Useful sites (weekly)

• 2020 Forecast: Creating the Future of Learning A web site on the challenges to education dealing with tech. This 2020 Forecast illuminates how we are shifting toward a culture of creation in which each of us has the opportunity – and the responsibility – to make our collective future. People are creating new selves, organizations, systems, societies, economies, and knowledge. 

• Nik’s Quick Shout: AudioBoo to Posterous: Audio Podcasting from the Classroom Quick classroom podcasting direct from your students with an iPad or mobile device- post from Nik Peachey

• Edinburgh Zoo Penguin Cam Live webcam of the penguin enclosure at Edinburgh zoo. Great at the moment while it’s covered in snow.

• What librarians make. A response to Dr. Bernstein and an homage to Taylor Mali « NeverEndingSearch Joyce Valenza’a excellent response to Dr. Bernstein’s suggestion that in this Internet age, Governor Cuomo eliminate the antiquated requirement that all high schools have at least one full-time librarian and a minimum number of books.

• Tech Transformation Blog : Assessment OF learning –v- Assessment FOR learning Assessment, Teaching and Learning 

• Tech Transformation Blog: The link between student assessment and improved teaching practices Assessment doesn’t have to be a big deal that causes anxiety on the part of both students and teachers, as often happens in the end of unit or end of year exams. In fact it can be carried out as part of the normal classroom routines, so that a teacher can be constantly checking to see that students are understanding the concepts.

• Enabling a Participatory Culture using Creative Commons Licenses | Beth’s Blog A blog post where the author invited Gautam John, who works with Pratham Books, to write a guest post about their social publishing strategy where he briefly touched upon their use of Creative Commons licenses. In this post, shares more about how his organization uses Creative Commons licenses and why he thinks it is important for your organization to consider it 

• 30+ Places To Find Creative Commons Media A good resource, showing creative commons media sources for audio, images and video 

• Do Podcasts Help Students Learn? In Autumn 2009, the George Washington University’s Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning studied a world history class of 262 students to find the answer. The answer isn’t simply “yes or no” – it depends on the student’s learning style, gender and motivation. 

• The Future of Reading and Writing is Collaborative | Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning  An interesting post on the blog: Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning 

• Flash cards, vocabulary memorization, and study games | Quizlet Free quiz maker for educational use

• ProProfs: Knowledge Sharing Tools & Free Online Education Quizmaker that is free for education use

• Home – Gillian Philip The official homepage of YA author Gillian Philip  

• Pics4Learning | Free photos for education Pics4Learning is a copyright-friendly image library for teachers and students.

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

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Multicolr – finding shades from flickr

I love finding images interesting images and tools that help me find just what I am looking for. This is a very nifty little  web-based tools that everybody should know about.  Multicolr Search Lab (Idee) finds photos on Flickr whose dominant colours match those which you can select from a palette at the side of the page.  You can select up to 10 to be part of a set of colours.

I like the idea of being able to easily find a colour scheme

The screen shot shows the result when I selected 6 colors – shades of purple, blue and a red. The resulting Flickr pictures displaying a combination of these colors and some were quite amazing. With the photos coming from Flickr and therefore often licensed to use under creative commons they can go ion to be used on blogs or other websites. This is a boon for students especially when they can use Imagecodr to help them with attribution.

Useful sites (weekly)

  by  mikefisher821  

• Teens Find Innovative Ways to Control Their Facebook Presence “Ever heard of “Super-logoff” or “whitewalling”? They are ways to designate what some teens have been doing in order to have total control over who posts what (and when) on their Facebook page:”

• Digital Culture & Education: Classroom perspectives – Digital Culture & Education In this issue we present articles that push the boundaries of research on digital cultures, teaching, and technologies in fruitful and generative directions.  Researchers and practitioners in this issue present case studies and analysis of practical classroom use of copyright literacies, learning management systems, mobile/cell phones, social video, Twitter, and Google Reader.  The articles demonstrate how the affordances of digital culture have shifted our understandings of how pupils learn as content can be accessed, designed, and shared.  Despite the affordances of digital culture, teaching and learning—with and through digital technologies—requires effective pedagogy.  Digital technologies are not ‘teacher-proof’ tools; they require thoughtful and thorough integration into pedagogy, in a manner that reflects carefully articulated instructional and learning goals

• Media Awareness Network (MNet) | Reports and Publications The Digital Literacy in Canada discussion paper is a response to the Government of Canada’s Digital Economy Consultation, launched in May 2010. The paper calls for federal leadership in the creation of a national digital literacy strategy to ensure all Canadians have the necessary skills to use digital technologies to their fullest potential.  

