a Papercraft Monster collection

2007-02-04T15:22:00.000+11:00

Make your very own papercraft "strike team" with Readymech's free printable monsters.

Every cute little monster here is available as a .pdf, fully colorized, and designed to fit on a 8.5"x11" page. You're probably going to want to use thicker paper in order for these to really stand up the way they should. Of course, you can print them out in black and white, and get the kids to colour them in!

Come join our blogging team!

2007-02-03T08:44:00.000+11:00

This cartoon is meant for you! Yes, we are looking for new contributors to our blog.....Come on, give it a go - just send me an email. Group blogs work really well. Why not check out Digital Chalkie to see the power of group blogging! Then come on over, and become a regular Bibliosphere News reporter!

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

Why would anyone want to blog?

2007-02-02T19:24:00.000+11:00

Blogging has a lot going for it....but we don't often have time to stop and think about it, or have a presentation handy to show a group of people who just want to learn about the value of blogging.

This is the beauty of Slideshare..... a great online tool where you can create and save presentations, and then share them with others.

You could create things for your classes too! Or they could create things for you! What we want is to use Blogging effectively for learning and teaching is what it is really all about.

Catch this graphic on Using Blogs in Education.

Let me share a presentation with you titled
Weblogs.....why should I care? Click on the title to view via Slideshare, or just press play in the window below!

(For the bloggers amongst you, Slideshare allows you to use the URL to hyperlink, or embed the file directly into Blogger)

Children's Library of the Future?

2007-01-31T22:22:00.001+11:00

We don't need libraries anymore? Right?

Thank goodness that not everyone is so narrowsighted as to think that children only need spacious classrooms, computers and the internet to develop their creative talents, and foster a thirst for enquiry and knowledge.

I suggest that good 'future' thinking is what is really needed, and as usual (when it comes to design) the scandanavians are right into it!

Imagine a children´s library where movements activate the room and elements in the library, and where imagination is stimulated by sound, images and light. And at the same time it is possible to place oneself in isolation and become deeply absorbed.

How do we create a physical and virtual sensation of being inside and outside, of being both alone and part of a social group?

Here we have an entire conference devoted to this theme - The Children's Interactive Library - with presentations available for download in pdf form. Amongst these papers you may find ideas and inspiration for tackling the "learning spaces" agenda that we began to discuss in 2007.

Let's keep the focus clear - libraries do have a valuable place in our schools and communities!

We know that the information society is changing, and that the way children look for information and the way they use information is changing.

The question is whether we as libraries are also keeping pace with the change and if so; is it in the right direction and in what way are we involving children – with their different talents - in this proces ?

Innovation is what it is really about!

How are we going to go about this?

23 Things Aus-Style

2007-01-29T16:03:00.000+11:00

Try to get in on this SirsiDynix Institute Webinar which is being presented by staff of Yarra Plenty Library in Victoria at the special time of 12.30pm Sydney time on Tuesday 6th February. As these online events usually happen at about 3 am our time, this is a great opportunity, although during lunch isn't the best time to get away from the library crowd in schools. If you can get relieved for an hour it does add up to very cheap PD. Otherwise wait for the podcast version which should come up over the following week.

Why would I bother? I hear you ask. Lynette, Denise and Christine put it best:

Yarra Plenty Regional Library in Melbourne Australia enthusiastically took up the fabulous PLCMC 23 Things program in October, and our staff has engaged with alacrity and creativity. We know that libraries have to change, and we are opening up possibilities for our staff and our users.

We will talk about why we decided to implement Learning 2.0, how our staff experienced it, and how this has equipped us to get bold in our thinking about social networking. We'll discuss the 4 themes for our Library worker 2.0 staff development program in 2007 - getting information, enabling learning, creating content and celebrating culture; and how we are encouraging an environment of lifelong learning within the organization. (SirsiDynix Institute)
This is an idea with lots of potential for all school staff and one whose time may just have come - and in time for FOL 5 program submissions?

2007 Printz Award for Young Adult Literature

2007-01-28T14:55:00.000+11:00

This most recent of the major US awards is proving a great showcase for Australian authors. After the success of Markus Zusak and Margo Lanagan last year with Honors for The Messenger (US title:I am the Messenger) and Black Juice, Zusak has done it again with The Book Thief. This time he is joined by Sonya Hartnett in Honor status for Surrender. Very well earned kudos for both authors, and interesting that both books were published as adult titles in Australia.

