Author Archives: slvadmin

Searching Google with your voice

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Today’s guest post comes from Bev Novak. Bev takes a look at the new Google search app for IOS devices and tests out the voice search feature. 

Released a couple of days ago, I just discovered the latest Google search app and I must say it’s really cool!

Designed for both the iPhone and iPad, this latest update allows you to search just by asking a question! Simply select the microphone icon on the new Google search page to instantly find answers to absolutely anything.

I’ve just had fun asking some very basic questions and had graphic returns within seconds:

What year was Napoleon born?

What is 10 Euro in Australian dollars?

What’s the weather tomorrow?

And if you want to be really impressed, just sit back and relax after giving the command ‘Play the trailer for the new James Bond movie’.

By using Knowledge Graph in its search technology the app is able to answer questions about people and places, says Google. Referred to in some reviews as Google’s attempt to take on Siri at her own game, the competition is certainly heating up with this new release and the winners are most definitely the users!

My one disappointment though is that none of the responses to my questions have elicited audio responses as they do in this video released by Google. I must admit though that even without audio responses I’ve been very impressed with both the speed and accuracy of responses. My mind is abuzz with the many different ways this can be used in our classrooms.

Have a listen and be inspired!

Thanks to Bev for taking a look at this interesting new Google search feature. This post originally appeared on the NovaNews blog, where Bev has some wonderful thoughts about teaching and learning. You can also follow Bev on Twitter. 

Infinity Ring: Read the books and play the games

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Today our guest post comes from Joy Burlak, Education Resource Centre Manager at Sunbury Downs College. Joy explains how the Infinity Ring series of books and games is taking her school library by storm.

A poster came across my desk from Scholastic, promoting ‘Infinity Ring’ “Fix the past. Save the future. Read the book. Follow the guide. Play the game. www.infinityring.com ” 

Such intrigue! I could not let that go without further investigation. The poster had piqued my interest in the exact way we try to entice students – we want to stimulate their curiosity. I was curious.

I went onto the Scholastic website and read about the ‘New Multi-Platform Time Travel Adventure Series Infinity Ring.’ The concept is simple. There are 7 books in the series. Each book comes with a guide which allows access to a new adventure in the online interactive game ‘Infinity Ring.’ I was hooked. Then I saw the promotional video.

The pace and drama of that video was enough. I showed it to some of my students and they too were hooked.

All I had to do now was organise for the IT department to unblock the game, and then we had to allow permissions for Unity web player to run across the network.

In the meantime students were reading up a storm, making sure they had finished the book before the game became available. The day finally arrived and the first student started playing. Soon enough we had an audience to be proud of. Those who had borrowed the book (I bought 3 copies) ran off to get their copy so they could sit and read and then get onto the game. That first day created 6 reservations for the book.

The first book is called ‘A mutiny in time’ by James Dashner. It introduces our heroes and the premise of the series and then takes the reader on a wild adventure back in time to Christopher Columbus in 1492. The adventure continues with the first game when students are taken back to1792 and the French Revolution. There are 7 books in the series, to be published over the next 18 months. James Dashner wrote the first book and will conclude the series, however the books in between will be written by other authors. This allows for a shorter publishing run and ensures interest remains at fever pitch.

The graphics are amazing and the plot is complex enough to challenge Year 8 students. I would suggest Year 9’s may even learn something. The website comes complete with Teachers’ Notes and free Common Core whiteboard activities. Circulating whilst students play the game provides an excellent opportunity to challenge their curiosity. A comment was made about crossing to the other side of the river, so my natural question was “What is the name of the river that runs through Paris?” The name d’Artagnan came up, so again the questioning continued – is he a fictional character or is there an historic link? The answers had to be provided the following day, before the game could continue.

We have decided to have 1 day each week as ‘Infinity Ring’ day. Students will be either playing the game (after reading the book) or actually reading the book. The best of both worlds!

Thanks to Joy for telling us about the passion of her students for this new series of novels. We’re off to read the first novel and start playing!

 

SLVLearn 2012 resources now available

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Last week the State Library of Victoria’s Education team hosted the inaugural SLVLearn 2012 conference with two varied days of professional development and sharing. The first day explored the topic of information access, while the second day saw a number of Melbourne’s cultural institutions get together to show how Melbourne can be used as a learning environment.  Many of the resources and presentations from the conference are now available online.