• Roald Dahl – The Official Web Site  This is the official web site of author Roald Dahl. A great site to visit for fans of all ages. It contains Dahl’s biography, books, and special links to peruse and enjoy.

• Mobile Digital Storytelling with StoryKit, Storyrobe, and SonicPics #edapp « Moving at the Speed of Creativity Post from Wes Fryer. An overview of StoryKit, StoryRobe (both free), and SonicPics (small cost) on iOS devices (iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads)- Some great apps for creating digital stories

• Blekko Tries to Filter Out Web Search – NYTimes.com NY Times article: New search engine Blekko aims to show search results from only useful, trustworthy sites

• Sir Ken Robinson, Daniel Pink and David Pogue the Creativity World Forum #cwf2010 « Moving at the Speed of Creativity Wes Fryers notes from Sir Ken Robinson’s presentation at the 2010 Creativity World Forum in Oklahoma City. “Sir Ken is part of our morning panel along with Dan Pink and David Pogue. My notes from their panel discussion after Ken’s remarks are also included”

• TEFL Non – Stick Teaching | EFL Classroom 2.0 – Teacher Talk post about 25 ways to be a good teacher

• e-Learning Stuff » Blog Archive » Adobe Photoshop Express – iPhone App of the Week 

• Violating a Creative Commons License | edte.ch Interesting case over in the “interesting ways” world.. resources built up through widespread teacher use. Australian company, Edsoft, using our “Interesting Ways to use an iPad in the Classroom” resource as a handout at a sales event. You can see the image clearly showing how they have used it, breaking the terms of the CC license. 

• 40 Astounding Examples of Abstract Photography | Inspiration Some great examples of photography 

• 30+ Outstanding Websites of Higher Education Institutions | Vandelay Design Blog These College and Uni sites contain huge amounts of information and they managed to design an attractive and usable websites. Links from this post take you to more than 30 outstanding sites for your inspiration. 

• Global Education Conference – Home The conference is a collaborative and world-wide community effort to significantly increase opportunities for globally-connecting education activities 

• Bookapedia The blog for a NZ school book club. Links to their website for hosting the Bookapedia Book Battles project. 

• 10 best Android tablets in the world | News | TechRadar UK  These are worth a look if you are wondering about how the Andriod tablets will compare to the ipad. Article about 10 best Android tablets in the world In Depth: Which Android tablet is best for you?” 

• Using new visualizations to tell your story – Official Google Docs Blog This blog post gives information and examples about the new charts and graphs that Google Docs offers using new visualizations to tell your story  

• 10 iPad / iPhone apps for primary school teachers – TEACHING APPS: iPhone – iPAd, iPhone, Android, AIR – Edgalaxy: Where Education and Technology Meet. 

• And the Most Popular Way to Read an E-Book Is … | Epicenter | Wired.com 

• DeweyDigger An innovative way to discover what the Dewey Decimal Classification system involves!By clicking on one of the Dewey classifications, you are then presented with a range of topics that would be found under that classification. Clicking on one of those you are then presented with a range of options to dig further. 

• Make a word cloud – WordItOut Much like Wordle, this tool creates word clouds out of any text that you paste into the text box. The application allows the word cloud to be customized by size, font, and color scheme. Word It Out also allows the user to ignore certain words and thus keeps them out of the word cloud. It can be used without a login, although the saving option requires an email. You can work around this option by right clicking to save as jpeg and/or screen print.

• Australian humour – Australia’s Culture Portal  This article describes the nature of Australia’s unique sense of humour and how this developed. It also contains a brief overview of how humour has been used in literature, film, television and radion. Links to relevant online resources are provided. 

