Monthly Archives: June 2010

PLN Program Round 2

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Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

The School Library Association of Victoria in partnership with the State Library of Victoria present the PLN – Personal Learning Network program. This program is funded as part of the digital education content initiatives and strategies of the Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development.

Your PLN is a reciprocal learning system designed just for you!

  • Create your own personalised learning network and share information, opinions and experiences with like-minded people from across the globe,
  • Apply a little intelligent filtering to the information overload out there,
  • Learn from others and contribute to others’ learning,
  • Connect around ideas that you are passionate about.

Find out how you can use the web 2.0 environment to:

  • Expand your personal learning network,
  • Manage the information that web 2.0 provides,
  • Use web 2.0 for learning and teaching,
  • Develop your skills and experience in a web 2.0 environment.

This twelve week online program, enhanced with regular Elluminate how-to sessions, exemplars, and online mentoring offers you a hands-on experience of a range of web 2.0 tools and activities.

This program is designed for novices to the web 2.0 world as well as those who wish to further explore this interactive web environment.

When: Commencing Monday 26  2010
Who: Teacher-librarians, teachers and library team members

How: Work at your own pace, explore new things week by week, share your learning as a team!

Why: So that you build a network of trusted sources for learning and collaboration.

Cost: $175 per person for SLAV members – team discounts apply!

The registration form is now available here!

Have a look at the Wordle of how Round 1 participants described the PLN:

Wordle

Please join us!

Dr Joyce Valenza @ SLAV!

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The School Library Association of Victoria is proud and pleased to announce that renowned international and online presenter, Dr. Joyce Valenza is coming to Melbourne. Joyce will be speaking at the Make, Share, Do professional learning day to be held at the Olympic Room, Melbourne Cricket Ground on Friday 30th July. Places are limited, so please contact the SLAV office as soon as possible to ensure your place at this very special event.

Joyce Valenza is the teacher librarian at Springfield Township High School in Philadelphia. She says;

This is the best time in history to be a teacher librarian. Major shifts in our information and communication landscapes present new opportunities for librarians to teach and lead in areas that were always considered part of their role, helping learners of all ages effectively use, manage, evaluate, organize and communicate information, and to love reading in its glorious new variety.

Dr Valenza’s innovative and practical advice to guide learners in new and emerging information and communications landscapes has received global attention and acclaim across the international education community.

The 3 Rs or the 4 Cs?

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Most of us were either brought up with or have heard of the three Rs as being central to education;

  • reading,
  • (w)riting and
  • (a)rithmatic.

The Libraries and Transliteracy blog suggest that we should now be focusing on the four Cs;

  • critical thinking and problem solving,
  • communication,
  • collaboration and
  • creativity and innovation

This certainly makes sense as the focus for education in the 21st Century. Can we make the general public, the media (and some schools) understand this as well as they have the three Rs in the past? To read the whole post, please go to 21st Century Workers Require New Skills, it is well worth perusing.

iSpeech

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A great tool that converts text to speech is iSpeech.

iSpeech

Personal (non commercial) use is free and is great for visually impaired students. You can either use the demo at the front of the site for quick text to speech, or you can sign up for a free personal account that lets you do much more such as embed text to speech in your website.

iSpeech could also be good for language and literacy learners.

Stop Disasters Game

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The United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction brings you and your students the Stop Disasters game.

Stop disasters

The aim of the game is for students to learn how they can stop disasters from occurring. The FAQ page explains more:

Who can play the Stop Disasters game?
Anyone with internet access can download and play the Stop Disasters game from this web site. The game will not be ‘downloadable’ as an exe file on your hard drive. Instead it will load into a browser window.

Do I need a special computer?
No, any computer built within the last few years will be sufficient – Mac, PC or Linux based, with a screen resolution of 800×600 pixels.

You’ll need an up to date browser, with Flash Player version 7 or higher. You can download the latest Flash plugin from here:
http://www.adobe.com/go/getflash/

How long does it take?
Each scenario takes between 10 and 20 minutes to play, depending on the disaster you are trying to prevent and your skill level. There are five scenarios to play, and each can be played on easy, medium or hard difficulty levels.