Although I admit to not being a particular fan of The Book Thief, I know I am in the minority with that opinion (and must admit that parts of the book resonate with me still). The Book Thief also won a hard fought battle to take out both the Jhunt Award and The Karen Sue Simonetti Cover Art Award. The Jhunt is a survivor-like contest run each year by the very active YA discussion list Adbooks.

Not to be too parochial, let’s acknowledge the actual winner of the Printz which is an interesting first as it is a graphic novel: American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang. This is also the next discussion book for Adbooks and I was thrilled to find it at Dymocks’ Macquarie Centre yesterday after ringing around half a dozen stores within cooee of my home. Have just started and am hooked. The blog at Manhasset Library TeenZone has a nice cover picture and annotation. Gene Yang is also a teacher and has a passion for using comics in education.

More about The Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature

2007 Newbery Medal Winner

2007-01-28T13:19:00.000+11:00

Just in case you haven't heard (and have a manuscript of your own in the bottom drawer) :
a librarian has won the Newbery award for children's literature this year.

The 2007 Newbery Medal winner is The Higher Power of Lucky written by Susan Patron, illustrated by Matt Phelan, published by Simon & Schuster/Richard Jackson.

In “The Higher Power of Lucky,” Patron takes us to the California desert community of Hard Pan (population 43). Ten-year-old Lucky Trimble eavesdrops on 12-step program meetings from her hiding place behind Hard Pan’s Found Object Wind Chime Museum & Visitor Center. Eccentric characters and quirky details spice up Lucky’s life just as her guardian Brigitte’s fresh parsley embellishes her French cuisine.

“‘Lucky’ is a perfectly nuanced blend of adventure, survival (emotional and physical) and hilarious character study... as well as a blueprint for a self-examined life,” said Newbery Medal Committee Chair Jeri Kladder. “Through Lucky’s experiences, we are reminded that children support one another just as needy adults do.”

Here's an excerpt from "Patron and Wiesner Discuss their Award-Winning Books"

This story originally appeared in Children's Bookshelf on January 25, 2007 by Diane Roback, Children's Bookshelf -- Publishers Weekly, 1/25/2007

Some old habits die hard. Susan Patron, a Los Angeles librarian who served on the Caldecott committee back in 1988, remembered that "the call" to the winner was traditionally placed on Sunday night, in advance of the Monday morning announcements. "We all have that little hope—you dream about it,"she said, of her Newbery chances for The Higher Power of Lucky
[Atheneum/Jackson) . However, since she was under the impression that the call came on Sunday, when the phone didn't ring, she thought, "It's OK, I'm moving on.".........

As juvenile materials collection development manager for the Los Angeles Public Library, Patron says she's very accustomed to trying to gauge the possible award winners each year, to have them in stock for library patrons.

"Lucky was not among the books being buzzed about, not on any mock Newbery lists," she says. "It didn't make a splash. I truly did not expect anything. So it was a great shock."

She's been a librarian for 34 years, and says the award is especially meaningful to her because it was given by her peers.

From Martha Baker
_________________________________________________________________________
Bibliothek / Library - Salem International College - Kurt-Hahn-Str. 1 -
D-88662 Überlingen - Germany

Share your files anywhere, anytime!

2007-01-25T09:16:00.000+11:00

In November 2006 I wrote about Box.net - our Web 2.0 sanity box - providing free storage, and linking of resources for blogs, myspace etc. We have a link in the right-hand navitation bar to quickly create your own space.

Mashable writes that now they’ve created a new Box.net widget , which adds even more functionality.

The Flash-based widget allows you to share all kinds of files: anything on your computer, plus music, photos and videos. Many of these file types can be viewed in the widget itself: you can view a photo, for instance, or play an MP3.

You can also transfer files between widgets: visit the MySpace page of ex-Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh and you can copy his music to your own widget, or just download it. (ohh, copyright.....)

Click on the image below and take a closer look at the widget!

Literary Award Winners

2007-01-24T12:08:00.000+11:00

The American Library Association announced on 22 January the literary award winners for books and videos for children and young adults. These include the Newbery and Caldecott awards.

The list can be found at the following:
American Library Association announces literary award winners

And the winner is...

2006-12-18T10:07:00.000+11:00

Take a look at the list of winners in the 2006 Edublog Awards
Or to cut straight to the chase go to Hey Jude

Well done Judy!

