Using the quick and easy WordFoto app, I captured Marie and Maggie at the school swimming carnival. What do you think? (Obviously the educational possibilities are limited only to the imagination).
Feb15
Feb15
Great library mashup
Thought you might enjoy this video. Cross posted from my other blog.
Feb15
This is what I need – a chair that follows me around
You’ve all seen me wheeling my ‘special’ chair around the library, driving it from desk to desk. Thanks to Bev’s blog post I believe I have found the chair for me – one that will follow me around!
Feb2
What exactly does a 21st century teacher librarian do? A list of curated topics in Scoop.it
On the topic of the teacher librarians’ role and exactly what it is we TLs do in our jobs, I wanted to share this article in The Guardian: Beyond books: what it takes to be a 21st century librarian. We all know that there’s more to being a librarian than stamping books, as the subtitle of the article states. How bothered are we by the fact that a large proportion of our school communities have little idea what we do?
If we stopped the next person walking by on the street and asked them what our jobs as librarians involve, we’d be willing to bet that their first answer would be stamping books. This is because many people’s experience of librarians is of the frontline, customer service staff.
I think the same can be said of school libraries although it varies greatly depending on the interaction between teacher librarians and teaching staff. What the article says about librarians is surely relevant to teacher librarians, librarians and technicians -
If anyone ever thought they’d become a librarian because they liked books or reading, they would be sorely disappointed if they did not also like people too.
Of course, in the digital age, in fact, in the global digital culture in particular, teacher librarians play a vital role in schools. What exactly is the role of a 21st teacher librarian?
It’s not something which can be answered in a simple sentence. For this reason, I want to share links to curated websites on this topic. I am including a list of Scoop.its which have been curated by various people (including me) on the topic of the 21st century teacher librarian. I hope you find this list useful; it includes all things relevant to the 21st century librarian in the broadest sense.
My Scoop.it – What is a teacher librarian?
Curation and libraries and learning - Joyce Valenza
e-Books – Carmel Galvin
Create the web and learn to live - @pipcleaves
21st century libraries – Dr Steve Matthews
Educational technology and libraries – Kim Tairi
Embedded Librarianship – Buffy Hamilton
Graphic Novels in the classroom – @dilaycock
Information coping skills – Beth Kanter
Information science and library studies - Joao Brogueira
Information fluency, transliteracy, research tools – Joyce Valenza
Inquiry and digital literacy – Shawn Hinger
Internet Search – Phil Bradley
Learning – Darren Kuropatwa
Libraries and ethnography - Buffy Hamilton
Libraries and Tumblr – Buffy Hamilton
Libraries as sites of enchantment, participatory culture and learning (what a title!) – Buffy again
Livebinders – Peggy George
Multiliteracies – Vance Stevens
New librarianship – Karen Burns
Personal learning networks for librarians – Donna Watt
QR codes – libraries - NairarbilUCA
Readers’ advisory for secondary schools – Marita Thomson
School libraries – Nickki Robinson
Social media content curation- Guiseppe Mauriello
Social networking for information professionals – Judy O’Connell
The library technician – Dawn Jimenez
Student learning through school libraries – Lyn Hay
Weird and wonderful - for librarians and booklovers – Jean Anning
This selection is only a small fraction of what’s being curated by people passionate about their topic on Scoop.it. It’s overwhelming but also a fantastic way of keeping track of evolving scoops on searchable topics. The fact that the list relevant to teacher librarians is so broad indicates the breadth of the teacher librarians’ focus and involvement. Of course, we can’t do everything but it’s a good idea to see potential involvement, and having seen the bigger picture, delegate to team members (assuming you have a team) the most pressing areas according to their interest.
By the way, Scoop.its are very easy to make and make reading enjoyable in their magazine-scoop-style presentation. It’s easy to follow, to search, to share and to recommend Scoop.its and articles. It’s also a brilliant way to build your Personal Learning Network by investigating the curators, checking out their bio, looking at what else they’ve curated or what they themselves follow.
You’ve got to start somewhere! Happy scooping!
