A very useful tool for this year’s Book Week theme is the site BuiLD YouR WiLD SeLF.
Here is the Bright Ideas ‘wild self’, created in a few fun minutes:
This could be a fun Book Week activity with staff and/or students.
Courtesy of the New York Zoos and Aquarium.
Nicola Crawford and Maree Bell from Monivae College Library & Information Centre have developed a strong Web 2.0 presence in their school. Nicola explains how this came about.
Since completing the SLAV Web 2.0 course last year, we became inspired by all the terrific resources out on the World Wide Web. We wanted to share some of these with the rest of our school community, so we created ‘The WILD Library’ which is the blog of the Monivae College Library and Information Centre. The WILD Library contains lots of Web 2.0 Resources, plus “Good Library Stuff” such as authors, reviews, book requests, competitions and links to other useful information and resources. Students have begun to make contributions to the blog, but as yet it is early days.
'The Wild Library'
From little acorns…big trees certainly grow!! From a single Library oriented blog, we now have a nest of blogs to disseminate information to the different areas of the school community. The WILD Library acts as the primary blog, and from this there are links to all the other Monivae blogs. Some of these are more advanced than others, but all are a work in progress.
Exciting English
If you have a wander around the various blogs, you will see that the different Domains utilize them in different ways. Some use them as “go to” points when they begin a new topic. For example, “Super SOSE”, “Sensational Science” and “Fortes in Fide” (the Religion @ Monivae Blog) carry web lists for particular projects. These are used as starting points, or depending upon the scope of the topic can act to limit students to a particular selection of sites.
Sensational Science
The “Exciting English” blog has evolved differently. It has pages containing information and resources for teachers. This site is only in its infancy, eventually the aim is to provide resources for all the literature studied at the different year levels in the College.
Bathurst Island blog
“The Bathurst Island Blog” is run by my colleague Maree Bell. The aim of this blog is to provide information to students and parents about the 2009 Mission Experience to Bathurst Island. During the trip later in the year, it will be used as a travelogue of their adventures.
Ultimately, our aim is that the Monivae Blogs be the first port of call for staff and students when they are looking for resources or information from the World Wide Web. To date, this is probably quite optimistic, but we continue to encourage people to use and contribute to the blogs.
When we first dipped our toe into blogging, we never expected that it would blossom into such a wide ranging affair. We now have ten blogs at various stages of development, and we still have plans for others. We have just created an ICT Committee Wiki and our next project is a class blog in collaboration with one of our LOTE teachers.
Ten blogs ranging across a wide range of curriculum areas is certainly a major achievement. Well done to Nicola, Maree and all the staff involved!
The ABC has developed an online diary of events. The Big Diary lists ‘what’s on where you are’.
By creating a free account, you are able to set your location and add events to your list. You can also apply to become a contributor which enables you to upload events to the Big Diary.
The Big Diary could be a good way of finding free (or other) events to take classes to, or to publicise events that your school is holding.
Nice one Aunty!
Thanks to Rick Mulholland (ISLM coordinator) for the following text:
The International School Library Month committee is pleased to announce that the 2009 ISLM posters are available for downloading on the IASL website.
This year we have two versions of posters for your celebrations. We have one with a young student and the other with an older student.
Please visit http://www.iasl- online.org/ events/islm/ islm-resources. htm to download your posters.
Also, see the above website for details on how you can obtain a copy of the poster in both English and your language.
EduHound is a free US-based site that caters for K-12 teachers. Teaching resources are organised by topic and many topics are applicable to Australian curriculum. Topics include:
| Aaron Burr
Energy** Equality** Fiction** Fitness** |
Forensic Science
Health** Issues** News**
|
Paraphrasing
Pluto** Professional Learning Communities Reefs** |
As well, there are lesson plans, daily newsletters and more.
Thanks to Connect’s Kerry Rowett for the following text:
Are you doing some wonderful work connecting students using web 2.0 applications in your classroom … or keen to start? You might be interested in entering the Connect and SLAV web 2.0 competition 2009. What do you need to do? Work in a team to create a unit of work incorporating the use of web 2.0 technologies and submit it, along with an application form to Connect by Monday October 5th.
There will be two prize packages awarded to winning schools with a value of approximately AU$800 each. Wii machines have generously been donated by the International Digital Entertainment Festival (iDEF) and games donated by Madman interactive. Each package includes:
- Nintendo Wii Console
- Wii Sports
- Nintendo 7 in 1 sports kit
- One copy of each of the following gaming titles: Disney Think Fast, Ultimate Band, Bratz Kidz Party and Build A Bear Workshop
Please share this information with other teachers you think may be interested in entering! Visit the link or click the images to find out more.
This site is going to be very handy for Book Week. Block Posters enables users to upload their images and then enlarge them. By printing each block of the image as an A4 size, users can print images with lots or just a few blocks to create small, large or enormous photos for display. This picture and link explains more…
Block Posters
ScienceDaily reports on a study that games such as Wii Sports are good for health:
ScienceDaily (July 17, 2009) — Scientists at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center have found that playing active video games can be as effective for children as moderate exercise. The findings appear this week in the journal Pediatrics from the American Academy of Pediatrics.
While OU pediatricians don’t recommend children stop playing outside or exercising, the research shows that active video games offer a great alternative to moderate exercise for many children of today’s generation who are sedentary and at high risk for obesity and diabetes.
“These exer-games are no substitute for ‘real’ sports activities, but if kids play them as designed and stay engaged, they can burn several calories per hour above their sedentary level. We view any increase in energy expenditure (calories burned) as a good thing, especially in our overly-sedentary society,” said Kevin Short, Ph.D., principal investigator on the project.
