Useful links

  by  crystal.eisenhauer 

• 20 Google Docs Secrets for busy teachers and students. – Edgalaxy 20 great tips every teacher and student should be using to get the most of the collaborative learning opportunities Google Doc’s offers.
• 24 Digital Tools That Represent New Ways To Study
• Wartime Snapshots ”Wartime snapshots are background information guides with teaching activities on topics of Australia’s wartime history.  The wartime snapshots relate to posters developed by the Department of Veterans’ Affairs and distributed for Anzac Day, Remembrance Day or to mark special commemorative anniversaries.  These guides containing background information, resources, website links and teaching activities and are suitable for teachers to use to introduce or explore a theme, or encourage discussion around an image.”
• cooltoolsforschools » home A great wiki site to find good resources
• Top scientists agree climate has changed for good – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) ABC article: “The nation’s top climate scientists and science bodies have for the first time endorsed a major report that says Australia’s climate has shifted permanently in some cases.”
• How 7 Education Technology Platforms Have Changed How We Learn
• Metropolitan Library System eMedia on Vimeo
• Ken Robinson on Passion on Vimeo In this video from The School of Life, Robinson articulates the ethos at the heart of The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything and echoes, with his signature blend of wit and wisdom, many of the insights in this indispensable collection of advice on how to find your purpose and do what you love.
• Social Media in Education: Pros and Cons – EdTechReview  Social media is being widely used to support learning. It offers new opportunities to share knowledge and experiences in fun and exciting ways. Good post and great infographic.
• How To Cite Social Media: MLA & APA Formats | TeachBytes Now you can officially cite social media sources in MLA and APA formats.
• Why (Not How) We Should Use iPads In Education | Edudemic  You can also insert the term “Tablet” for iPad: the questions and arguments for thinking about the task before the technologies are still very valid and worth considering.
• 6 Time-Saving Writing Apps For Students | Edudemic Some options for organizing your writing and writing on the go with different apps and web tools.
• 9 Steps to Create A Classroom Poster Using Google Docs ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning  ”Google Docs has a drawing canvas that is really excellent for creating posters for your classroom and here is a step by step guide on how to do it”.
• Educational Technology and Mobile Learning: writing tools  Links to posters on writing.
• 22 Ways to Apply Blooms Taxonomy to Twitter ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning ” A good graphic from Teachbytes”
• Designing Libraries – Planning school libraries  Collection of articles that discuss the important considerations for designing the learning environment for modern, 21st Century school libraries.
• 10 Techy Icebreakers for The 21st Century Teacher ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning Several lists of digital tools you can use for these activities. Icebreakers are ” discussion questions or activities used to help participants relax and ease into a group meeting or learning situation” (Dover, 2004). Icebreakers are very important in the learning-teaching process that takes place within the classroom. They can help in creating and maintaining a healthy and successful learning environment for students and are also the best warm-ups to get students engaged in a learning task.”
• Barcode Feature & Bibliophiles | Free | AppCrawlr: Search Engine for Apps
• Apps similiar to Kobo – 1 million FREE Books – Read eBooks! » alternative recomendations » for iphone,ipad  Book apps
• Cool Cat Teacher Blog: 89 cool apps, sites, and tools for teaching  A lot of those mentioned are for Apple products but some android devices too.

CBCA shortlist 2013 and the older readers list links

Congratulations to everyone who was connected to the short list this year, writers, publishers and of course the judges. The judges have such a difficult job to whittle down the long list to the short list. As always, there will be discussion with my colleagues about what was left out and their personal favourites. We have many of the titles on this years shortlist but a few did not make it to our shelves as we try to cater for our clientele and not break our budget. This year we had only one of the picture books,  A Day to Remember by  Mark Wilson and text by Jackie French, and none of the Eve Pownell shortlisted books.

Older Readers Short List 2013 (These books are for mature readers)