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

The state of education or the perils of watching daytime television

Again, being home I have time to watch some tv. I put on ABC24 the news station and found…our parliament in full flight. It was very difficult to hear the politicians talk about the great things they have been doing for education; the National Curriculum tht still has not been agreed to by all the states, the website set up for parents to get a better understanding of schools and their child’s progress (statistics that can show many things and nothing) and how good the introduction of national testing is. They are such experts on education I don’t know why we need teachers at all!

I have ranted about this before and I have not changed my attitude to this so I got so annoyed, listening to the glib  statements and the smirks of the politicians, that I put on a commercial station only to hear an labour election advertisement with our Premier talking about how well he understood teaching, after all he had been one in another life, and what is government has been doing for schools and students. Time to switch off the television I thought. This is not making feel better or rested.

I watched the video below that seems to put things into perspective.

Andy Griffiths on Roald Dahl

Sitting at home I have had time to listen to the Radio National Book Show, Yesterday (Tues 16th) there was a discussion by Andy Griffiths about Roald Dahl. The podcast is now up and you can listen to the recording of the  session. This is the 20th anniversary of the death of the wonderful English (Welsh) storyteller Roald Dahl and Andy Griffiths talks about the impact of Roald Dahl on his own life and work.

Andy Griffiths is well-loved by many, especially the boys at our school. He quirky humour, that appeals to all children, especially to boys,  is not always loved by adults, who seem not to remember their inner child. He has however won many awards and recently was shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Award for children’s fiction for Just Macbeth, his adaptation of Shakespeare’s play. This was a great way to introduce the Macbeth story to younger children and was a lot of fun.

The latest book by Andy we bought into the library this year was The very bad book. When the first one (The bad book ) came out a few years ago there were again adults selling the young people short and wanting to prevent it being sold let alone put into school, due to some of the impossible storylines. Talking about the stories with the kids just brought home how silly it is for adults to assume that the young cannot tell the difference between what is real and what is just fun and silly and totally not real. Some of this is discussed in the podcast and related to Roald Dahl’s writing as well.

Also on The Book Show site is a link to a podcast where  Donald Sturrock and Ophelia Dahl discuss Roald Dahl.

Roald Dahl left instructions nominating his daughter Ophelia to write his biography or to choose a suitable person to do so. Ophelia is a trustee of the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre and has archived much of his work. She chose Donald Sturrock , a former BBC documentary maker, biographer and director, to write the biography. As a young man Donald had made a documentary on Roald Dahl and has also written five opera libretti including one based on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  At the recent Times Cheltenham Literary Festival Dahl’s daughter Ophelia and biographer Donald Sturrock discussed the life and times of the great English storyteller.

Useful sites (weekly)

• Storyboard Depot : The eLearning Coach A collection of storyboard templates 

• Obsurvey A new survey tool that looks quite impressive at first glance. “Create a survey, collect responses, analyze results no ads, no cost, no limitations.” 

• Innovative school design is hard, but it doesn’t have to be. – By Ronald E. Bogle – Slate Magazine Creativity in designing schools. “When people talk about how hard it is to change our public schools, they’re usually referring to curriculum reform or employment contracts. But there’s another area where change is difficult: design. When a proposed school building doesn’t look exactly like what folks think a school should look like, officials freeze. ‘

• What should we do with tools to make them great? « Online Sapiens Some great ideas put together in this post

• Designing the Classroom of the Future | always learningConsidering that education may look very different in a reasonably short amount of time, that we’re going 1:1 in the next year, continuing to expand our online course offerings, and that the school is not too afraid of taking risks, I want to make sure we don’t just design a great classroom for today. I’m just not quite sure how to bring our classroom design into the present, while still being forward-thinking enough to take us into the future at the same time.

• Designing the Classroom of the Future | always learning 

• About the series | A 21st Century Education Film Series These films look specifically at the ways that the latest digital and mobile technologies can potentially transform the ways that young people communicate, collaborate, and learn. “The twelve first-person films that make up this series explore three related themes, each in its own way at the center of current debate about what works, and what’s needed, to help students succeed during school and in life.” 