The Blended Librarian

2006-12-14T19:59:00.000+11:00

Ever wondered why you are so tired all the time? Well, someone has found a name for the job we teacher librarians do and it explains everything:

"A blended librarian is one who combines traditional library and information technology skills with instructional design and technology skills and knowledge of collections of instructional resources and current trends in developing and distributing instructional resources. The blended librarian uses this combination, along with a heightened emphasis on pedagogy, to collaborate with faculty, information technologists, and instructional technologists/designers on the design of information literacy that is tightly integrated into the individual instructor’s courses and with broader programmatic curricular goals." http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlproftools/collaboration.htm

Find out more about Blended Librarianship and join this community at The Blended Librarian website. Expect a day or so delay for approval, and then explore what is on offer.

To hear the founders, John Shank and Steven Bell, download this Learning Times Green Room Podcast. The Green Room people made the mistake on an earlier podcast of commenting that librarians may be redundant soon. John and Steven beg to differ.

Marco Torres

2006-12-08T13:00:00.000+11:00

Yesterday I was fortunate to ‘experience’ Marco Torres. What an inspirational afternoon – those who have attended his sessions this week are sure to agree. He made his work appear so easy – however, this man obviously has enormous energy and talent.

+ What did I take away -

1. Good pedagogy underlies and is implicit in his work
and
2. in practical terms -

+ We have Three options

Complain
Quit
Innovate

+ Focus on ‘yes but’ group – they provide the best opportunities to innovate
+ Essential question is critical (this links to our 2006 AGQTP project at St Michael’s: higher order questioning)
+ Remember Einstein’s quote, ‘Don’t ask a question if you can look up’ [= ‘Google it’!]
+ When planning – always ask ‘Does the project have wings?’ – is there a wider audience outside the classroom?
+ Students don’t use technology, they do technology
+ Music is very important : Music is the ugly stepchild in multimedia : so - Find the musicians in the school and use them in multimedia projects
+ Be resourceful: Too many schools have many resources, but are not resourceful; Many schools have limited resources, and are resourceful
+ Creativity is the key - Remember the red paper clip – http://oneredpaperclip.blogspot.com/
+ Connect to the family
+ Connect to the community

Today my head is spinning – where to begin, and begin I will. It could be easy to be overcome by the quality of his projects, however, creativity with few resources is possible. There is no question students are motivated by technology, we all have supporting evidence - My experience with students and movie making has been exciting. I believe the real key is getting the pedagogy right – having the essential question.

If you have been one of the fortunate people to have Marco in your classroom/school this week – please share. We can all benefit from your experience. In the meantime -
1. Visit his website http://homepage.mac.com/torres21 .
2. Open sfett to view inspirational student produced movies.
3. Open flickschool for tips on getting started.

Wiki ideas for the classroom

2006-12-08T07:10:00.000+11:00

So how do I use wikis with my classes?

Go no further for the answers!

Wiki Ideas for the classroom provides a flash tutorial outlining all the benefits of wiki, and all the practical considerations for good learning and teaching.

Not only are the learning and design issues covered, but the tutorial also provides information for consideration of safety, spelling, copyright and more.

Some suggestions include: a study guide; vocab list; organizational 'epicenter' for your student's learning on a topic (see the Aristotle experiment); collabortive research projects; an “everything I needed to know I learned in Ms.Teachername’s class” wiki where students add their own observations of ways the class knowledge has spilled over into the “real world”; A travelogue from a field trip or NON-field trip that the class would have liked to take as a culmination of a unit of study; and more....

For more information you may also go to Mark Wagner "Wikis while you Work: an Introduction to Wikis in education".

The tutorial is designed to support WikiSpaces which we promote on this blog.

Travelling with Delicious ...

2006-12-06T23:32:00.000+11:00

This week is Transition week for Year 10s at Delany.

One of their sessions is an introduction to Delicious, and the creation of their own 'digital bookshelves' for their coming 2 years in the senior school.

We took the time to explain that when the new Intranet comes, they will be able to link their delicious accounts into their Intranet resources and have the best of both worlds.

Delicious has networking, but no chat or other contact between users, so it can be difficult to identify network members. We have asked students to precede their chosen username with DC and end with their year level. So DCsweetpie11 and DCalistair12 would be easy to identify as our students. They seem happy enough with this.

I think Marion College has also set up Year 10 with delicious accounts too.

Any other schools introducing Web 2.0 tools to their senior students?

Jan@Delany

Podcasting book talks!