• Grant, Neil The Ink Bridge (Allen & Unwin)
  • Neil Grant has written a YA novel that tackles the very divisive political issue of asylum seekers whilst still delivering a story with enough action and suspense for our boys to enjoy the tale without losing poignancy
  • Teacher reviews  here and teaching notes also available from Allen & Unwin site.
• Lanagan, Margo Sea Hearts (Allen & Unwin)
  • This is the one book in this part of the list I have not read and we do not have in our library.
  • Reading groups guide, notes for teachers PDF and reviews by teachers PDF are also available from Allen and Unwin site.. Interestingly it is called The Brides of Rollrock Island for the US market
• MacLeod, Doug The Shiny Guys (Penguin Group)
  • An engrossing and affecting story on another serious subject, depression. Colin is a 15-year-old boy who, after a very traumatic event, is hospitalised. He exists in a world where fantasy and reality merge in his mind. Some of the other patients offer him friendship and are part of the lighter aspects in the story. Although not a comedic novel there are many touches of dark humour.
  • You can read more about this book on the Goodreads reviews page, the ReadAlert (SLV) site and a page on The Wheeler Center also discusses the novel.
• Touchell, Dianne Creepy & Maud (Fremantle Press) I have yet to read this and it must now be on my to-read list.
  • Teaching notes PDF is available and there are quite a few reviews on Goodreads
• Wakefield, Vikki Friday Brown (Text Publishing)
  • This story has many fascinating characters and very tangled relationships. Having lost her mother, seventeen-year-old Friday goes on the run and falls in with a band of street children who are led by an unpredictable but charismatic young woman called Arden. She running to escape her memories but throughout the book, Friday remains haunted by the ghost of her recently dead mother, and also the  family curse; a history of drowning.  Things don’t go well and Friday is lost, alone and afraid.
  • Teaching notes PDF is available. There is also an article you can read on the Readings site where Vikki Wakefield talks about the process of writing Friday Brown.
• Zail, Suzy The Wrong Boy (Black Dog Books, Walker Books Australia)
  • Suzy Zail is an Australian-born author and daughter of a Holocaust survivor. She writes this her first fictional story in the first person. Hanna Mendel, is a 15-year-old girl living with her older sister Erika and her parents in the Debrecen Jewish ghetto in Hungary.  She is a good student and talented pianist who has always behaved appropriately. Her world changes when the Nazis arrive to announce that the ghetto is closing and the family will be “resettled”. After a long train journey in a cattle car they end up in the camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau. There are examples of many survival strategies throughout the story and it quickly becomes evident that there are no longer any simple solutions or simple judgements in Hanna’s life. The characters are flawed and changeable, not simply good or evil but often a mixture of both. There is also a romance that blossoms between Hanna and the camp Captain’s son, Karl.  He does not seem to be like his Father and sees more to Hana than her Jewish heritage. Her mother and sister do not fare well but this is the story of Hanna. She may be a naïve teenager  but she is determined to survive. The end of the book leaves an opening for a further story.
  • Classroom Ideas PDF is available from the publishers sites and there are Reviews on the Insideadog site and Goodreads

Younger Readers Short List 2013 (Intended for independent younger readers.)

• French, Jackie Pennies for Hitler (Angus & Robertson, HarperCollins)
• French, Simon Other Brother (Walker Books Australia)
• Gleitzman, Morris After (Viking Books, Penguin Group (Australia))
• Hartnett, Sonya Children of the King (Viking Books, Penguin Group (Australia))
• Herrick, Steven Pookie Aleera is Not my Boyfriend (University of Queensland Press
• Millard, Glenda & Stephen Michael King The Tender Moments of Saffron Silk (HarperCollins)

The World’s Highest Peaks: Scaling heights via Google maps

Have you ever wanted to climb to the top of the tallest mountain peaks in the world but are afraid of heights? You aren’t quite fit enough or things such as avalanches, rock slides and altitude sickness worry you?

You now have the opportunity to get some idea about the sights that the intrepid travellers see via Now Google Maps. It has added some amazing imagery taken whilst scaling the highest mountains on various continents, from the Everest Base Camp (Asia), Mt. Kilimanjaro (Africa) Mt. Aconcagua (South America) and Mt. Elbrus (Europe). Also included are Namche Bazaar (the gateway to the high Himalayas) and Mudslide Bridge, the long bridge across a chasm along the trekking route from Lukla to Namche Bazaar, that has been destroyed many times

It is all part of World’s Highest Peaks, the latest special collection of Google Maps. As with all Google views you can zoom in, up/down and 360 degree swivel (Every location you see from the treks is made up of 12 photos (three in each direction, strung together). It also offers a small map to place it geographically.

Above is an example of one in the collection.

At 19,341 ft, Uhuru is the highest point on Mount Kilimanjaro. Called the Roof of Africa, Kilimanjaro is the highest peak on the African continent and highest freestanding mountain in the world.

I like it that the images have not only captured the magnificent natural scenery, but you can also see man-made structures along the way. The collection has pictures that show base camps and even cliff-side monasteries.

