Useful links

   by  Ken Whytock 

• Four Skills to Teach Students In the First Five Days of School | MindShift “”Before the internet there were two important things to teach: content and skills, like writing,” November said. “Now there’s a third skill which is to build out your network to the world.” Teaching students to view Twitter as a research tool, a way to see what the brightest minds in a discipline are thinking and reading is akin to teaching them to search the internet powerfully. It’s giving them the tools to continue learning long after the test”

• This Librarian Is Not Impressed With Your Digital, No-Books Library – Next City Interesting arguments in favour of the paper book being retained as well as the digital.

• Three Common Mistakes to Avoid When Publishing a Book App | Digital Book World “There are three big mistakes people make when it comes to tackling this kind of project. I’ve helped scores of people publish their books as book apps, and I’ve seen these mistakes made over and over. They’re easy to avoid if you’re aware of them.”

• Ebooks Enhance Development of the Whole Child | Up for Debate | School Library Journal “When the best new media tools are expertly selected and appropriately used with children, such tools can support and enhance adults’ role in supporting development of the whole child, especially three-to-eight year-olds, the focus of this article. Used to complement rather than replace print, the finest ebooks, enhanced ebooks, and book apps (collectively referred to here as “ebooks”) on the market put traditional picture book content in new containers that—like traditional print books—educate and entertain.”

• Top ten ways to start with “maker education” | Invent To Learn Some good ideas about how to start your maker space. It is not simply about buying in lots of “cool” stuff. There are also quite a few useful links to other maker educators.

• How To Choose A Learning Game | MindShift Some criteria that could help teachers choose the right learning game for their classroom.

• http://makerspace.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/hsmakerspacetoolsmaterials-201204.pdf “Makerspaces are collaborative workshops where young people gain practical hands-on experience with new technologies and innovative processes to design and build projects. They provide a flexible environment where learning is made physical by applying science, technology, math, and creativity to solve problems and build things.” Ideas, costings for a range of maker spaces and discussion about what could be done in them.

• Maker Space | A New Trend In Education And A BIG Responsibility – gustmees Maker Space – It offers so much opportunity for schools to improve the education of students. This post throws up ideas, suggests things that we should be aware of, safety points, and plenty of links. It challenges the reader to think seriously about maker spaces.

• Australian library wins international Public Library of the Year Award 2014 | Architecture And Design “Craigieburn Library in Hume City, Victoria has been internationally recognised as the recipient of the 2014 Public Library of the Year Award.”

• Readers absorb less on Kindles than on paper, study finds | Books | The Guardian This study was done with only a small number of participants but it is interesting”In a recent study it was found that readers using a Kindle were “significantly” worse than paperback readers at recalling when events occurred in a mystery story is part of major new Europe-wide research looking at the impact of digitisation on the reading experience.” The study, presented in Italy at a conference last month and set to be published as a paper, gave 50 readers the same short story by Elizabeth George to read. Half read the 28-page story on a Kindle, and half in a paperback, with readers then tested on aspects of the story including objects, characters and settings.”

• Is This The School Library Of The Future? | Co.Exist | ideas + impact “The school library has changed the main focus from providing books providing a place for students to practice skills like creative thinking and collaboration.”

• A Step-by-Step Guide To Hosting or Joining a Twitter Chat A useful guide to hosting or joining a Twitter chat, with some discussion of the different Twitter tools available.

• BBC Radio 4 – The Educators, John Hattie “What really works in schools and classrooms? How much difference can homework and class size make to a child’s ability? Sarah Montague interviews John Hattie, Professor of Education at the University of Melbourne and Chair of the Australian Institute of Teaching and School Leadership. Over 20 years, he carried out one of the biggest pieces of education research, compiling studies from previous decades and comparing the effect they have on attainment and ability. His work is ongoing, but the results show a league table of effectiveness. It reinforces things you might expect, such as the importance of teachers, but also offers some surprises that might have parents and teachers questioning their priorities.”

• 15 Examples of Student-Centered Teaching “Interesting post looking at what “student-centered learning” means in a modern classroom”

• 7 Ways Teachers Can Use Technology With Purpose Infographic – e-Learning Infographicse-Learning Infographics

• Free Technology for Teachers: Share Lesson Outlines in Google Calendar “Advice on how to share lesson plan outlines in the events on a Google Calendar.”

• The Black Death in 90 Seconds: Next Vista for Learning A great short film on the Next Vista for Learning site. It is a short explanation of The Black Death and was created by a teacher in California. The video was a winning entry in one of Next Vista’s video creation contests. An example of something I would like to emulate at my school

• What 10,000 Students Told Us About Information Literacy “EasyBib announced the initial findings of a survey that they conducted with over 10,000 users and more than 1,200 librarians and educators. In the meantime, you can check out this interactive presentation, featuring videos, polls, infographics and more, summarizing some of the major points from our initial report.”