2006-12-04T10:09:00.000+11:00

A great idea from Michele Velthuizen Middle School Librarian American School of The Hague

"I recently started encouraging our middle school students to create video podcasts about their favorite books since peer recommendations sometimes work better than my own booktalks!

I set up my computer (a Mac Book Pro which has a built-in camera and microphone) in our reading room and have students come in during lunch break to create their recordings. They rehearse for a minute, then they record themselves using QuickTimePro which has a movie recording feature that is very easy to use. I then upload the podcast onto our library web page within minutes.

I've used these podcasts when classes come in to check out books and update their reading cards.

Click on this link http://fc.ash.nl/~mvelthuizen/, then click on "Watch a video podcast" on the main screen to see some samples.

To follow up from Marita's post on graphic novels, you might like to check out iFanboy.com.

The iFanboy.com Comic Book Podcast is a weekly talk show discussing the best in current comic book releases.

Ron, Conor and Josh will share what they loved and hated about the week's comics. With a deep, sometimes scary knowledge of the depths and intricacies of pop culture and the geek lifestyle, the conversations can spin off in many directions. While comics, graphic novels and trade paperbacks are the center of the iFanboy universe, the discussion often covers the video games, movies and TV shows which will capture the fancy of your regular comic book reader.

Something different for older students.

Getting Graphic

2006-11-28T23:35:00.000+11:00

I started a new discussion at Read On today asking people to share student’s current favourite reads, with a view to starting some recommended lists for various age groups. Please join in when you get the chance – it will be interesting to compare notes.

When answering my own question first thoughts were about our comic collection, maybe because this was discussed on OZTL last night. Here is a bit of what I posted to that discussion, plus some local additions to the literature:

At Patrician Brothers our graphic novels are a big hit across the board. Like certain series books (Harry Potter, Deltora Quest, Alex Rider, Darren Shan) they have an appeal to reluctant and avid readers alike. In this sense they are a real boon in our efforts to develop a reading culture. Whilst many boys read books as well, some are having their first (and maybe only) positive reading experience with comics.

Earlier in the year I was travelling home on the train from our athletics carnival with the boys and was chatting with one of our very avid Year 8 readers. He was reading a graphic novel and said to me that it was actually taking him longer to read than a novel (and he is a very fast reader). We had an interesting conversation about why that might be. I don't think we should undervalue the visual.

Favourite links to resources on this topic:

Secret Origin of Good Readers
Free book download. Check down the page for the 2006 version. Plenty of quotes,links, annotated reviews, information for librarians and teaching activities.

The "Decline" of Reading in America, Poverty and Access to Books, and theuse of Comics in Encouraging Reading by Stephen Krashen, Teachers CollegeRecord, February, 2005 (More in Krashen's book The Power of Reading - search here for local publication details)

Di Laycock of Barker College has published an article and completed an action research project on graphic novels, adding a much needed Australian flavour to this field:

Developing a Graphic Novel Collection, Synergy, Vol.3, Num.2 (PDF)

Getting graphic with guys: Using graphic novels to engage boys in school reading From this page choose IBSC 2005/06 Action Research Project from the menu on the left.

Okay, I know you don't have time for all this reading. Maybe in the holidays?

Search the Biblioblogosphere and Beyond

2006-11-28T08:14:00.000+11:00

It's worth taking a look at LibWorm to find the latest items of interest in librarianship - join LibWorm and create your own reading list, collect your favourite feeds, or just collect clippings. Choose from Feed Categories or Subjects. Nice one!

Of course, this also had to come along from Google! Go take a look!

Web2.0 & Primary Students

2006-11-24T13:38:00.000+11:00

I wish to share an ICT initiative from St Michael’s, Baulkham Hills, and I hope we receive some responses to guide our future planning!

A colleague and I attended an Introduction to Podcasting course and as a result our Year threes and a class of year 4s have been introduced to podcasting this term …by two novices! They have been our second ‘group’ of learners to embrace Web2.0.

Audacity [free download] is the program we are using for creating the audio file, then using Lame [free download] to convert the files to MP3. We are yet to load the files to the web. Our students have been highly motivated by the opportunity to publish their research and understandings using podcasting. This is the positive aspect of the tool, combined with the students demonstrating some prior knowledge and understanding of audio - In year 3 we were able to add some ‘zing’ to the important [dry!] topic of Recycling!

