Creative Commons and Schools

Thanks to Karen in her blog K-12 Open Ed I found a post about Creative Commons. I am making a library page for our staff and students about using Creative Commons in a classroom context. Karen often reflects on issues related to open education and many can relate to those of us in education anywhere in [...]

Promoting reading to teens

I really like this promotion video that I came across in a library blog set up for teenagers about a summer reading program. I don’t know how many signed up for the “Metamorphosis Summer Reading Club for teens ages 13 and up” but it was certainly catchy. TeenPoints.org is also a great site for advertising books/reading and [...]

Cuil – a search engine to rival Google?

Ok, it’s very early days but it’s interesting that, after I thought that Google had conquered the world, new search engines are coming into being and they offer good/interesting alternatives. I have discussed, in this blog, some of the visual alternatives and today I found out about Cuil, not visual but with some good features.
Launched [...]

Copyright – YouTube and TeacherTube

Here I go again, trying to explain about copyright responsibilities to teachers. Always, when I mention copyright to teachers, a glazed look comes into their eyes. Although I try to put copyright as simply as I can, many answer “but it’s for teaching” when they want to make a copy of [...]

100 Unbelievably Useful Reference sites

Having a break from the “big” picture questions, I have been searching on the web for various pieces of information and I stumbled across this site. There are so many reference sites, do we need any more? Probably not but I discovered this fascinating site. I found myself scrolling through 100 Unbelievably Useful Reference Sites You’ve Never Heard Of from [...]

Tim Winton reading from “Breath”

Tim Winton’s Breath

The Herald Sun had a piece “In Winton’s voice” on June 22nd. The article was short but it did provide some useful extras. You can listen to Tim Winton reading 3 extracts from the novel as well as watch a short video trailer for it. The passages are good examples of Winton’s descriptive prose. The book [...]

Blogging and Teachers

Blogging readiness

After the “Technology Day” today the thing I would like all teachers to do would be to start, and maintain, a blog. There are several reasons to do this but there are 2 major ones.The first reason is for them to understand what others are discussing, debating, thinking about and that gives anyone a better understanding of [...]

Web 2.0. Introducing it to teachers!

As I related in a previous post, I have an hour session to explain Web2.0 to some teachers. I played around with a wiki and loaded up a lot of the Commoncraft Videos from TeacherTube.
I have changed my thinking about the approach as those who will be in the session have vastly teaching methods and [...]

Wired for books – Listen to the authors

Wired for Books is a site that features a large collection of interviews with different authors as well as poems, stories, plays, essays and lectures, for children and adults. David Kurz created the the website to take advantage of the many literary events held at Ohio University and it has grown form there.
Many interviews were recorded [...]

Google Maps and the Tour de France

 

Tour de France

Whilst on holiday in Brisbane, I stayed up late to watch the Tour de France. I always find it fascinating to watch how the riders negotiate (or not) all the hazards thrown up in this race. Reading the daily newspaper I found a small article about tracking the Tour via Google maps. When [...]