Gliffy

Posted on February 19, 2010 by slav

Gliffy is a very cool drawing and drafting tool. Free access and ease of use will appeal to many users including teachers and students.

With the ability to create:

floor plans
diagrams
flowcharts and
technical drawings

there are many possibilities for educational use as well as personal use. Visual Communication students may find it useful to create floor plans and technical drawings while Humanities, Science, Maths and English could take advantage of the flowcharts and diagrams for planning and mindmapping.

Gliffy offers a library with a large range of shapes and items. Once completed, drawings can be exported jpeg and png and files can be shared or published to the internet.

Library staff planning a new or updated library could use the floor plans and anyone designing or building a new home may find the floor plans worth while.

Gliffy has free and premium accounts. The academic account is free.

ALA great websites for kids

Posted on February 16, 2010 by slav

Thanks to Helen Boelens for passing on another great site. The American Library Association and the Association for Library Service to Children have developed a page entitled ‘Great websites for kids‘.

Each site listed has a brief summary, a link and an age guide. Although some sites are not particularly relevant to Australia or other countries, there are many that are. Worth a perusal.

Guitar Hero World Tour at Preston Girls’ Secondary College

Posted on February 15, 2010 by slav

To help engage and enhance student interaction at the VCAL level (alternative year 11 and 12), Preston Girls’ Secondary College teachers Les Kyle and Judith Way have developed wiki that houses a unit of work based on the wildly popular Guitar Hero video game.

While the main foci of the unit are literacy and numeracy, Les and Judith hope other skills will come out of the program. The program will begin in term 1, 2010. Les and Judith explain:

Introducing literacy and numeracy at senior years is always difficult. It always needs to be embedded into types of work the students find interesting and what better way to get the students’ attention by using Guitar Hero as a starting point.

Upon forming their ‘bands’, students will be blogging about imagined tours, CD releases, booking and travelling to venues around the world and so on. Numeracy skills come into play when deciding who much to pay roadies, how much tickets will cost and how the money will be split between the band. Students will need to be aware of their audience when blogging and develop a convincing history of their band.

Other skills such as cooperation and collaboration, problem solving, researching and investigating, mapping and creativity. Students will also be learning how to use web 2.0 tools such as Big Huge Labs to create posters, tickets and CD covers. Voki or other sites will be used to develop avatars and students may film their ‘concerts’ to upload to teachertube.

We hope that this unit of work will grab the students’ imagination and keep them actively involved for the entire time.

(With thanks to staff at Perth and Kinross Schools in Scotland for the seed that developed into this wiki.)

Hopefully the students enjoy their numeracy and literacy lessons! It will be interesting to hear how it all goes.

“School Libraries Seek Relevance Through Virtual Access”

Posted on February 12, 2010 by slav

The article “School Libraries Seek Relevance Through Virtual Access“, in which US school libraries are the subject, appeared on the Education Week website a few days ago and is certainly worth a read.

Some readers may know of the funding issues that have hit US school libraries in the last few weeks. This article, which quotes Buffy Hamilton and Joyce Valenza, outlines how some proactive school librarians have been changing the use and vision of school libraries and as such, how libraries are viewed by students, teachers and parents.

The advent of Web 2.0 tools and the way that some school librarians have embraced them are discussed, particularly with the view that these school librarians have kept their library relevant to their students:

In addition to teaching students and teachers how to navigate information, libraries have now become a place where students go to create and produce, said Carolyn Foote, the district librarian who works at the 2,500-student Westlake High School in Austin, Texas.

“Students are producing all sorts of products—YouTube videos, PowerPoint presentations, online slideshows, podcasts—and so as librarians, we need to have the skills to work with all those different formats and help students learn how to produce in those formats,” she said.

Consequently, it’s increasingly important for librarians to be familiar with new technologies and Web 2.0 tools, she said.

“There’s a lot of debate in the library field about whether you can even be a 21st-century librarian if you aren’t willing to embrace some of those Web 2.0 tools and be very proficient in them,” Ms. Foote said. “There’s a real need for us to be participating all the way through the [creation] process, and we need the skills to be able to do that.”

The library as both a place and a service, or a state of mind is discussed; the importance of a flexible, attractive physical space as well as the Web 2.0 tools which can connect students to the world through the library are vital. A great article advocating the excellent work many school librarians do.

Bringing experts into your classroom

Posted on February 12, 2010 by slav

It can often be problematic for students to gain access to authors and other experts in their field due to location, cost, time, travel and other issues. Technologies such as Skype can help. The ability to make free calls computer to computer with the added bonus of video conferencing if users have webcams has been a boon for schools.

But Skype is not the only method available. Richard Byrne’s (@rmbyrne) wonderful Free Technology for Teachers blog outlines three other free methods for Bringing Experts into Your Classroom:

Present.io

Wetoku

Vokle

Go to the Free Technology for Teachers post Bringing Experts into Your Classroom for some fabulous free tools to explore, thanks to Richard Byrne.

100 Incredible & Educational Virtual Tours You Don’t Want to Miss

Posted on February 10, 2010 by slav

Online Universities has provided a list of 100 educational virtual tours. With topics such as:

Cities (including Pompeii and Ancient Rome)
Famous landmarks and buildings (including Stonehenge, Taj Mahal and the Vatican)
Museums (including the Louvre and the Smithsonian)
Outer space
How things are made (Toyota cars and Hershey chocolate)
Humans and animals
Google Earth virtual tours (Cathedrals, castles, palaces, libraries and universities) – note that you need to have Google Earth installed on your computer

There are lots of tours to choose from. Well worth a look.

Safer Internet Day

Posted on February 9, 2010 by slav

Today is Safer Internet Day. The Victoria Police have just released this statement about the day:

Victoria Police are taking the opportunity on Safer Internet Day to engage with young people about cyber crime.

The annual international event aims to raise awareness about the safe and responsible use of online technologies, especially among children.

This year’s theme is ‘Think before you post’, an important message for young people to think about the possible consequences before posting information online.

Victoria Police will have our Cybersmart Detective Sergeant Jill Dyson in the hot seat today on a site called SuperclubsPLUS which is the protected Social Learning Network where primary school kids can meet friends, have fun and learn cool stuff, it can be found at http://www.superclubsplus.com/i/tour01.

Det Sgt Dyson has been a police officer for 22 years and will be live, answering questions posed by children on the topic of cyber crime.

Also on board for Safer Internet Day will be Victoria Police’s 11-year-old “recruit” Constable Zak who will be offering advice to young kids about being safe on the internet via a video which can be viewed at http://www.police.vic.gov.au/kids.

The Australian Communication and Media Authority‘s cyber(smart) page has lots of materials to keep kids safer today and everyday.

Thanks to Karen Bonanno for passing on the Cybersmart page link.

Share and celebrate: Professional development from SLAV

Posted on February 9, 2010 by slav

The School Library Association of Victoria has released its professional development offerings for the year. Celebrating 50 years of the Association, you are invited to come share and celebrate all things library. This year’s professional development offerings are diverse and stimulating and there is something to suit everyone.

Highlights include:

Personal Learning Network: Learning through sharing course,
Open the door to inquiry and
Make, share, do: active online learning featuring US teacher librarian guru Joyce Valenza in person.

To avoid disappointment it is advised that you complete the form and send it back to SLAV as soon as possible.

School Library Association of Victoria

Yearly Archives: 2010