The Future of Information saw a number of educators present on topics such as curation tools, digital citizenship, creative commons and accessing digitised resources.  The presenters have kindly shared their presentations and you can find links and a full summary of the day in this Storify- SLVLearn 2012 The Future of Information.

Kelly Gardiner, Cindy Tschernitz, Sandy Phillips, John Pearce and Cathy Hainstock explore the topic of Information vs. Skills

Learning in the Present: The Melbourne City Experience saw 22 of Melbourne’s cultural institutions come together to showcase their resources and school programs. A panel discussion explored the logistics of organising city experiences for students. Teachers also had the opportunity to go on a walking tour of a number of institutions.

The day also explored how technology such as Historypin, Storify and Twitter can be used to enhance the experience before, during and after the city visits. You can access a list of the resources mentioned in this Diigo list: The Melbourne City Experience.

 

Explore Victoria’s history with Vic Heritage

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Today’s guest post comes from Tanya Wolkenberg, Heritage Communications Project Officer for the Heritage Council of Victoria. Tanya introduces Vic Heritage, an iPhone app that lets you explore significant sites across Victoria. 

Vic Heritage is an app designed to connect people to the history of the places around them. For years now I’ve been watching the development of mobile technologies with keen interest, thinking of how these technologies can connect people to the stories and layers of history in their streets and suburbs.

There are lots of apps out there doing this really well, Historypin probably first among them. As I work for the Heritage Council of Victoria and we have an amazing database of 2,200 places and objects of state significance to Victoria, that’s where my focus lies. Each place or object on the register has a Statement of Significance – a statement of why that place is so important it should be protected – and these reasons might range from architectural to scientific, to contributing to an understanding of Victoria’s cultural history.

I was also really interested in capturing people’s stories about those places. If we think of the Statement of Significance as the official history of the place, I wanted to know the unofficial history too. Maybe someone saw their first gig there, or their parents got married there…. I wanted the app to reflect the layers of personal and community meaning attached to places.

In order to do that, I worked with our developers, Outware Mobile, to create some custom functionality. This allows users to add their own content to individual places, either a comment or image. Once the content is moderated it is displayed on a tab attached to the place.

We also created some custom tour functionality, which allows users to create their own tours by adding places together and giving them a title (might be related to a theme or location). Users can theme places together by a type of place, style or personal interest (for example, silos, Art Deco or swimming pools) or by location. They can save the tours for themselves or chose to share the tours with others.

The tours functionality is particularly useful for excursions – students can individually or in small groups create their own tours of the city according to buildings on a particular route, by architectural style or era, or by a type of place (civic building, church, etc). They can share these tours with the rest of the class, or report back on the histories of some of the places they’ve seen along the way, having read the Statements of Significance. I’d be keen to get feedback from other teachers using it as part of their classroom or excursion activities.

There are also ‘Recommended tours’ – tours created by us. These include two audio tours – one of the housing styles and social history of St Kilda narrated by Radio National’s Peter Mares, and another on contemporary architects’ re-use of old industrial buildings in the city. The two other tours in this section include one on 20th century architecture, and another which explores, via the built heritage of the city, Victoria’s Framework of Historical Themes. Each of these are easily walkable and lend themselves to excursions.

The app is currently only available for iOS devices, but we plan to rebuild the Victorian Heritage Database with most of the app’s functionality in the near future, and a mobile version of this will be available to all smartphone users.

The Vic Heritage app can be downloaded from the Apple Appstore.

Thanks to Tanya for taking us through some of the features of the Vic Heritage app. Tanya has also recorded a brief video demonstration of the app’s key features.

PLN short course builds your research toolkit

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The next round of the Victorian Personal Learning Network has been announced, with the first ever Victorian PLN short course kicking off on November 12 and running for 4 units. The Research Toolkit course will explore reliable online resources, effective search techniques and tools for organisation and referencing.

The online course is self paced and will feature webinars with research experts. It’s a great way for teachers and library staff to brush up on their skills and keep up to date with new tools and techniques. Research Toolkit is also a good refresher for previous participants in the Victorian PLN course looking to reinforce and further develop many of their own research skills.

Image of research guide on census

State Library of Victoria Research Guides

Research Toolkit is a partnership between the State Library of Victoria and the School Library Association of Victoria. The course costs $85 per person, but group discounts are available for teams of six or more. For more information visit the State Library of Victoria website, or email learning@slv.vic.gov.au

Learning with Gusto

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Today’s guest post comes from Emma Reilly, Education officer at the State Library of Victoria. Emma explores some  online resources related to food and introduces a free webinar that will run on October the 16th.