I will be sending the link to the geography department and add to our store of good resources for our students.

Useful Links – Weekly

• It Will Be Awesome if They Don’t Screw it Up: 3D Printing | Public Knowledge An article that looks at the intellectual property implications of 3D printing (written with quite some detail).

• My Top 10 Web Curation Tools as A Teacher ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning A good list of some curation web tools that are easy to use and that versions that can be used with most computers

• 16 e-textbook providers: Who’s publishing and who’s selling? | Education Dive ”16 names in e-textbooks that you should know about, as well as what each of them are doing to set themselves apart in a competitive new area of education:”

• Ebook Friendly – ebooks made simple and cool  ”The Ebook Friendly is a site for e-book geeks. You can find here simple tips and fun stuff about ebooks, digital publishing and the future of books!”

• Guest post: Steve Saville of Alfriston College, Auckland, on comics in the classroom | Books and Adventures  “Post by Steve Saville, deputy principal at Alfriston College in South Auckland. For four years, Steve has championed the use of comics in the classroom through a series of innovative workshops which have allowed students to develop and publish their own high quality comic books. In the first of a two-part guest post, Steve tells the story of Alfriston’s unique comic book education project.”

• Learning Ratings | Common Sense Media Ratings are given for a variety of digital media products based on core academic content. There is an assessment of the learning potential. Alternative games and sites that achieve the same goals as the product being reviewed as also given.

• The Difference Between Content Curation and Link Spraying | Social Media Today

• Caitlin Barry: Educators, Please Stop Confusing Media Literacy with Ed Tech

• Great Critical Thinking Map for your Classroom ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning ”You ask any teacher today about the skills they want their students to develop and you will get critical thinking skills as an obvious answer; of course together with other skills. With the advance of technology and the educational paradigmatic shift that ensued , critical thinking skills have occupied a central part in the literature of teaching and learning pedagogy, not that these skills were not important before but I would say they came to the foreground now more than in any time before”

• A Bill of Rights and Principles for Learning in the Digital Age The broad aim is to inspire an open, learner-centered dialogue around the rights, responsibilities, and possibilities for education in the globally-connected world of the present and beyond

• 11 Facebook Updates to Privacy and Timeline You Should Know | Social Media Today  ”It’s common for Facebook to undergo drastic (or silent) changes whether the users like it or not. The real question is, how ready are you when Facebook is determined to ‘make the world more open and connected’? Have you made full use of the privacy and account settings to your advantage? Also, if you’ve been observant enough you should’ve discovered several improvements on the existing features to make them more visible and user friendly. Why not give this list a run-through and see if you missed any.”

• A Must Have Check List Poster for Innovative Teachers ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

• Maybe ‘What do you want your students to do?’ is the wrong question | Dangerously Irrelevant  ”Laptops. iPads (or other tablet devices). Chromebooks. Maybe even netbooks or ultrabooks… As more schools and districts move toward 1:1 computing, one of the most common questions is ‘What device should we get for our students?’ The typical response is another question: ‘Well, what do you want your students to do?’ I wonder, though, if that’s the wrong question…”

• How Teachers are Using Tumblr in the Classroom | Emerging Education Technology Some of the different ways teachers are using tumblr in their classrooms

• 10 Secrets To Unlocking The Learning Potential Of The iPad The ideas and concepts apply to tablets (or mobile devices) not just the ipad

• ML: Macaulay Library The Mcaulay Library is the world’s largest and oldest scientific archive of biodiversity audio and video recordings

• Library Services in the Digital Age | Pew Internet Libraries

• ‘Bill of Rights’ Seeks to Protect Students’ Interests as Online Learning Expands – Technology – The Chronicle of Higher Education ”12 educators, many of them well known in online-education circles, did manage to draft a document that they hope will serve as a philosophical framework for protecting the interests of students as online education. Called “A Bill of Rights and Principles for Learning in the Digital Age,” the document proposes a set of “inalienable rights” that the authors say students and their advocates should demand from institutions and companies that offer online courses and technology tools.”

• 26 Latest Photoshop Tutorials 2013 | Tutorials | Graphic Design Junction Jan 2013 Photoshop Tutorials. These tutorials are created by Photoshop experts. The article gathers professional Photoshop tutorials that may enhance designing skills and improve the quality of digital works.