• 8 Effective Ways To Get To Know Your Students – Edudemic A post that describes eight good activities (and an infographic as well) that offers different ways you can learn more about the students in your class. They would be especially good for the start of school terms or semesters.

• Getting Started with Google Classroom – Instructional Tech Talk ” This article tries to break down the ‘Getting Started’ aspects of Google Classroom and point out important features along the way.

• 9 Outstanding Apps for Adding Text to Your Photos

• Apps & More for Makerspaces | Mix It Up | School Library Journal “This post offers a “offers a broad selection of free or low-cost apps, websites, and tools for engaging kids and teens in creative maker projects. Our field-tested recommendations are grouped into three main sections: Coding, Filmmaking, Tinkering, and 3D Printing. Making is all about trial and error; don’t be afraid to experiment with these tools and encourage playful exploration by your patrons or students”

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

The Slaves of Socorro: a great story needs a great trailer

Many of our boys love John Flanagan’s Ranger’s Apprentice series and its spin-off the Brotherband series

This year we have had many students enjoying #4 in the series “The Slaves of Socorro“. It is a great story with lots of the sort of action that our boys love. The official book trailer, whilst advertising that the book is out, does nothing to really recommend it. So much could be put into the short trailer to really whet the appetite but this is a really bland attempt. We show trailers of our new books on a screen in our library. I am always looking for something to attract the eye of not only the good readers but especially the less interested students.

My challenge to our students is to come up with a better trailer, one that offers more to the imagination and may bring new readers to the series. We created a guide to the process and a rubric for class assessment several years ago. It has been used (and adapted) by students and teachers,and is available on one of our wikis

 

Useful links

   by  Ken Whytock 

• Movenote Movenote is available on any browser and can be accessed with your Google account. Create video presentations quickly with your webcam and share them worldwide. This looks like quite simple to use and may be a tool for recording presentations and getting them online. May be useful to create useful library videos.

• Self-Assessment Inspires Learning | Edutopia The post offers a self-assessment survey, created for students and educators, which provides questions that address short- and long-term goals. In doing so, it provides a framework for metacognition (thinking about our thoughts) and helps us each to clarify, reflect on, and prioritize our feelings, actions, and behaviours.

• 8 Practical Tools to Easily Gather Student Feeback ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning “There are a many web tools that teachers can use to gather informal feedback and responses from students.Those described in this post are ones that seem to offer useful and relevant applications in a classroom setting”

• Edutech for Teachers » Blog Archive » 10 Ways to Integrate Mobile Phones in Class The infographic shown here outlines ten simple yet effective ways to impact the learning process with mobile device and real-world activities.

• 30 Trends In Education Technology For 2015

• 15 Apps for Exploring the World (Virtual Field Trips) | Class Tech Tips  “A list of apps for exploring the  world. You can click on each link to read other posts by the author who has written more detail about how they can be used in a classroom.” She links to iOS options but their are quite a few that have android versions too.

• 38 Ideas to Use Google Drive in Class ~ Educational Technology and Mobile Learning “Some interesting ideas and tips on how to go about using Google Drive in a classroom. This work is created by Sean Junkins from SeansDesk.”

• Android Apps Long list of educational android apps

• Free Image Resources for Almost Anything | Tech the Plunge The author of the post has created a Symbaloo page of free Image sources. The page is linked from here

• Most Beautiful Libraries in the World- Page 2 – Articles | Travel + Leisure “We’ve catalogued cutting-edge and historic libraries, from Australia to Vienna.”

• Page to Screen: Kid & YA Lit Flicks to Look Forward to After ‘The Fault in Our Stars’ | School Library Journal “Hollywood continues to tap kid’s books, from classic fairy tales to the latest dystopian. To celebrate the highly the anticipated big screen version of John Green’s best-seller, The Fault in Our Stars ll , SLJ has compiled a list of upcoming projects that will be coming to a theater (or TV) near you.”

• 7 steps to stronger, more secure passwords – Business – NZ Herald News A useful guide offering very necessary advice. Seven ways to fortify passwords offers information that seems commonsense but these things often get overlooked

• 29 Teacher Tools for Leveraging Technology An annotated list of tools that have application in schools. They are not oragnized in any particular way. Many I know but there are some new ones here that sound interesting.

• 5 Unusual Ways To Use Google Presentations – Edudemic Some interesting ideas for presentations

• Encouraging Intrinsic Motivation in Your Students – Edudemic “There are a number of things you can to do encourage intrinsic motivation in your students. Listed hints plus an infographic from Mia MacMeekin that explores 27 ideas to encourage this type of motivation in your students. Keep reading to learn more.”

• Tool Buffet A collection of emerging tools useful for humanizing online learning. Annotated so you can glance through the list and then click to try them out. “

• ISTE | Essential elements of digital citizenship

• Being a Better Online Reader – The New Yorker “Interesting piece about how we go about reading on-line. Conclusion is that we all need to learn to navigate our online reading. working at it just as deeply as we once did with print. We need go about it with the necessary thoughtfulness as before.

