This week is Reading Week on Teachers’ TV. There is a range of programs on good practice, libraries and reading aloud and all stages of schooling are catered for.
Reading Week at Teachers' TV
Hopefully there will be something to inspire everyone.
Saturday’s Age published a very interesting and thoughtful article by Suzy Freeman-Greene entitled The Write Stuff on the subject of teaching handwriting.
She has some very interesting thoughts such as
Florey, an American author, believes handwriting is in crisis. It’s often illegible, she told ABC radio, and in some US schools, kids are being taught something known as “keyboarding”. Studies have shown that kids master reading more easily when they write some of the words at the same time. There is, she says, a direct connection from brain to hand. But beyond fourth or fifth grade, US schools pay little attention to the quality of handwriting.
After hearing Florey, I’m mighty glad that Victorian prep students are straining over their giraffes and monkeys (though I’m not sure what they’re doing at secondary schools). But you have to wonder what this penmanship will be used for, other than filling out forms and signing credit-card receipts. Will the next generation write in diaries? (Who needs to when you can record every moment on the web?) If they no longer send love letters, will they save those heartfelt emails and flirty texts for posterity?
Handwriting began as a specialised enterprise. (Think of those medieval monks bent over illuminated manuscripts.) And maybe it will again become a rarefied activity, closer to calligraphy than a daily necessity. Today, a handwritten letter already has a rare, intimate quality.
When you pause to think about what we actually do use handwriting for today it is a sobering thought that it may well become a lost art.
Casey Grammar School Head of Secondary School Teaching and Learning and teacher librarian Julie Squires has developed a very useful wiki for her year 11 English class.
Useful online resources
Julie continues, ‘And by giving them links to useful resources, like Glogster and Ergo, I am helping them find resources they would not necessarily come across themselves.’
Congratulations to Julie for her great ideas, creativity and for sharing her wonderful wiki with us. Julie really is a leader in her field! If you have a moment, check out her ning, a place for Victorian teacher librarians to meet and share.
Essay map is an intuitive online essay planner for students.
Homepage
Students do not to have sign up for an account or register an email address. They simply enter their first name and topic and away they go.
Introduction
Students can move between screens as their ideas develop and become clearer.
Ideas
They only downside is that essay maps cannot be saved. However, they can be printed out before exiting.
Review of map
Thanks to Julie Squires of Casey Grammar School and Lynda Santolin of Parade College for the tip off about Essay Map.
After pondering the future of libraries, including school libraries for a while now and thinking about 21st Century Learning after hearing Professor Stephen Heppell speak at the State Library of Victoria in November 2008, it’s probably time to address the concept of gaming in schools, libraries and school libraries.
Are you still reading? You haven’t fainted? Great! Library staff of all makes and models have always been exellent at managing change and the takeup of Web 2.0 over the past year or so has proven that to be true.
Gaming in schools does seem to inspire strong reactions in some people, however the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development’s Knowledge Bank: Next Generation team are currently leading action research with selected teachers in Victoria to identify potential technologies that may support learning and teaching. This project is supported by The Department of Education and Early Childhood Development, The Department of Innovation, Industry and Regional Development (Multimedia Victoria) and The Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy.
In term 2, 2009, these technologies include gaming consoles such as Nintendo DS, Nintendo Wii and Xbox 360. Being a DEECD project, there are strict guidelines and record keeping so all research can be validated. This is a major step for the DEECD in acknowledging the educational potential of gaming and backing up ideas with action research. Bright ideas will keep you up to date with developments and outcomes of the project.
Some of you may have heard Derek Robertson speak when he was in Australia in November 2008. Derek heads up the Consolarium, which is a part of Learning and Teaching Scotland. The Consolarium highlights the positive outcomes of using gaming in schools and gives excellent examples of particular games and how they have been used by teachers. The Consolarium blog has been in action since September 2007, which seems like a long time in the world of technology. Derek has lots of examples on the Consolarium blog of excellent uses of games in schools.
In late 2008, an Australian study focussing on interactive entertainment was published. Some remarkable statistics were uncovered such as:
If these facts have raised your interest about the possibilities of using games in an educational context, the good people of the State Library of Victoria are offering a chance to find out what gaming is all about at an evening of interactive play and mini-tournaments. Discover a range of video games and consoles, and meet game experts from Dissecta. It will be held on Tuesday 7 April (school holidays so no worries about going out on a school night) from 6-7.30pm at the State Library, in Experimedia. The session is free, but bookings are required. Please click this link to book in.
Hope to see you there!
With the Internet and a computer you can visit any library in the world. So will virtual libraries replace the traditional ‘bricks and mortar’ library? Could digital screens replace the book? So asked Radio National during a recent broadcast.
Radio National has now given interested people access to the podcast where the discussion focuses on ‘The future of the library’. First broadcast on Thursday 26th March, guests included Lea Giles-Peters, who is the Queensland State Librarian; Bob Stein from The Institute of the Book, online writing and publishing and Hamilton Wilson, the Managing Director of Wilson Architects.
Looking for an online brainstorming tool? bubbl.us could be the answer.
The bubbl.us website says you can:
bubbl.us is ideal for student collaboration and as the mind maps can be simply saved, printed or embedded into blogs, etc. students can include their brainstorming and planning in their assignment submission.
An encouraging comment from a teacher via the bubbl.us blog:
Ben Davis describes how Bubbl.us helped his students to network.
Typically I have trouble getting them to get excited about word webs. However, they were VERY excited about doing this. The guys loved how the bubbles exploded when you deleted them, and the girls loved the colors. However, the thing they seemed most interested in was the fact that they could network.”