What age do you need to be to play?
The core audience is 9-16 year old children, but anyone can play and enjoy the game, and everyone will learn more about preventing disasters.

The game is available in English, Spanish, Chinese, French and Russian, which makes it excellent for language classes.

A series of fact sheets for teachers have been developed and include:

  • Tsunami Fact Sheet
  • Hurricane Fact Sheet
  • Wildfire Fact Sheet
  • Earthquake Fact Sheet
  • Flood Fact Sheet

There are also videos and links to other resources.

A fun way to teach students about natural disasters, but also to demonstrate that they have the power to help minimise or stop them occurring.

PGSC Reading wiki

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A wiki suggesting alternative ways to respond to texts has been developed by Preston Girls’ Secondary College.

PGSC reading wiki 1

The idea behind the wiki is to show both students and teachers creative ways to respond to texts. The wiki includes examples of how students have responded via tools such as:

PGSC reading wiki glogs

A big thank you to @thenerdyteacher Nick Provenzano for sharing his students’ Prezis on The Great Gatsby. You can view more student responses (including YouTube clips) on his excellent blog.

PGSC reading wiki prezis

Hopefully students will be excited to show teachers and parents their understanding of texts through creating and publishing presentations. Schools could use the presentations on their websites and/or parent information night.

Weekly links (weekly)

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

DEECD Innovation Showcase

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Recordings and Presentation Materials from the 2010 Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development’s Innovation Showcase have just been released.

Katrina Reynen, the General Manager of the Department’s Innovation and Next Practice Division has shared the following information about the Showcase:

The 2010 Innovation Showcase, staged in May, exhibited a wide range of innovative practices from inspiring teachers and early childhood workers.

Recordings of each session along with their accompanying presentation are now available online.

With 36 presentations on innovative practices – from iPod touches to play based learning – and three inspiring keynote speeches, the online resources from the 2010 Innovation Showcase have something to interest everyone.

Some stand outs from the event included:
To continue to connect with the inspiring Innovation Showcase presenters and take part in further discussions about innovative practice, join the Educators Guide to Innovation ning.
You can listen to and view any or all of the presentations at your leisure. They are certainly well worth the time invested. Hopefully they might inspire you to implement your own innovations.

New and improved site from State Library of Victoria

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The State Library of Victoria has just relaunched its website. With an amazing wealth of information, activities and events, checking out the new SLV website is a must.
Homepage

Homepage

Hamish Curry, Education & Onsite Learning Manager in the Learning Services area of the State Library of Victoria explains:
This revamped site opens up a great deal of new opportunities to bring our collections and services to the surface; be sure to check out the ‘Learn’, ‘Explore’ and ‘What’s On’ sections.
Professional learning
Online learning resources
Online learning resources such as:
are included.
Professional learning
Professional learning
The professional learning page (above) caters for:
slv 4

Student and teacher resources

The Student and teacher resources page (above) provides resources related to:

  • Specific websites for schools (such as ergo, Insideadog)
  • SLV blogs
  • Audio and video resources
  • Education kits

So many fantastic resources available in the one place, the newly revamped SLV website is an absolute treasure.

Cooperative Library Instruction Project resources

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The Cooperative Library Instruction Project resources is a fantastic website with tutorials for students on internet use, searching, citations and more. The website explains it origins:

CLIP is a partnership between Western Oregon University, Oregon State University, Willamette University, and Chemeketa Community College whose mission is to design and develop sharable, web-based tutorials to assist in library instruction and information literacy.

The following tutorials may be of use to your students and you are able to embed them into your own website.

Evaluating Internet Sources:

Developing a topic:

Incorporating Sources into your Research Assignment:

What is a Library Database?

Generating Search Terms:

Why You Need to Cite Sources:

Internet Searching Tips:

Popular and Scholarly Sources:

Primary and Secondary Sources:

Also included are guides to compiling both APA and MLA style bibliographies.

Librarians can also request access to the CLIP quiz page as well as apply to become a writer for the site (you must join the site before you can apply.

Thanks to Joyce Valenza for blogging about this useful resource.