Feature blog – Whitefriars College – Fiction is like a box of chocolates

Posted on November 2, 2009 by slav

Web 2.0 dynamo Tania Sheko has developed a fiction blog for the students at Whitefriars College. Tania explains the reasoning behind the blog’s development:

Why I started to write ‘Fiction is like a box of chocolates’ – I wanted to do more than just talk about books. My aim was to present information about fiction in an informal way, providing hyperlinks to further information, but without cramming it into a half-hour talk. Blogging allows me to include images of books covers or authors, videos of interviews, book and movie trailers, or videos produced by the authors themselves. My idea was that people would browse what they wanted and when they wanted to. Students will always go to the videos; they’re raised on multimedia.

The blog is deliberately informal in tone, and invites comments and discussion. Initially I started a webpage which was too static, then an internal school blog, which I couldn’t share outside the school, and finally moved to a WordPress blog which has an unlimited audience. Sharing in this way has resulted in wonderful connections with people from all over the world, and a chance to exchange ideas and information. I think that blog commenting is still foreign to our students, and needs to be learned. If English teachers integrated fiction blogs into their classes, it would be just like reading the newspaper for news, only it would be browsing the blog for information about books and authors. In the same way that we teach students to find facts in newspapers and other traditional media, we should teach them to engage with opinions and ideas in newer media such as blogs.

Where the Wild Things Are

I don’t apologize for including as much audiovisual content as I can, as well as featuring books which have been made into films. I think the ubiquitous crossover between books and films should not necessarily be seen as a bad thing, as young people who don’t read voluntarily may come back to the book after enjoying the film. The media isn’t the most important thing, it’s the engagement with ideas and stories.

Thanks and well done again Tania. It’s great for students to be able to revisit what you have discussed at school or read about books you don’t have time to fit into your book talks. The incorporation of multimedia is a great idea and will lead more and more students back to books. Which is what we all want!

Feature blog – Whitefriars College – Tania Sheko’s year 7 English blog

Posted on October 12, 2009 by slav

Thanks to Whitefriars College teacher librarian Tania Sheko for sharing another of her virtual creations. This time, Tania has developed a blog to support her year 7 English class. Tania explains:

http://englishwfc.wordpress.com/ is basically something I started to support the year 7 English class I teach collaboratively with an English teacher at my school. I decided to document the progress of our journey through this class because I’d read other teachers’ blogs and found them to be helpful and inspiring. I wanted to include what worked and what didn’t work and why. I think it’s important to be honest so that readers can benefit from your experience. I include resources and links, student work, videos used and created, in the hope that a teacher may find something they could use – an idea, a word of caution, recommendations or advice. I also include a short list of my favourite English teachers’ blogs. These have been a wonderful, rich resource for me.

I also find that making myself record what we do in class is a worthwhile discipline. Nothing is forgotten or wasted, and I can look back to review what we’ve done, as well as clearly see the path we’ve taken and how far the students have come.

Thanks again Tania for your contribution to the world of Web 2.0 and for sharing your efforts with the readers of Bright Ideas.

Book trailers

Posted on September 12, 2009 by slav

A number of people contributed places to find book trailers via OZTL_NET. Here they are in one place:

TrailerSpy – thanks to Ruth Buchanan.

Twilight # 2 – New Moon (Stephenie Meyer) thanks to Ruth Buchanan.

BookScreening

teachertube

CMIS

CMIS trailer Tuesdays thanks to Judi Jagger.

Whitefriars College book trailers

Jacketflap thanks to Barbara Braxton

On the topic of book trailers, local teen publisher Ford Street have a set of YouTube ads created by a fan who loves making trailers:

Crime Time by Sue Bursztynski

My Private Pectus by Shane Thamm

Trust Me! edited by Paul Collins, foreword by Isobelle Carmody
The Spell of Undoing by Paul Collins
Before the Storm by Sean McMullen
Finding Home by Gary Crew, illustrated by Susy Boyer

Ice-cream man by Jenny Mounfield:

Crossing the Line by Dianne Bates:

They Told Me I Had To Write This by Kim Miller

Sean McMullen speaks about Before the Storm

As with anything you show students, please remember to vet all book trailers first.

Feature blog – Karen Kearney

Posted on August 10, 2009 by slav

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.

Feature wiki – Whitefriars College “Reading – Active and engaging

Posted on July 13, 2009 by slav

Whitefriars College Head of Library and Information Services (and School Library Association of Victoria President) Rhonda Powling has created an incredible wiki. Entitled “Reading – active and engaging”, Rhonda’s wiki focusses on strategies for engaging students with reading, particularly for boys (as Whitefriars is a boys’ school).

