A blog by the School Library Association of Victoria
Sep 3rd, 2010 by slav
Next week sees a number of free professional learning sessions looking at digital tools for learning and teaching. Presented by SYN Media in conjunction with the State Library of Victoria, all events are free, but bookings are essential. Highlights include:
A fantastic opportunity to discover more about ways to engage students.
Sep 3rd, 2010 by slav
For Victorian Schools only.
Are any of your students and teachers involved in using interesting and innovative online tools?
Have you been working with students and teachers on copyright, creative commons and Intellectual property?
Are you interested in helping your students to build online resources to share their discoveries with others? If you answer YES to any or all of the questions above then the SLAV Web Elements Engaged project might be for you. We need a number of schools to be involved in the development of online video/audio resources to help share knowledge, skills and links that make use of online technologies and help educate others about copyright and IP.
Being part of the project will provide schools with:
Those involved in the project will also become part of an online community where project resources, ideas and learnings will be shared, discussed and reviewed.
The following are some of the areas we would like to cover as part of the project:
If you are interested in being involved please fill out the following online Expression of Interest Form.
Expressions of Interest close: Monday 13th September 2010
To send any additional information including audio or video clips to show us what you have done, please contact the SLAV office on phone: 9349 5822 or email: slav@netspace.net.au for uploading instructions.
Timeline: Project will run from September 2010 until May 2011.
Sep 2nd, 2010 by slav
Have you and/or your students created a book trailer? If so, you could be in line for an award. A couple of days ago, Joyce Valenza blogged about the New Book Video Trailer Awards to be held by the School Library Journal.
The competition is global and the categories are:
- Publisher/author created for Elementary readers (PreK-6)
- Publisher/author created for Secondary readers (7-12)
- Student created for Elementary readers (PreK-6)
- Student created for Secondary readers (7-12)
- Adult (anyone over 18) created for Elementary readers (PreK-6)
- Adult created for Secondary readers (7-12)
The deadline is 17th September. For more information go to Joyce’s brilliant blog Never Ending Search.
Sep 2nd, 2010 by slav
Sep 1st, 2010 by slav
Let’s all celebrate Indigenous Literacy Day today. As part of the National Numeracy and Literacy Week, there are a number of activities taking place. The website explains:
Indigenous Literacy Day aims to help raise funds to raise literacy levels and improve the lives and opportunities of Indigenous Australians living in remote and isolated regions. We need your support to help raise funds to buy books and literacy resources for these communities.
What happens on Indigenous Literacy Day
- Events and fundraisers are held across Australia.
- Participating publishers donate 5% (or more) of their takings from their invoices on ILD.
- Participating booksellers donate 5% (or more) of their takings from sales on ILD.
- Participating schools host The Great Book Swap and other fundraising activities.
- Participating businesses, clubs and organisations host The Great Book Swap and other fundarising activities.
- Across Australia people attend ILD events including local Great Book Swaps, purchase books at participating bookshops or organise their own private fundraising literary lunches and morning teas.
- People everywhere pause to read to support Indigenous literacy.
There are lots of activities to choose from to support this important initiative.
The MeeGenius library enables users to read children’s books, personalise and share them for free.
A range of classic children’s books are available including versions of:
The stories have been recorded and are read aloud. As the story progresses, words are highlighted for readers to follow and learn. This makes the MeeGenius library perfect for young children learning to read and young language learners. Users can personalise stories for specific audiences, however if users wish to save these stories for use later on, they must register and login. Some stories appear to be abridged, others are not.
A MeeGenius app is available for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch as well (A$2.49).
Thanks to Kelly Tenkely from i Learn technology for the heads up on this great tool!
Aug 31st, 2010 by slav
Big sister to Sweet search, findingDulcinea is a must see site for school library staff. The aim of the founders of the site is “to bring users the best information on the Web for any topic, employing human insight and methodical review.”
So what exactly does findingDulcinea provide?
FindingDulcinea selects and annotates credible, high-quality and trustworthy Web sites, saving time for both the novice and experienced user.Each piece, whether a Web Guide, a Beyond the Headlines news story or a Netcetera feature article, undergoes the same meticulous research. The Web sites included in each piece are connected through original narrative, providing users with information on each site before they visit them.
