Free event with author of Brotherband, John Flanagan

Posted on October 18, 2011 by slvadmin

On Sunday 23^rd October, 2-3pm The Centre for Youth Literature will be hosting a free event at the State Library of Victoria with author John Flanagan, launching his new Viking series, Brotherband. John will be talking about the books and answering questions from the audience.

The event is free but bookings are essential. You can call 8664 7099, book online or via email, bookings@slv.vic.gov.au. More information about the event is available on the Read Alert blog.

Keep an eye out for Vikings at the event!

Google+

Posted on October 13, 2011 by slvadmin

Google’s new social networking site Google+ is similar to Facebook but includes features that have a range of professional applications for schools and libraries.

Circles let you group friends together and post, chat and video conference with them exclusively, effectively making a private channel. Just as you can create a circle for your family or close friends, you can set up circles for staff from different subject areas, schools or even based on projects you’re working on with schools in other parts of the world.

Hangouts let you video conference with a group of people in real time. This has obvious uses when connecting to people in other schools, cities or countries.

At this stage Google+ is still in beta so it’s only available to people over the age of 18 with a Gmail account. Google has stated that they plan to test the platform for security so that they can open the network to all people over the age of 13. When students can access the service, circles and hangouts could be an incredibly useful way for educators to engage with students in a social media environment.

Two simple measures of your school’s relationship with technology

Posted on October 12, 2011 by slvadmin

Brad Ovenell-Carter, Head of the Think Global School recently posted on the integration of ICT in schools.

He talks about how visible new technologies are in the learning process in 2 simple ways to measure the success of your school’s tech program.

Do students use devices in a lab or are they available anywhere learning happens?

Do staff and students notice new technology or is it just another tool in the classroom?

It’s interesting to think what would have to happen in schools for devices like smart phones and tablets to be as ubiquitous as a pencil or notebook.

Or maybe they already are? What are your experiences?

Ngram viewer

Posted on October 11, 2011 by slvadmin

Ngram viewer is a great new tool from Google Books that lets you search through individual words from over 5 million books digitised by Google.

The resulting graphs illustrate word usage trends over the past two centuries.

This TED presentation, by Erez Lieberman Aiden and Jean-Baptiste Michel from the team who created the Ngram viewer, shows some of the amazing things you can learn from 500 billion words.

Commons explorer

Posted on October 4, 2011 by slvadmin

You probably know Flickr Commons, long an incredible source of images from some of the world’s greatest library and museum collections. All images in the Commons have “no known copyright restrictions” and can be used, mashed up, tagged and added to your own Flickr galleries.

Many of the big names are there: Australian War Memorial, Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, the Powerhouse, and the National Libraries of Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and Scotland.

There are also many smaller but astonishing collections which offer a wide range of digitised historical images of everything from maritime history to cowgirls to warfare to Antarctic expeditions. The number of institutions involved increases all the time.

Now there’s also a great new way of exploring the collections: commonsExplorer, from Creative Canberra.

Browse interface, CommonsExplorer

It’s a quickly downloaded browsing interface that gives you, and students, a more visual view of the collections and the images. You can scroll through the list of all the participating institutions, then either search through the tag cloud or window shop through the pop-ups for images.

Act Wild

Posted on October 3, 2011 by slvadmin

Act Wild is a website, m-site and mobile app providing opportunities for students to take simple real world actions that benefit wildlife.

It offers information in a range of formats such as videos, fact sheets, images, and habitation mapping, and offers online actions that students can take if they want to get involved in saving the Sumatran Tiger or the Growing Grass Frog.

It also includes feeds on recent web or mobile initiatives by the Zoo and other wildlife organisations (for example, the use of iPads in Zoo learning activities, or new apps launched recently).

Act Wild is a partnership between Zoos Victoria and Greening Australia and is funded as part of the digital education content initiatives and strategies of the Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (DEECD) through the Find Use Share Education (FUSE) project.

Surviving exams

Posted on September 27, 2011 by slvadmin

Today we’re focused on supporting students who are facing the stress of exams next term.

The ergo website, from the State Library of Victoria, offers tips, resources and strategies for senior secondary students on exam preparation, revision, essay writing and the exam process.

Resources for secondary students

Cool tools for students

Posted on September 20, 2011 by slvadmin

Jenny Luca, Teacher Librarian at Toorak College, presents three vodcasts in the Merspi VCE Advantage series, which look at some really useful online tools that can help students with organization, notetaking and presenting their work.

These videos cover the how, what and why of bookmarking using Diigo, notetaking using Evernote and presenting and sharing your work using Slideshare. Great advice and guidance for students and useful for teachers and librarians too!

The vodcasts are available via the VCE Advantage link on the merspi front page, directly from the merspi YouTube channel and through FUSE for all schools – search for them by title.

Phat poetry

Posted on September 14, 2011 by slvadmin

Here’s a great FUSE project, not just promoting poetry to students, but also highlighting the ways in which web tools can add creativity and fun to learning.

Phat Poetry is an interactive poetry website targeted at middle years students (VELS Level 5). The site allows students to research a range of poetic styles and techniques and explore poems in the Poetry Vault, chosen from a selection of classic and contemporary poets. Students are then encouraged to use original or published works from the site and combine it with photos, animation, video, sound effects and music to create a digital mashup.

Reference tools for the 21st century

Posted on September 13, 2011 by slvadmin

Guest blogger Ria Coffey shares a few ideas taken from Dr. Joyce Valenza, guest speaker at the recent SLAV conference.

Staff members have been using these tools in Teaching and Learning at St. Patrick’s College in Ballarat:

Bibme

This easy and fast bibliography maker has blown our students away. “Where has it been all this time?” has been heard on numerous occasions since student were introduced to this awesome online tool

Mashpedia

The beauty of Mashpedia is in the way it organises search results and in the currency of the results. It provides for greater efficiency when searching for resources.

Flickr Creative Commons

This site offers images with attribution details meaning we can easily see how to appropriately use and reference images.

Thesis builder

This is an online essay builder that assists students in developing a contention and arguments for writing a essay.

You can watch footage of Joyce’s presentation on YouTube.

School Library Association of Victoria

Yearly Archives: 2011