: Homepage

Rhonda has introduced her students to ‘Book trailers’ This is where students make a movie style trailer advertising a book. Rhonda’s rationale for introducing the student to book trailers includes:

There are many students who seem disengaged at school. It has been said that young people are not reading and won’t write anymore than they absolutely must.
Outside school, however, it is a different story. Studies have shown young people are reading and writing incessantly, updating their MySpace/Facebook pages, keeping blogs and WebPages

In other words they are reading and writing but in different modes and media to the more traditional print literacies of the 20th century. Indeed the definition of literacy is evolving all the time. Literacy can no longer just encompass print-only works. In the 21st century literacy must include digital, hypertext, images and the plethora of communication media that make up the complex systems that bound in today’s world.

The complexity of messages in today’s world means that our students have to not only know how to “read” them but also know enough about them to be critical viewers, with the power to analyse and understand the obvious and more obscure meanings of the messages around them.

Students are bringing multi-literacy skills to the classroom and teachers tap into their interests and skills and then enhance their students’ understanding of these various diverse texts. This will enable them to become skilled at critically viewing any of the diverse texts that is presented to them so that they can confidently use all the media around them to learn, clarify and communicate information rather than by passive users who can be coerced, confused and persuaded by the unscrupulous.

Some statistics: (in 2008)
· 73% or ¾ students on the internet watch or download videos
· ½ of the young internet users say they watch YouTube
· Many young people post videos to blogs and even more forward on a link in an email
· They are socializing, researching, playing games, getting news via technologies.
In schools we need to look at innovative ways to capture the interest and commitment of students to the understanding the deep-thinking and as the learning world because more and more immersive these initiatives are an important step.

Rhonda has supplied some examples of book trailers developed by her students.

The General

Nemesis Book 1: Into the shadows

AdsRus

Rhonda has included the process of storyboarding and planning before students begin filming:

Storyboarding

Also included is an assessment rubric:

Assessment rubric

You have to agree that Rhonda has created a sensational unit or work and seeing the students’ brilliant efforts only reinforces what a wonderful job Rhonda has done to bring the love of reading to students in this age of multimedia.

Tania Sheko’s English wiki

Posted on June 22, 2009 by slav

Whitefriars College teacher librarian Tania Sheko has been busy! She has also created a wiki for the English class she has been working with.

Tania explains how the wiki came about:

The English wiki was created to support a particular English class but with a view to sharing resources with all English teachers. It’s in its very early stages, and will continue to evolve with time, according to the needs of the English class.

There is a variety of information and resources, including resources and ideas to support teachers (lesson ideas, rubrics, warm-ups), support for students (brainstorming ideas and research), ideas for using technology (cool tools, using multimedia, videos, Voicethread – podcasts are still coming), ideas for units of work (digital storytelling, using picture books), resources for ESL and VCE, and links to English blogs and wikis. Some pages have only one example, and others (lesson ideas, picture books, videos and Voicethread) have a longer list of resources.

Recently I’ve created a NING, which is a virtual learning community, and this will house the wiki, as well as providing a space for individual student blogs and countless discussions and groups. At this stage the NING is a closed community.

The wiki and the NING are both in their early stages. I’m learning how to construct it as I go, and I’m using people in my own PLN (personal learning network) to help me. It’s great to be able to ask questions at any time, and receive replies from people all over the place. The best part of being a teacher is being a learner.

Tania is more than happy to have people join the wiki and make contributions.

Thanks Tania for sharing your hard work and ideas with us. Congratulations on the development of all your ICT tools.

Feature wiki – Tania Sheko’s art wiki

Posted on June 8, 2009 by slav

Whitefriars College teacher librarian Tania Sheko has agreed to share the development of her art wiki with readers.

Art matters

Tania explains,

The wiki is an excellent place to collect information and links to sites in order to support teaching and learning. It can be used as a closed space for one class, or it can be a shared, collaborative space.

The art wiki began as a support for a year 11 Studio Arts class, and was initially a collection of resources and links. I was invited to the class to introduce the wiki, and also to get to know the students so that I could find resources for their individual projects. I started out going around to the students one by one to get an idea of what they wanted to do and what they needed in terms of online information, resources and images. As well as these tailored resources, the wiki houses general resources, such as links to galleries and museums around the world, as well as online magazines, excellent for visual examples when students need inspiration and ideas. For the theoretical component, there are links to websites about art history, art styles, and artists. There’s a growing list of art blogs, which specialise in a variety of art, and are a wonderful way to read about aspects of art in a personal way, as opposed to textbook reading. Of course, the blogs often open up discussion which is interesting in itself, and invite participation.