• The Ultimate List of Pinterest Tips – Blogging with Amy  A good number of tips. Areas covered: Pinterest Basics; How to Use Pinterest to Drive Traffic; How to Add the “Pin It” Button to Posts; Pinterest Copyright Issues; Further Reading

• How to Track Traffic From Pinterest in Google Analytics How many referrals does Pinterest generate? How many people use the “pin it” button on a site? Which pictures on a site are the most pinned and repinned? Here are four ways to measure Pinterest using Google Analytics.

• New Pew Internet & American Life Project Report Looks at Younger Americans’ Reading and Library Habits | LJ INFOdocket A new report (Oct 2012) from Pew Internet focusing on the reading habits and public library habits of younger Americans’ (ages 16-29) is now available online.

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Useful links

  by  Jeannine St. Amand 

• Top Ten Tips for Facilitating an Effective Primary Source Analysis | Teaching with the Library of Congress  A blog post at “Teaching with the Library of Congress” on 2011-09-13.

• Visualising China: explore historical photos of China Visualising China is a JISC-funded project to allow users to explore and enhance more than 8000 digitised images of photographs of China taken between 1850 and 1950.

• Libraries as makerspaces Slides from a presentation by Kristin Fontichiaro

• YALSA » Connect, Create, Collaborate: Sparking the Maker Movement at your Library A makerspace (sometimes also referred to as a hackerspace, hackspace or hacklab) is a location where people with common interests, often in computers, technology, science, electronics, engineering, and/or digital or electronic art, can connect, create and collaborate. Makerspaces can be viewed as open community labs incorporating elements of machine shops, workshops, and/or studios where hackers and makers come together to share resources and knowledge to build and make things. Many libraries have embraced the maker movement and have incorporated makerspaces into the services they provide.

• Creating infographics | screencast tutorial on Vimeo From School library Journal Plus “You can create infographics – visual representations of data – from scratch using free web tools. LIbrary consultant and educator Linda W. Braun takes you step by step through making your own infographic using easel.ly and info.gram.”

• Baker & Taylor Partners with Findaway World to Offer Library Audiobooks – The Digital Shift

• Librarians Use Social Networking Professionally More than Teachers and Principals, According to Report – The Digital Shift ”The study provides information about educators’ favorite sites by category and reveals social networking patterns by age and frequency of use. It also reveals educators’ concerns about privacy and provides information about school district technology access policies for students and teachers.”

• Free Stock Photos – Foter ”Foter.com allows you to search, manage and add free stock photos to blogs, forums, websites and other online media. We host over 190 million free Creative Commons images from many online sources and the entire system is also available as a WordPress plugin for seamless use within the WordPress platform.”

• Assessment and Rubrics – Kathy Schrock’s Guide to Everything Created by Kathy Schrock, this is an excellent site if you want rubrics to evaluate student work

• Small Demons – Welcome to the Storyverse A website which tracks characters, locations, references through various books. Allows you to connect all the details in books.

• Educational Origami – Teachers and social media

• Digital Citizenship| The Committed Sardine How do we teach Global Digital Citizenship, a fluency that is critical at all levels of education? The author identifies four aspects of this that he thinks are critical: Clarity and rationale; Understanding and Purpose; Monitoring and consequences; Individual and community involvement.

• iPad App Evaluation for the Classroom Langwitches offers various ways to evaluate apps for educational use. Offers excellent advice that is colorful and visual.

• A Must Have App Evaluation Rubric for Teachers ”You are responsible for your students learning and this responsibility grows riskier when learning becomes digitally based.This is particularly the case when integrating apps into your teaching. It is true that one simple Google search will generate tons of apps for you to choose from , but does it stop just here ? How about after you find the apps, do you know how to evaluate their pedagogic implications ? Are they educationally valid ? Do they target skills you want your students to work on ? Are they flexible enough to let students learn in different settings ? Are they student friendly ?”

• Ebooks

• Can E-Books and Libraries Coexist? An infographic from Mashable that examines the question ”Will e-readers really edge out print books?”

• Learn English With Songs – Stand by Me, By Playing For Change ”English Listening activity for Elementary English language students and young learners at all levels of English. Watch the video and then use the words in the word box to complete the gaps in the lyrics. part of a free online series of lessons for English language students, designed to practise your English at the same time as learning about music and popular culture in English speaking countries”

• Student Blogs: Learning to Write in Digital Spaces | Langwitches Blog Some good advice for student blogging

• Free grammar check at GrammarBase.com A free proof reader, grammar checker. Just copy and paste in your text and get a detailed report and some advice on ho to improve your writing.

• Infographic: History’s most influential people, ranked by Wikipedia reach (Wired UK)

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.