Julie Squires of Casey Grammar also uses bubbl.us. with her VCE students (thanks Julie for alerting Bright Ideas to bubbl.us) and her use of it and other tools will be featured shortly.
A letter in the Fairfax magazine Northern Weekly dated 24 March 2009 seems to sum up what the SLAV conference featuring Will Richardson on Monday 23 March was all about. Written by Caryl Oliver she says,
Imagine a learner who has grown up never knowing life without the internet, never being “off the air” and always able to access answers to questions the minute they arise because there is a mobile phone, wireless connection and more?
How much more do you learn if your study group is made up of learners from all over the world, connected by computing networks? Wouldn’t it be great to plunder the resources of any library, anywhere in the world?…. Mini-laptops and wireless connectivity make mobility as commonplace as current mobile phones; students no longer need to be tied to classroom, campus or even city. Learning becomes part of life because it is always there and always available.
2020? Sure, but we can have it now if we think outside the classroom and make policy and infrastructure decisions that will allow us to exploit the enormous opportunity that technology offers education.
As Will says, ‘When there’s an internet connection in a room, I’m no longer the smartest person in the room. My network can answer all of the questions I can’t answer myself.’ Thanks to my Mum for pointing Caryl’s letter out to me. Mum’s 82 but really gets what we are all trying to achieve.
While on the theme of using ICT in education, the latest Victorian Institute of Teaching digest focuses on ICT in education. Topics include:
For everyone who attended the School Library Association of Victoria’s Professional Learning program today at Etihad Stadium (formerly Telstra Dome), or for those who were unable to attend, here are the links to Will Richardson’s sessions:
Network literacy: Leveraging the potential of the HyperConnected world.
Podcast, Vodcast, Screencast, LiveStream Nation.
And here are the podcasts of these sessions:
Perspectives on learning v2 – March, 2009
– “Network literacy: leveraging the potential of a hyper-connected world” – Conference keynote
Link to .mp3 audio file Part 1 – 14Mb approx.
Link to .mp3 audio file Part 2 – 16Mb approx.
Link to .mp3 audio file Part 3 – 16Mb approx.
Prepared by Will Richardson (Connective Learning)
– “Podcasts, vodcasts, screencasts, livestream nation ” – Featured address
Link to .mp3 audio file Part 1 – 14Mb approx.
Link to .mp3 audio file Part 2 – 11Mb approx.
Link to .mp3 audio file Part 3 – 13Mb approx.
Prepared by Will Richardson (Connective Learning)
– “Weblogs in schools ” – Plenary session
Link to .mp3 audio file Part 1 – 15Mb approx.
Link to .mp3 audio file Part 2 – 16Mb approx.
Link to .mp3 audio file Part 3 – 17Mb approx. )
Prepared by Will Richardson (Connective Learning)
A link to Jenny Luca’s session on Now you know Web 2.0, what next?, a link to Adrian Camm’s companion wiki and a link to Judith Way’s presentation on Bright Ideas.
One of Scotch College’s Librarians, Michelle Sweeney, has kindly informed Bright Ideas about their wonderful library blog. Michelle explains, ‘Blogging has become incredibly popular over the last 12 months, and in the Senior Library at Scotch we have embraced the trend! Blogging on The Portal is a safe and fun means for the boys, staff and friends of Scotch to engage in discussion about the books they love (or love to hate), to debate contentious book-related topics and to learn about events in the literary world.’
The Portal homepage
Michelle continues, ‘Since Brendan Gullifer launched The Portal at our ‘Library’s Longest Literary Lunch‘ on March 13 2008, we have seen the number of users swell to over 100. Articulate and passionate boys are airing their opinions on diverse topics including the journalistic merits of the Herald Sun and The Age, the decline of the English language, the poignancy of soldiers’ letters from Iraq, controversy over school texts and the modernisation of Shakespeare’s texts. The boys are also displaying their own creativity (and competitive spirit) by participating in The Portal’s various competitions and writing high quality book reviews.
Competitions
‘Staff at Scotch have long been writing book reviews about their holiday reading for the library website, and these are now also published on The Portal.
‘Initially The Portal was hosted by Edublogs, in many respects a fantastic site developed especially for blogs in schools. However we did become frustrated with some aspects of Edublogs and decided to shift our blog to our school domain where we could have more control over the appearance and the method of registration. Boys and staff may now register in a few minutes without the need for emails to be exchanged.
‘A blog committee was formed and during six meetings we established the aims and objectives of The Portal, the User Guidelines and discussed ways to maximize the potential of this new library tool.
Aim
The Portal provides an online forum for the Scotch Community to engage in discussion about books and reading in order to encourage Scotch boys to develop a lifelong love of reading.
Our objectives for The Portal are:
‘Currently The Portal is promoted through word of mouth, introductory sessions to Literature Circles groups and English classes, fliers in the library and an article in the school magazine. We intend to use it extensively before, during and after our Literature Festival which runs every second year, by inviting guest authors to initiate discussion with our students before meeting them at the festival and encouraging students to comment on the workshops they have attended. Hopefully there may be some ongoing blogging contact with festival presenters once the festival is over.’
Scotch Scribes
Michelle concludes, ‘All in all The Portal has been a great success. Year 7s and 8s in particular are excited when they see it and English teachers are keen to use it with their classes. Competitions and controversial posts are definitely winners!’
Congratulations to Michelle and all at Scotch College who have been involved in the introduction and ongoing promotion and develpoment of The Portal.