There are links to controversial issues to support essay writing, points of view, practical tips and how-tos, and help with research and essay writing skills.

Wikis allow you to easily embed media, and so there are links to podcasts, multimedia, Voicethread and videos. Multimedia resources are popular with students, and provide a dimension that text cannot.

However, the wiki is more than a repository for resources. As stated on the home page, it is ‘a shared space for you to place and locate information and ideas, a place to discuss and question.

If you click on ‘edit this page’ above, you can add content to the page. If you have any information or links to add, you’re welcome to contribute. Just remember to save the page when you’ve finished. You can also comment or raise questions using the ‘discussion’ link at the top of the page.’

A well prepared and considered introduction of the collaborative nature and possibilities of the wiki is important, and it helps if the teacher supports this. I was fortunate to work with a teacher who is passionate about Web 2.0 technologies, and she stressed to the students that they should visit the wiki regularly to check for resources which are constantly being updated. She also created a page for the class to display the work they created in the Studio Arts class. My aim for the wiki is that teachers and students take ownership of it, contributing to it, and reshaping it according to their needs. My relationship with the teacher and the students is vital for the adoption of and interaction with the wiki, otherwise I have spent countless hours creating a resource that is forgotten about.

And, of course, the wiki is a dynamic resource, growing constantly, and evolving through collaborative efforts.

Tania has obviously put a lot of thought, time and effort into creating useful and innovative resources for her students. Well done Tania and we are keen to see what you develop next!

Feature wiki – Whitefriars College, Donvale

Posted on November 15, 2008 by slav

Whitefriars College teacher librarian Karen Kearney has developed a wicked wiki for VCE classes! Karen outlines the development of the resource; ‘The Theatre Studies boys at our school have been studying Wicked – The Untold Story of the Witches of Oz as part of their curriculum. It’s one of the plays on our VCE list.’

Wicked front page

Karen explains how the wiki came about. ‘Earlier this year I attended the SLAV Conference featuring Will Richardson. Closely following this, all of Whitefriars College Library Staff, along with another staff member, completed the SLAV Web 2.0 “23 Things” course. These PD activities gave me many ideas of different and exciting ways in which information could be presented. Having already started blogging, I decided to try my hand at a Wiki.

‘Wikis have been used in the past at Whitefriars College. We have been a laptop computer school for many years now, and have a great intranet. Wikis for classroom use have been developed as part of the intranet, but I wanted something on the internet which many people could share.’

Karen continues, ‘Setting up a wiki really couldn’t have been simpler. Wikispaces was suggested as a good location for an educational Wiki. Following my first effort I found myself with a nice Wiki, complete with advertisements all down the side! After discussion with a colleague, I discovered that Wikispaces offer a place where teachers can create a Wiki without fees, and without advertising, for educational purposes.’

Karen says, ‘I have long had an interest in musical theatre, and was delighted to hear from our Theatre Studies boys that they were going to study Wicked – The Untold Stories of the Witches of Oz, as part of their VCE curriculum. I have seen the show on Broadway, and our Australian production, so knew it well. Furthermore, technical aspects of theatre fascinate me so I set out to find many articles on the Internet which take a back stage look at the show. I came up with many relevant articles, interviews, reviews, podcasts and YouTube videos, all of which discuss different aspects of the show. This information supports, and extends, that already provided by the Theatre Studies teacher.

Costumes, lighting, set design

‘The Teacher Librarian in me wanted to bring a reading perspective to the Wiki, and so I added a page about Gregory Maguire, the author of the book Wicked. Several of his books are listed there, as is his web site. Perhaps this might encourage some of our students to explore his other work.‘

Gregory Maguire's books

Finally, when the Wiki was near completion, Karen sent the link to the Theatre Studies class, their teacher, and other students and teachers she thought would be interested. She then sent an email to the OZTL_Net Teacher Librarians list, asking that anyone who wished to share the link should do so with their students and teachers. Karen does warn potential users that ‘YouTube video links have been included and I’m aware that not all schools will be able to view those.’

Thanks to Karen for sharing her valuable resource with us! Well done Karen.

School Library Association of Victoria

Tag Archives: Whitefriars College