- Web Guides
- Beyond The Headlines
- Netcetera
- Custom Search
findingDulcinea provides a range of web guides to popular research topics. Their FAQ page explains:
Our Web Guides provide resources on thousands of topics.
Our collection of Web Guides began with the original Guide to Web Search. With the Guide to Web Search, you should be able to find any Web resource you need, but we’ve drilled down into much more specific topics to help with more targeted search.
Our collection of nearly 300 topic-specific Web Guides is always growing, and the Web Guides already on the site are updated frequently by our research team.
The Guides include fun topics such as Family Travel, academic subjects such as Elementary School Social Studies Resources, serious health topics such as Leukemia.
To find a Web Guide use our site search function (in the upper right corner of any findingDulcinea Web page) or browse our guides from the most general guide on the Web Guides main page to the most specific guides by using the Web Guide topics shown on the right side of any Web Guides page.
More information is available in this video:
Although the site has a US bias, there are plenty of web guides and other resources for global audiences.
Aug 30th, 2010 by slav
The School Library Association of Victoria will celebrate its 50th anniversary with a Gala Dinner on Thursday, 9 September in the Ballroom at the Rendezvous Hotel. Damian Callinan will be the MC, so it will be a fun opportunity to catch up with colleagues old and new.
The Booking Form is at:
http://www.slav.schools.net.au/downloads/01home/Gala_Dinner_0910.pdf
Please pass this invitation on to your networks. SLAV’s 50th is definitely worth celebrating!
Aug 30th, 2010 by slav
I work very closely with the Learning Support team at my school and we are always looking for ways to present material to our students that is engaging and motivating. We began using a Ning with our Year 8 and 9 students this year, and decided to have a supporting Wiki, originally for our Year 7 boys. With Ning moving to pay only, I decided to trial how discussions would work on our Wiki and the following activity was developed.Learning together wiki
I wanted some graphics to add to our Truman Show section and created word clouds using Wordle and Tagxedo. I used two different summaries of the film as the text to create these graphics. Both were saved as .jpegs and uploaded to our Learning Together Wiki.Although most students had not begun discussing the film in their English class, we explored the two word clouds together. I explained how they had been created, and that the larger the word in the graphic, the more it appeared in the text that I had placed into the text box. Therefore those larger words would probably be more important.We began by comparing the two graphics. Which words seemed more prominent? Were these prominent words the same in each graphic? We then brainstormed different words they suggested, focusing on the larger ones, and these were written on the white board. By looking at the words they had chosen students could see that there was a media theme to the film. Words like “soundstage”, “network”, “TV”, “scripted” and “audience” indicated that the film might have something to do with a television show. Several students picked up the word “zoolike” in the Tagxedo, and this led to some animated discussion as to why that particular word might be included. “Seahaven” was large and students felt perhaps this was where Truman lived, or wanted to go. “Unwanted” and “prisoner” were also words that were discussed, and we pondered on why they might be included in a summary.Students were then asked to write just a couple of sentences predicting what they thought the film might be about now that they had analysed both the Wordle and the Tagxedo. Their responses are in the Discussion Forum connected with that page. Each class had their own thread, although they were allowed to read those responses from other classes once they had posted.This was a simple, fun activity for the students, which they all enjoyed. The Wordle and Tagxedo provided a springboard for a class discussion, analysis and prediction. Students were interested to know how to create their own word clouds so links were provided. Several asked for more details about how Wikis worked and how they were created, thinking ahead to how they could use them in the future.We will continue to use the Wiki as a place to explore The Truman Show further during term 3. Learning Support staff have created notes, character summaries and quotes, which are on the wiki and these will help students as they continue their work on The Truman Show.
Aug 29th, 2010 by slav
SBNING – - et nettverk for skolebibliotekinteresserte i Norden
NING for discussions about the school libraries in the Nordic countries – in Norwegian, Danish, Swedish – and 12 groups in English
Ping is a social networking site that makes learning music fun, simple and accessible, and provides creative musical opportunities for middle year school students in Australia.
For the first time, the World Report is being made available online in a fully searchable database, complete with graphical map interface. By clicking on a country’s marker, you can either select “View individual report”
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
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