• Image Forensics : Error Level Analysis Error level analysis seeks to prove that whether or not an image has been altered. It takes the image and shows differing error levels throughout it, strongly suggesting some form of digital manipulation. Areas to note are the lips and shirt, as well as the eyes. All are at significantly different error levels than their surroundings. Presumably, colours have been altered and areas brightened.

• The Reading Pile: November 8 « Good Comics for Kids 

• Borrowing ebooks beyond a library’s walls | Simon Barron | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk Article in the Guardian by Simon Barron. It discusses the arguments put by the publishers about borrowing ebooks beyond a library’s walls and opinions baout why they wont work.

• Christie ‘exorcised’ herself of Poirot – News, Books – The Independent

• Interviews, Writers, Quotes, Fiction, Poetry – Paris Review Author interviews ranging through the decades, from the 50’s to the present from The Paris Review.

• National Novel Writing Month NaNoWriMo is an annual (November) novel writing project that brings together professional and amateur writers from all over the world.” Write a novel in a month with the nanowrimo website’s encouragment and structure.

• Supernatural stories. – Catalog ListingA list from the CMIS Resource Bank with 150 titles for a search of ‘Supernatural stories’.

• Ghosts – Fiction. – Catalog Listing A list of 86 titles from CMIS Resource Bank when a ‘Ghosts – Fiction’ search is made

• Neil Gaiman’s MouseCircus.com | Artists: Artist and Illustrator Biographies The official Neil Gaiman website for younger readers

• Finding your Character’s Voice « Ripping Ozzie Reads The VISION list has been discussing how writers find their character’s voice, so Ripping Ozzie Reads writers were asked for their insights

• welcome to seanwilliams.com  The official site Australian speculative fiction writer Sean Williams. 

• ipads changing our relationship with text « 

• The new era of workplace learning The new era of workplace learning – Jane Hart This is the second of a two-part article that looks at the emerging trends in learning tools and workplace learning. In this part, Jane Hart, a Social Business Consultant from the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies – http://www.C4LPT – and a member of the Internet Time Alliance, looks at the future of workplace learning and the implications for Learning & Development. 

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

Author interviews and farewell Fiction Focus

It has been a short week for those of us in Melbourne schools with a public holiday to celebrate the running of the Melbourne Cup. The work days this week have been: 1. spent deciding on how best to utilise the Kindles we have bought for the library and 2. looking at authors and writing for some of our literary students. 

I am sorry to say that one of my mainstays when it comes to keeping up with YA literature, the Fiction Focus blog, has written its last post. This was a terrific site and so useful to all who work in the YA or children’s literature area. Funding cuts seem to be so random and ill-advised at times but if you feel like you would like to register your disappointment please visit the blog to leave a comment.

It was from a post on the Fiction Focus blog that I found out about the newspaper in the US , the Albany Examiner, that has been publishing a series of profiles on contemporary YA authors. The latest is an article about Australian author Melina Marchetta. In the US Finnikin of the Rock is the most recent release. There have been  five previous writers in this ongoing series. They are: Andrew Auseon,  Ally Carter, Kristen Cashore, E. Lockhart and M.T. Anderson.

I, along with two students at my school, was fortunate to be able to met author Michael Grant last night. He came along to speak to students from some of the nearby schools. He is a very dynamic character and seemed totally at ease talking to the students present.  A good post can be found on the Booktopia blog (Michael Grant, Author of GONE, HUNGER and LIES, answere ten terrifying questions) He was funny, articulate and offered some interesting ideas about writing to those present.

I have also been reading some fascinating author interviews that range from the 50’s until today. These were done for the Paris Review.

The Review focused on original creative work and innovatively, at the time of its founding, letting the authors talk about their work themselves. The Review’s Writers at Work interview series offered authors a rare opportunity to discuss their life and art at length; they have responded with some of the most revealing self-portraits in literature. Among the interviewees are P.D. James, Elie Wiesel, Margaret Drabble, V. S. Naipaul, P.L.Travers,Seamus Heaney, Ian McEwan, Ray Bradbury, Les Murray  and Peter Carey.

Aside from “hearing” how the author liked to write and about the impetus for their works, I also became fascinated with the little examples of manuscript pages that you could view for each of them.