To test the idea, researchers measured the heart rate, energy expenditure and self-reported exertion in children between ages 10-13 while they watched television, played active video games and walked on the treadmill at three different speeds.
Compared to watching television, the calories burned while gaming or walking increased 2- to 3-fold. Similarly, high rates of energy expenditure, heart rate and perceived exertion were elicited from playing Wii boxing, Dance Dance Revolution Level 2 or walking at 3.5 mph.
Wii bowling and beginner level DDR elicited a 2-fold increase in energy expenditure compared to television watching.
Overall, the energy expenditure during active video game play was comparable to moderate-intensity walking. Thus, for children who spend considerable time playing electronic screen games for entertainment, OU researchers found that substituting that time with physically active games can be a safe, fun and valuable means of promoting energy expenditure.
The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Children’s Medical Research Institute.
Journal reference:
- Graf, Diana L., Pratt, Lauren V., Hester, Casey N., Short, Kevin R. Playing Active Video Games Increases Energy Expenditure in Children. Pediatrics, 2009 0: peds.2008-2851 DOI: 10.1542/10.1542/peds.2008-2851
Adapted from materials provided by University of Oklahoma.
LiveMocha is a free language learning website.
With interactive lessons and games, and a huge list of languages to learn, LiveMocha could be useful for LOTE teachers or anyone wanting to learn another language. You can learn at your own pace and even communicate with native language speakers through the site.
From the LiveMocha blog:
About Livemocha
Livemocha is a Seattle-based company that is redefining language learning by combining dynamic online courses in 22 languages with the world’s largest community of native language speakers. Since launching in September 2007, Livemocha has grown to over 3 million members in less than 20 months, a clear indication of the demand for an engaging, collaborative approach to language learning. There are currently over 375 million people wanting to learn a language worldwide, and the market is currently estimated to be $50 billion, fueled by rapid globalization, immigration and travel.
Thanks to Dr Ross Todd for the link to LiveMocha.
Whitefriars College teacher librarian Karen Kearney has kindly agreed to share the development of her blog – Childhood Memories. Karen explains:
The SLAV “23 Things” course during 2008 saw the creation of my Childhood Memories blog. Our very first “thing” to do was to set up a blog, where reflections on each week’s tasks could be recorded.
Homepage
It was very difficult to decide just what the main focus of my blog should be. There were so many possibilities! I wanted something that was going to be of continued interest for me to write about, and that was interesting for anyone who wished to drop by and read it. After chatting away about some favourite childhood books in the first post, I decided to incorporate all of my interests into the blog, and write down some memories of my childhood.
As I explored each of the subsequent tasks, many times I was able to tie in the task with something from my childhood. Theatres have always been a large part of my life and the image generation tasks allowed me to explore some of the different ways I could present photos of our Melbourne theatres. The week we explored YouTube.I looked at different book trailers. Later I had fun exploring some old doll television commercials and some clips from classic television shows I watched as a child. These commercials are absolute gems if your classroom is comparing values important for girls growing up, as I did, in the 1960s, with that of today’s young girls. Exploring podcasts led me to many different podcasts related to both my professional and personal interests, so much so that I am now a devotee of podcasts as a source of information!
The blog has also been a place for me to record different ideas which have been useful both in classes and the school library, and as a reminder of useful sites and applications. I thoroughly enjoyed watching the black and white videos at Connect Safely for example, yet would probably have forgotten all about them unless I had recorded the site in a blog post.
Book Week ideas also made it into the blog. Last year our school library created lots of posters, using Glogster to advertise our book week activities. Some examples of ones I made can be seen on my blog. We also designed some Book Week activities using Web 2.0 technology, and again, posts were made on my blog to remind me of these ideas.
Karen's glogs
Wordlewas used to create word clouds. Examples of Wordles have been made, and can be seen on my blog. Short, written reviews of both Kill the Possum (James Moloney) and Miss McAllisters Ghost (Elizabeth Fensham) were found and then copied and pasted into the Wordle box. A click of the mouse then randomly arranged the words and created a word cloud, where words appearing more frequently were larger, and less frequent words were smaller. This was explained to the students and it was their mission to then work out which Wordle went with which book. Very popular books were chosen and students had to analyse each Wordle carefully and gather clues to help them correctly identify each book. Blurbs could also be used for this activity, or students could create their own Wordle by writing their own book reviews.
Miss McAllister's Ghost
Kill the Possum
Mosaic Maker, part of Flickr’s Big Huge Labs was used to create another competition. Around 10 well-known books were chosen and a mosaic was made for each. Using scans from the front and back cover, as well as finding other pictures which identified objects found within the book, twelve pictures in all, were used to create each mosaic. Examples can be seen on the blog. Students were able to try to guess which book each mosaic represented. If they found any too hard they were able to collect a sheet which had all of the titles listed, but each title was jumbled. Titles needed to be unjumbled before the mosaics could be matched to the books.
Black Dog Gang
Both of these activities were very successful. They were easy to prepare, and create, and were enjoyed by many of our students. They could easily be incorporated into Library classes at both primary and secondary levels, as either activities or displays. Better yet, have students create them.
I enjoy sharing my thoughts through writing my blog, and reflecting on the different Web 2.0 tools I have explored. Writing and commenting on blogs are a wonderful way to get to know people from all over the world. Whilst there may be few people in your circle of friends who share some of your interests, there will be many worldwide who do, and connecting with them is extremely satisfying.
Well done Karen and thank you for sharing your blogging journey with us.