• ISTE | Want to know what students think? This librarian asked them! “One librarian created a survey designed to get at what young people want from school and from the adults who work in them. She blogged about the survey and shared it to her vast PLN on Twitter. And she received hundreds of responses, including some from students all over the world. The results of that survey was the impetus for her K12 Online preconference keynote.”

• Aboriginal Knowledge and IP Protocol Community Guide booklet This is a useful resource when incorporating the Australian curriculum Priority – understanding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures.

• 6 Online Collaboration Tools and Strategies For Boosting Learning – eLearning Industry A useful annotated list of collaboration tools. “The right strategies will enable instructors to conceive and create interesting, informative learning coursework, activities and exercises that will fuel students’ hunger for learning more. Also this will encourage them to open up towards their instructors and other students in their group who can ably support them by offering thoughtful advice and tips. So implementing right strategies and using proper tools for implementing them, is a must for facilitating learning through online group collaboration.”

• 44 Twitter Chat Tools For The Modern Teacher “Offer numerous reasons why Twitter is powerful teacher professional development tool in the 21st century”

• Book Week 2014 – Mrs Mac’s Library

• Growing Learning Communities Through School Libraries and Makerspaces-Creating, Constructing, Collaborating, Contributing | The Unquiet Librarian A presentation for the Independent School Library Exchange of Southern California by Buffy Hamilton.  The slides in this post are from her presentation about the possibilities for makerspaces and school libraries. ” Please note all links referenced in the session are live and accessible via the SlideShare post below”

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

CBCA 2014 Books of the Year – Winners and runners-up

Congratulations to the authors and illustrators of the books below. To their editors and publishers and also the CBCA judges.

The CBCA winning books for 2014 voted on by the judges, were announced this afternoon. The judges have a difficult job and I know that a lot of deliberation and discassion has gone on. The CBCA awards are given to works that are the benchmarks for quality in Australian children’s literature. The books that made to this short list are being read and enjoyed by the boys. I wrote a post about the older readers shortlist with links for follow-up earlier in the year.  As is usually the case the books chosen this year were quite varied in their styles and subject matter.

The 2014 CBCA Book of the Year awards have been given to the authors and illustrators in the following five categories from older readers to early childhood

Older readers

Winner: Wildlife by Fiona Wood

Honour Books

• Fairytales for Wilde Girls by Allyse Near
• The Sky so Heavy by Claire Zorn

 

Younger readers

Winner: City of Orphans: A very unusual pursuit by Catherine Jinks. Catherine has an interesting page about the title, there are teaching notes and, from the Allen and Unwin site, there are Reviews by teachers (PDF) also.

Honour Books

• My life as an alphabet by Barry Jonsberg. There are teaching notes, on the Insideadog site there are reviews by YA readers and plenty of other reviews including a Readplus review
• Light horse boy by Dianne Wolfer

 Early Childhood

Winner: The Swap by Jan Ormerod and Andrew Joyner.  Teacher notes here 

Honour Books:

• I’m a dirty dinosaur by Janeen Brian  and Ann James
• Banjo and Ruby Red by Libby Gleeson and Freya Blackwood

 Picture book

Winner: Rule of Summer by Shaun Tan. I am so pleased that another wonderful book by the brilliant author Shaun Tan won this section. There are some great resources  – my post with links including to videos, a teachers’ guide here and a podcast on The art of Shaun Tan.

Honour Books

• King Pig  by Nick Bland
• Silver Buttons by Bob Graham Classroom ideas here

 Eve Pownell Award for Information Books

Winner: Jeremy by Christopher Faille

Honour Books

• Welcome to my country by Laklak Burarrwanga and family  There are Notes for teachers (PDF) and Reviews by teachers (PDF) from the Ale and Unwin site.
• Ice, wind, rock by Peter Gouldthorpe

State Library of Victoria: Melbourne app

Melbourne has a rich and vibrant history. Although not old by European standards there are many great stories about the city. In the 1800’s it was extremely wealthy and many amazing buildings were built to show off that wealth although there were slums and a seamier side as well. There is now a new way to explore the Melbourne of the 1800’s.

The State Library of Victoria has developed a new app that offers a way of understanding more about the history of Melbourne as you are taking a stroll around the city. You can explore the fascinating history of the area and look behind some of the beautiful Victorian architecture. By using your location to show nearby buildings, the user can view more then 300 photographs of street views and aerial photographs as well as read the stories about each location. Some of the photos are as early as 1840. 

There is so much to like: it’s free, it offers heaps of interesting detail. The only drawback is that it doesn’t have an android version. I can see it being of great value to our year 9 students when they are doing their city discovery week but only if they have an iphone or ipad.