Evidence from this exercise has informed us of the possibilities of podcasting with younger students. We have the opportunity to combine this with evidence gathered from our St Michael’s AGQTP project. Both projects indicate high levels of student motivation when they engage in a social networking environment. We used www.think.com as the tool for social networking in our AGQTP project. In that project, we were able to gather data not only related to our research question, but on many other areas including the social and ethical use of computers. For example: we elected to use the online tool Think.com as a secure environment for our research project. Several discussions were held with the students regarding social and ethical behaviours in the Web2.0 environment. Despite this, we had evidence of inappropriate comments from [unexpected!] students towards others. Think.com was therefore a scaffold, a secure and controlled environment - valuable discussion ensured, thus scaffolding primary students into the Web2.0 environment.

Moving into 2007, I foresee a wider use of these two environments at St Michael’s.
Radio WillowWeb scaffolds students, and I believe this is a model worth replicating as we enhance student learning. Think.com has the facility to upload multimedia files [i.e. podcasts], thus providing a secure environment to develop our students’ ethical use of the Web2.0 environment.

Please comment and give us encouragement to keep developing ‘authentic’ Web2.0 educational pedagogy in our large primary school…with all its associated issues relating to access to hardware etc etc!

Read On! - An update from Marita

2006-11-19T23:41:00.000+11:00

At last Thursday’s Network/PD Day we neglected to give the group an update on our readers’ advisory initiative, launched at an after school meeting on 9th November. The “plan” (in its most flexible sense) is to start with course materials provided by the good people at NoveList (part of our EBSCO database suite) and develop our own local context support materials.

WHAT IS READERS’ ADVISORY?
Readers’ advisory is that part of our role where we assist students to discover reading which matches their wants. Like the reference interview, it is a specialised interaction and a good opportunity to practice one of our great potential strengths: the human touch. Stephen Abram in Waiting for your cat to bark – Competing with Google and its Ilk, Part 3 suggests the following summary of where opportunity lies for libraries:

Librarians aren’t just about search; we’re about improving the quality of the question. End users are about “find and discover.” We need to be clear on that. If we focus on search, we are focusing on Google’s best game. If we focus on the question, the human touch, and overall customer experience, then we will not only survive, we’ll thrive.

And, of course, in schools readers’ advising skills have relevance for teacher librarians, library assistants and classroom teachers.

RA-101 Lite
The course materials provided are based on sound principles developed from research and practice. However, most examples are about adult users and the references used are not Australian. Thus the need for local content.

RA-101, full version, was a joint project of EBSCO’s NoveList and the St. Louis Public Library, Minnesota. It grew out of a manual called Talking With Readers: A Workbook for Readers’ Advisory, by Duncan Smith and Suzanne Mahmoodi, Ipswich, Mass.: Ebsco, 2000, which is available from NoveList as a PDF file for subscribers. (Readers’ Advisory tab.)

Talking With Readers was developed using action research, but that is another (very interesting) story!

READ-ON!
Thanks to Frances Manning we have a wiki space and a good name for our context building exercise. When you go to Read-On! Click on “Manage Space” to see who has joined (about five so far). Contact a member and and ask them to send you an invitation to join. (Also done from Manage Space by a member). The space is evolving and contributions are eagerly awaited.

Finally another quote from Stephen Abrams' article:

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” Let’s be clear – that’s too long term – we need to do something now.

Introducing our next super contributor!

2006-11-19T08:53:00.000+11:00

Welcome to our newest contributor, Marita Thomson, who has been 'blasting the cyberwaves' for what seems like 'forever'! Marita is busy exploring all sorts of digital and web tools in her work at Patrician Brothers.
There's Marita, bottom left, with some of the other attendees at the IWB 2006 conference. I'll leave it to her 'showcase' her initiatives. Let me just say - they are ALL worthwhile.

Smart Learning is just one of these...and there are more. Don't you just love how easy it is to learn from each other?

Welcome to our Newest Contributor!

2006-11-15T21:34:00.000+11:00

One way or another, there's been a lot going on in some of our school libraries that needs to be shared with with others. Collaboration and the social networking power of Web 2.0 means ....... you guessed it - time for this blog to develop and more in to a newer phase.

Patricia Lee from St Michael's has joined me as a co-contributor (read 'blog team member'), so that she can share directly some of the things that are happening at her school as well as explore the world of 'professional' blogging.

Watch this space for Patricia's contributions........................

Are you keen to explore the world of 'professional' blogging too? I would welcome a couple of other keen and regular bloggers to our Weekly Update.

Lets make this blog a great place to share discoveries as well as initiatives and achievements in our schools.

Virtual Bookshelf - the 'shelfari' possibilities.....

