Hour of Code – skills and awareness

Posted on December 6, 2014 by SLAV Connects

The Hour of Code is an international activity aimed at involving K-12 students in the understanding and creation of computer code. Initiated by Hadi Partovi, the Hour of Code attracted approximately 20 million participants in 2013, the majority of whom were from the US. This year the message has spread further with the goal to attract 100 million participants worldwide. With today’s students living and, potentially working, in a technology-saturated world, digital literacy is an essential skill. Hadi Partovi, founder and CEO of non-profit organisation behind the Hour of Code – Code.org explains the need for students to have a better understanding of how technology works, saying:

The Hour of Code is designed to demystify code and show that computer science is not rocket-science, anybody can learn the basics.

Students can register to participate in the Hour of Code between 8-12 December. This is difficult timing for the Victorian students who finished school for the year last week, however, a bit of forward planning may be able to sort something out for next year. Students aim to achieve the goal of participating in one hour of code development and the understanding of how code works. Computers are not essential. Computational thinking is the aim and educator Vicki Davis provides a range of options in her Edutopia post 15+ ways of teaching every student to code (even without a computer).

How to run an Hour of Code

Chris Betcher in writing for ABC Splash explains the importance of this initiative:

…this push towards helping our students learn the ideas of coding is not simply about getting them to write computer programs. It’s about helping them to learn to think clearly; identify and analyse problems; come up with creative, innovative solutions; and, ultimately, help make the world a better place. The thing about coding is that it’s far more about learning to think clearly and creatively than it is about doing nerdy computer stuff. Put simply, good coders are usually good thinkers.

Also check out The Hour of Code @ Splash and take your students to a new level of thinking. This initiative also supports changes to the Australian Curriculum for Victorian schools to be introduced in 2015 whereby the Technologies program will include both Design and Technologies as well as Digital Technologies in place of the General Capability – ICT.

Conference report: Process of change

Posted on November 25, 2014 by SLAV Connects

During 2014, School Library Assoc of Victoria has presented a full calendar of professional learning. This post reflects on the conference School Library Roles: a Process of change held on 31 October at the Catholic Leadership Centre, East Melbourne. The gathering of over 120 delegates reflected on the impact that change has in school library staff job descriptions, tasks and responsibilities and how it is to be managed.

Head of Library at Whitefriars Catholic College, Rhonda Powling, laid out the tone of the conference in her opening keynote. Karen Malbon provides a thoughtful reflection on the presentation in her blog Infinite Possibilities where she says:

So often we hear gloom and doom stories about school libraries. Rhonda is optimistic for the future and drew our attention to the futuristic thinking of Mark Pesce and the 2013 ALIA discussion paper, Library and Information Services: the future of the profession themes and scenarios 2025.The three themes identified were convergence, connection and the golden age of information. Convergence generally means fewer jobs but require skills, connection is a library strength and the golden age of information is full of possibilities for libraries.

Libraries will flourish with professional expertise, connectedness, by building relationships with the community and by empowering clients. It is time to let go and move on. School library staff need to be open to challenges, creative, team based, collaborative and focused on the needs of community……. Read all of Karen’s reflection…

One of the aims of the day was to provide the conditions for delegates to discuss the variations between the roles of library staff and the impact on library team members’ situations. Personal input and discussion, followed by presentations from a panel of library staff who spoke positively about their jobs and the students they encounter daily was encouragement for everyone to go back to school and look closely at their roles and the documentation supporting it. Resources to support an analysis of roles and preparation for an annual review meeting can be found here.

There’s an increased emphasis at SLAV conferences to allow delegates time to try out new skills, discuss what works and simply swap ideas. The ‘sand pit’ session facilitated by Glenda Morris, teacher librarian, was hands-on time covering a range of topics from web tools to makerspaces and search engines. Comments from these sessions and more covered in the conference are captured in the Storify below.

SLAV conferences are increasingly about raising issues and building knowledge through the community. School libraries are being challenged, as Rhonda pointed out in her keynote, yet the future is potentially very bright. It does, however, require rethinking, reskilling and a good understanding of your role.