The State Library of Victoria is currently presenting a free exhibition, Gusto! A culinary history of Victoria. The exhibition explores Victoria’s historic and contemporary culinary landscape, featuring gastronomic treasures from the Library’s collections – from the first Australian cookbook, published in 1864, to an actual World War I army biscuit. To support the exhibition, the State Library of Victoria has produced a Gusto! Education resource for Years 3-6 of the Australian Curriculum (VELS Levels 3 & 4).

When we consider the Masterchef phenomenon, issues of global food security, health, well-being, ethics and nutrition, it is fair to say food certainly plays an important role in the lives of students today. In an upcoming free professional learning opportunity, educators from the SLV and Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation will explore engaging learning experiences through the themes: Food and Identity, Food Supply and Eating In.

Some of the highlights of the webinar will include:
• Get some Bright Ideas about bringing to life online media using simple thinking routines.
• Be introduced to engaging digital learning tools such as Glogster, Story Scrapbook, bubbl.us and Google Maps.
• Learn how to access extensive digitised resources for the primary classroom using the SLV catalogue and Gusto! research guide.
• Get a backstage pass to the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation Professional learning community, The Shared Table.

Have we tantalised your tastebuds? Sink your teeth into this Blackboard Collaborate session on October 16th at 4.00pm-5.00pm.

SLAV & NGV explore art, literature & stories

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The details of the final SLAV conference for 2012, Art, literature and stories: exploring sharing across cultures have now been announced. This partnership between SLAV and the National Gallery of Victoria will be held at NGV International on Friday the 9th of November, 2012.

The program features two keynote addresses. The first by Anne E Stewart will explore storytelling as a sharing of heart and spirit. Helen Kent and Dr Larissa McLean Davies will discuss Literature in the Australian Curriciulum in a socio-historical context. The session will also explain some of the ways in which the NGV can be used with students studying Literature and English.

Explore NGV’s learning resources at their website

The conference also features a number of concurrent sessions that explore many aspects of literature and art. The day will finish with an intriguing discussion about the significance of frames and the choices made when presenting paintings to the public.

The full conference schedule is now available and registrations can be completed through SLAV. As always, you will also be able to participate in the event on Twitter using the #slavconf hashtag.

Online learning takes off

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Online learning has been around for a while now, and most major tertiary institutions have some kind of online course management system, even if only to help manage classes presented in the real world.

But over the last few years, online education has really taken off, with course software designed to support teaching and learning online. You may be familiar with Edmodo, which is designed to look and feel like a social media platform and can be used with secondary students.

Lore is similar in intent to Edmodo, and offers similar functionality, but looks much more suited to adult learning (it’s developed for tertiary students, was previously known as Coursebake and has big names such as Harvard and Yale attached to it). We’ll be testing it in the next round of the PLN course.

screenshot of lore

Coursera is a platform that provides online courses from a wide range of providers: this week Coursera announced partnerships with a further 17 universities including University of Melbourne and Columbia. You’ll hear much more about this and other MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) which provide mostly short courses for free from major education providers all over the world. MOOCs provide an amazing opportunity to undertake professional development online – for free.

Here’s a brief introduction to MOOCs:

Story Scrapbook

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Today author Tristan Bancks tells about the development of his new app Story Scrapbook, a tool to assist with the creative writing process.

I write books for children and teens: Mac Slater Coolhunter, Nit Boy, Galactic Adventures and My Life & Other Stuff I Made Up. I use visual, aural, textual, web-based and interactive tools to prompt and inspire my writing process. Story Scrapbook is a new (free!) story brainstorming app based on my cross-media creative process that brings writing alive for children and teens. I developed the app with revolutionary new media developer Ben Train to assist us in co-writing a story.
 
The app, for Mac and PC, allows users to bring together text, images, video, music, sticky notes and Google Maps on virtual scrapbook pages. A simple idea about a kid with the worst case of nits in world history or a killer magpie or a boy with a dream of going into space becomes ‘real’ when it is brought alive using multimedia tools. There are no more, ‘I don’t know what to write about’ complaints or one-size-fits-all story starters on the whiteboard. Students can explore their own interests and brainstorm their own unique stories using an engaging, contemporary tool that they understand.
  