Dec9
Christmas Allsorts
Well, it’s almost Christmas. I’ve decided to finish the year off here by collating Christmassy (it is so a word) content. Hope you all have a safe and joyous Christmas and the very best wishes for a great new year.
Embellish the Interior Passageways! Can you guess this popular Christmas carol? Of course you can… then try the rest. Click here.
Here’s a Christmas carol Wordle quiz – see if you can decipher these traditional carols from the word picture.
The LIFE photo archive has a great collection of Christmas-related photos. Click here to see these.
You can read Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, the complete text from 1843, online here.
Here are some Christmas biscuits recipes.
And Abby has a great Christmas food gift idea which I have personally received and tasted (good) – Cookies in a jar. Read how to do it here.
And a fantastic macaron recipe here and melt-in-your-mouth cocoa hazelnut Spritz cookies recipe here.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has produced a beautiful Christmas story which you can read or listen to here.
Here’s an infographic for the history of the Christmas tree. See this on the Christmas Tree Market website.
What Victorian anxieties have to do with Coke, candy canes and mythbusting the Bible – find out in the History Channel’s series of videos, The History of Christmas
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5T5ibb2E9I&feature=player_embedded
Here are a few of my favourite Christmas shows on TV -
Watch the rest of the episode on YouTube.
Merry Christmas!
Nov29
Holiday reading – ‘Best of’ Lists by Readings
Looking for a good book to help you unwind in preparation for your Summer break? Readings has a few lists -
Best Art and Design books 2011
Best books of 2011 as chosen by Australian authors
Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2011
Best Fashion and Craft books 2011
Best Food and Cooking books 2011
Best Short Story collections 2011
Lisa Hill is an ambassador for Australian literature and reviews books in her excellent blog here.
You can also discover many book review blogs under ‘Stuff for us’ in the right -hand navigation of this blog.
Happy reading!
Nov21
Judith Way’s Virtual Aussie Libraries Tour
I am privileged to have as a friend Judith Way. Judith makes things happen – I’ve said this before. As soon as I heard she hit on the idea of a virtual library tour I knew it was going to be good. And it is. Take a look here.
Thanks to everyone for sharing photos of your gorgeous libraries – so many ideas for those of us who are thinking about how we can improve our library spaces. And thanks to Judith for going to the effort of putting this project together. It’s one step towards bridging the distances between all our libraries and sharing library design ideas.
Historypin looks fantastic – have a look at all the different tours.
Nov15
Awesome People Reading
Thanks to my good and very resourceful friend, Dawn Jimenez, and her Scoop.it topic, I have been enjoying these awesome photos of awesome people reading. So many favourites. Bowie, for example -
and Greta Garbo
Not to mention Grace Kelly
Paul McCartney and George Harrison
See the rest here.
I can just see these beautiful photos as posters in our library. What do you think?
Nov9
Premier’s Reading Challenge at MHS
At Junior Assembly last week we were fortunate to have Michael Pryor, an ambassador for the 2011 Premier’s Reading Challenge, present the “George Georgiou Reading Cup” to 9K and make special reading awards to some of our students.
Overall, 249 Year 9 students completed the challenge representing 81% of the cohort – a fantastic result.
It was exciting to see our students enjoying a range of high-quality writing including Australian & international Young Adult literature. Choices ranged from literary classics such as Homer, Dickens, Hemingway, and Erich Maria Remarque through to modern classics by Hosseini, Toltz, Martel, and Hartnett. We noticed an increased interest in biographies, and non-fiction reading. Graphic novels have also been more popular this year, especially the socially illuminating books by Shaun Tan, Marjorie Satrane & Art Spiegelman.
Book prizes were awarded to Stephen, Terrence and Zhengyu for reading across a wide range of genres. Austin had an interesting selection of graphic novels. Jean-Marc tackled some challenging non-fiction. Yunxu is our Shakespeare enthusiast, and Leo read the most Michael Prior books. Congratulations to all readers and we hope you will consider entering the Challenge again next year.
Nov3
Curation is the new key word
Thought I’d share Joyce Valenza’s slide presentation on curation. It’s massive! and excellent as expected. Wouldn’t it be good to print some of these slides out as posters for our library?