Congratulations – Dromkeen Librarian’s Award

Posted on November 14, 2014 by SLAV Connects

Congratulations to Melbourne High School Head of Library, Pam Saunders, recipient of the 2014 Dromkeen Librarian’s Award presented at the State Library of Victoria (SLV) on 12 October. The award ‘is presented to a teacher, a teacher librarian or a children’s librarian, working within or outside the education system, in recognition of the important role played by this person in introducing young people to literature and encouraging an enjoyment and love of reading.’ Pam has a long involvement with libraries and adolescent reading having previously worked as a librarian in schools and public libraries, as well as managing the Centre for Youth Literature at the SLV. In her interview with Tania Scheko, teacher librarian, she speaks of the development of her love affair with reading, saying..

I was fortunate to have become a reader on the lap of my father as he read to me. I remember walking as a very young child to the shop to buy the new magazine Playhour and then my father reading it to me, especially the comics. This was further fostered by a dynamic school librarian, Mrs Cecilia Stubbs, who ran the library at Burnie High School in the 1970s. She encouraged students to use the library, to be involved and, best of all, she challenged my reading, pushing me to read titles which I would not have discovered myself. Titles like Black like me by John Griffin. I hope I have emulated her as a librarian.

Pam’s award shines a spotlight on the role of library staff in the development of a culture of reading within the school and individual students. We know that to instil a love of reading is to give a student the passport to seeing the world through a different set of eyes. At the forthcoming School Library Assoc of Victoria (SLAV) conference to be held 21 November, author Leigh Hobbs and others will explore the importance of the school library, and the primary school in particular, in “Building Community Through Reading”. Reading is a skill for life. Congratulations Pam, you and others like you in our libraries are a positive influence on our students’ futures.

The Dromkeen Medal, this year awarded to esteemed editor and publisher, Helen Chamberlin, and Dromkeen Librarian’s Award have a distinguished history of over 32 years, with previous Medal recipients including well-known children’s book illustrators and authors such as Shaun Tan, Bronwyn Bancroft, Roland Harvey, Ruth Park and Graeme Base.

Blogging – Revisiting VicPLN Course tools and support

Posted on November 4, 2014 by SLAV Connects

When you’ve been connected online for some time, it’s possible to lose sight of the perspective of staff new to the professional online environment. Library staff in particular can come into the profession via a route that hasn’t involved interacting online other than in the personal social media apps such as Facebook and Instagram. In joining the school library workforce, however, they must be, or become, digitally literate. Every member of staff in a school library must be actively digital, it’s the very nature of today’s libraries.

Being ‘digitally literate’ involves knowing how to use digital tools and, most specifically, knowing how to apply them to a specific task. In recent years hundreds of people have participated in and completed, to various degrees, the VicPLN Course (Personal Learning Network) conducted by the State Library of Victoria learning team in conjunction with the School Library Assoc of Victoria. It’s amazing, however, that I constantly encounter people who ‘never really got their head around the PLN tools’, ‘don’t have a use for them’ or feel, ‘they don’t apply to the library role’.

If you work in a school library today you need to be using social media, blogging, curating resources and actively building your own Personal Learning Network (PLN). Building a PLN according to personal interests, fosters enthusiasm and reveals relevance as you increase your involvement. This doesn’t mean that everyone must be tweeting, skyping and Google+ing, however, it does mean that they must be looking outside the walls of their library for ideas and inspiration.

Blogging is a good place to start. Read other people’s blogs, comment and contribute where possible. The emphasis on blogging has changed since the introduction of curation tools such as ScoopIT and Flipboard but they’re for another post. Today we’re talking blogging because blogs are a powerful tool in schools, both at the learning and resourcing levels.

Blogging tools recommended:

Edublogs – via Global2 if you’re in Victoria
Edublogs – for non-Victorian educators
WordPress – same format at Edublogs (they’re built on WordPress platform)
Blogger – From Google – if you’re a Google Apps for Education (GAFE) school you’ll have this.

The VicPLN Team at the State Library created a fabulous resource to support participants of the online VicPLN Web 2.0 Course. The course material was refined over a number of years and VicPLN Unit 1: Start your blog is the recommended place to start your blogging journey. In addition to finding recommended resources and blogs to follow, you’ll find tips, tutorials and a wealth of support material.