2006-11-15T21:25:00.000+11:00

I spotted this, and thought that this new Web 2.0 tool provides a great virtual tool, to create a great virtual display, and provide the option for virtual sharing of books.

I can see a virtual display like this sitting quite nicely as part of a library web site, library wiki, CeNet, or just a classroom blog.

Imagine the possibilities for promoting reading - premier's reading challenge? or anything really.........

Seems like a cool tool. Can't wait to see who gives Shelfari first go!

We're Wondering - questions from Year 3

2006-11-08T22:22:00.000+11:00

Have you got computers and library books handy? Looking for an information hunt to help kids in another school. Then why not dive right into the questions being asked by the 'minilegends' from Glenelg school in SA.

Al Upton visited us at Parramatta recently, and met some of our teachers. Al works hard exploring learning opportunities using technology.

So visit "We're Wondering" podcasts, listen to the kids questions (divide them up for your own kids perhaps) and get the kids to write a comment back with an answer to one of the questions. Al explains how he did these podcasts (easy tools) and how he made them accessible using box.net, the free online storage solution, which we promoted recently.

We're Wondering Podcasts

It would be great if a couple of classes could reply to the children soon! Or perhaps you have some lunchtime library users who would enjoy this challenge.

Book Plates - from My Home Library

2006-11-07T22:39:00.000+11:00

Anne Fine welcomes readers to My Home Library with the following words:

Every day, we get messages from people who've just been told about us, or have stumbled upon The Home Library by accident. Schools, families and libraries all over the world: they're all delighted with our bookplates. Some of you are even making requests for different wordings that will suit you better. We're working on these as fast as we can, so keep checking.

For new visitors, let me assure you our bookplates can be used any way you like (except for commercial purposes). Some people print onto sticky labels; others print on paper, then use scissors and glue. (Don't forget you can always print out the black and white plates on coloured paper. Some look remarkably different against a fresh background.)

Everyone needs a Home Library. Make sure that yours keeps growing. Don't forget that books furnish the mind, and unfurnished minds are EMPTY and TIRESOME.

You will find black and white, as well as coloured book plates, in all shapes and sizes. There are lots of other good links too, including bookmarks, book reviews, tips & tricks, and more.

So dip in and enjoy!

Squirl: A site for collectors

2006-11-06T09:33:00.000+11:00

If you like organising your things, and maybe even cataloguing things....if you like Library Thing, and if you are a collector of things, then Squirl might be the place for you.

Just this weekend I have been musing over my vast CD music collection, and thinking that a Library Thing approach to my CDs and even my vintage collectibles wouldn't be such a bad idea!

So being alerted to Squirl seemed timely and 'kinda fun!' Now I just want to see how many of my Library Thing friends make the jump! You have the option of creating a public or private collection, and a number of templates are provided. Squirl also incorporates the option of organising your book collection too - good if you want to keep things that you organise within the same management space.

2006-11-02T07:57:00.000+11:00

For anyone who didn't notice - let me bring to your attention the small icon on this top right hand of this blog.

Box.net is a Web 2.0 'sanity' box! as it provides you with a free 1 gb of storage space online. There are many other great features. Click on the icon on the right, and get yourself free online storage!

Eclectic Bunch of Links I meant to share....

2006-10-30T09:40:00.000+11:00

Educational Hotlinks for New Teachers

http://131.125.2.61/~njcms/newTeacherResources/index.php
These websites have been chosen for their quality and special relevance for new teachers.
Though this is not Australian, it provides some useful material.

NewsMap

http://muti.co.za/static/newsmap.html
Select the continent/location. Click on any country on the chosen continent map to get the links to ten current news headlines for that country. Click on the headline link to reach the article. Try this... zoom in on the map and click on a city to get news specific to that area of the selected
country.

Philosophy from YouTube
Monty Python - International Philosophy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrShK-NVMIU

For those who know their philosophers, check them out on YouTube

School-Libraries
(not sure about this, but you might like to add your school library?)

School-Libraries.Net is the largest directory of school library and available on the net. It has recently changed hosts and is now hosted by StandardCatalogs.com, a service to the library community offered by the H. W. Wilson Company.

Now we need your help:

1. Please visit School-Libraries.net

2. We are not strong in the international libraries listed. We would like to add more countries and many libraries from each country. If you would like to list your library, or school, please send us the information requested at School-Libraries.net. The more listings we
have the more useful the site will become.

Check the website for more information.