 
As a child, if I read a book or watched a movie I would feel inspired to create my own story for screen or page. Story Scrapbook will, hopefully, inspire other young readers, writers and creators to do the same. And not just those who learn textually or have been born with a creative ‘gift’.
 
Since the launch of the Beta version in May I have been touring Story Scrapbook to festivals and schools from Sydney to Brisbane and out to Armidale, creating collaborative stories on smartboards and having students trial the app on individual computers in workshops. They have provided feedback on their likes and suggestions and have been instrumental in the ongoing development of the app. Feedback has been resoundingly positive.

Steve Jobs, co-creator of Apple and Pixar, said that the original instructions for the Star Trek video game were:
1. Insert coin.
2. Avoid Klingons
 
We have tried to do similarly with Story Scrapbook. On the web page there is a Quick-start pdf and an introductory video (see above) but other than that, students are invited to experiment and discover the app for themselves. This has proven a greater challenge for older people and the less computer-savvy but the tool has been created with children and teens in mind.
 
We are building a community around the app and we are currently developing an HTML5 version, which will allow easy embedding and sharing of the interactive creations. My hope is to build a suite of free or very inexpensive digital creative tools on my website and to continue to inspire and nurture others’ ability and confidence to create.
 
I would love you to be part of this process by downloading and testing the app, then sharing your discoveries. Find out more and download the app on the Story Scrapbook page.

 

Congratulations to Tristan for creating such a great tool. He is touring the app to schools in Melbourne from August 6-10. To find out more visit Tristan’s website.

Should we be teaching Facebook?

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Today’s post comes from a new regular contributor to Bright Ideas, Tony Richards.

What an interesting week we have just had in relation to movements around cyber safety. Recently we saw splashed across the traditional media a principal’s ultimatum to students and parents “Quit Facebook or be expelled, school says”. The headlines play on the social stigma of expulsion and the dreaded boogie man that is Facebook.

I am sure there is much more to this story that meets the eye but what frustrates me and should concern other educators is the lack of clear understanding that is shown by educational leaders, along with the fear mongering cyber safety experts that get their media ego fix and pump up the tyres of fear around social networks. Yes Facebook has lots of issues and challenges for our children and adults alike, however social networks are here to stay.

We need to change the model and educate our children around why some of these tools are not the best option for communicating, sharing or playing games. The responsibilities one takes on when creating a social networking presence has some profound implications if you choose to ignore or plead ignorance around privacy, friends, comments and all the other components associated with these networks.

We must start to provide social tools at school within the educational environment that students can engage in so that we can model, explore, test, bend and experience connectivity at this level and what it means to operate successfully online.

I find it extremely interesting that one of the great misunderstandings about social networks, especially the larger social networking sites, is that the 13 and over rule found in the Terms of Service (ToS) is based on the U.S. Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA). This act and the law behind it is to enforce privacy restriction on the site owners. As stated in the news article by a Melbourne based lawyer “the Facebook guideline that stipulated users must be aged 13 and older was not enforced by any law.”

When children sign up under the age of 13 in Australia they are breaking the terms of service of the site. Facebook has the onus to ensure that children under the age of 13 don’t sign up, which begs the question, “How do you enforce such a situation?” The stark reality is that you can’t.

The recommendations from some sections of the media around reporting your children to Facebook and getting their account deactivated and cancelled is certainly one step. From my experience working with thousands of students each year if students want to have access then they will get it. If parents or the school have taken these types of steps to remove them then all our children will do is take it underground where you will have no opportunity to help or support them. You will have no credible way to have smart, honest conversations about what they should and should not share.

I am not advocating children breaking the ToS, but I am advocating talking about the challenges, the risks, the complications and the moral question around being part of a service when clearly they should not. We have to talk and listen to our students and we have to help them grow and develop online.

If I were teaching in a class this topic and that media headline would be the foundation of a week’s worth of discussion around the use of Facebook. Why are students on it, what is the draw, why does the media react in such a way and what could have possibly tipped a principal over the edge like this? The headline “Quit Facebook or be expelled” is screaming out for an impromptu debate, preferably with another school using a collaborative tool like Skype to highlight the power of the environment we all access.

What will you be talking about this week with your students around cyber smarts?

Tony has listed a range of cybersafety resources at his blog and he is available to present Online Smart sessions to students, parents, teachers, community organisations and business around successfully navigating social networks and the internet. You can find all of  Tony’s contact details on his profile page, or find him on Twitter @itmadesimple. Let us know what you think about the post in the comments or, quite fittingly, on our Facebook page.