A note to Library Managers: Creating a blog for library staff use only is a great place to start. Use it as a communication and professional ‘sandpit’ learning tool within the library team. Use your library blog to:

Share library staff news and events
Record meeting notes, ideas and suggestions
Link to professional learning
Learn by actively participating

Once confidence is built, start blogging:

Book reviews and recommended reading blog
Travel blogs for school trips, camps etc
Support classroom teachers in using blogs
Library news and updates blog

The message cannot be overstated. Library staff build your skills. Review your practices, put aside the time-consuming busy work, book displays etc and become an indispensable, digitally skilled workforce. Blogging is a good place to start.

Bright Ideas will revisit the tutorials and support resources of the VicPLN Team in future posts. You’re invited to come on board with a commitment to personal skills growth and the development of your own Personal Learning Network (doc will download).

Comments and feedback is welcome as always.

Google Forms – new look, versatile tool

Posted on October 16, 2014 by SLAV Connects

Forms are one of the most useful tools in the Google toolkit. For some time, however, users have been looking for more functionality and an improved appearance in the product. It’s finally here with the recent announcement that Google Forms has a range of new themes and options, including the ability to customise the theme with your own image. These changes have really lifted the appearance and make them a great deal more appealing.

New to Google Forms? This Tour of Google Forms is prior to the themes upgrade but gives a clear introduction of the main features for the uninitiated.

Forms have a multitude of uses from data gathering, questionnaires, competitions, analysis of an embedded video, surveys, self-graded tests, short story competitions … the list is endless. Google educator Molly Schroeder’s examples of Using Google Forms is a source of inspiration, although once you start using them you won’t be short of ideas yourself.

At the recent Melbourne Google Summit the professional conversations around the use of Google tools was inspiring. With so many schools now using Google Apps for Education, the Summit was an ideal place to pick up practical tips that could immediately be applied to the classroom. In this video Chris Betcher, another leading Google educator and generous sharer of knowledge, explains some of the lesser known, innovative features in Google Forms. Chris’s Google Summit resources site is packed with ideas and assistance.

A colleague who attended the Google Summit with me has been ‘set on fire’ with the functionality of Chrome extensions Doctopus and Goobric, using them to manage the workload of senior Maths and Accounting classes. It is certainly worth exploring Google Apps for Education and tapping into the resources of the many knowledgeable educators associated with it.

Put the Google Drive Blog in your RSS feed reader to keep posted on the constant improvements. The Google Educast podcast on the Edreach Network is also a favourite of mine for keeping in touch with Google Apps for Education news, ideas and application to the classroom. So much to learn, thank goodness for our Personal Learning Networks!

Header image: http://frankbennett.co.uk/

Exploring Makerspace culture

Posted on September 30, 2014 by SLAV Connects

It’s twelve months since Kristen Fontichiaro presented Sharpening our toolkit: defining great work, exploring Makerspace culture and badging accomplishments at the SLAV Conference Transliteracy: whom do you ask and how can you participate? At that time Kristen spoke of the value of Makerspaces as positive learning opportunities based on her experience and research with the Michigan Makers group and the University of Michigan, USA.

A number of schools have explored the idea and are implementing them in various ways. As a ‘third space’ in a student’s life – a place that is neither home and nor the classroom, libraries and the concept of a Makerspace is an ideal fit. Every school has a unique ‘maker’ identity according to the interests and resources available to that community. Some lean towards integration with STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) and concentrate on electronics and coding. Others, such as Mazenod College library that I presented to delegates at the recent ELH conference, feature Lego, Minecraft, Kerbal Space Program and Augmented Reality.

Makerspaces: creating an opportunity

Regardless of the focus, Makerspaces share a common definition:

A place where people can use tools and materials and can develop creative projects
Can be embedded in an existing organisation or stand alone e.g. Makerfaires
Are adaptive – can be shaped by educational goals or individuals’ creative interests Makerspace.com

Opportunities for innovation are emerging rapidly as schools purchase 3D printers and the notion of introducing computer coding as a primary school subject is being canvassed by education departments worldwide. There is an opportunity here for school library staff to look at their spaces and investigate the possibility of working in collaboration with Technology and IT Departments combining ideas across the school.

Schools libraries have the benefit of a degree of flexibility to venture into providing activities with a Makerspace mindset as an opportunity for students to tinker, explore, relax and mix with peers around a shared interest. It doesn’t have to be a fully equipped, technical space. Students simply need somewhere they can explore and learn in a voluntary yet constructive capacity.

Do you have a Makerspace story to share in relation to your school library? Please use the ‘reply’ box below to share your story.

Some resources to assist your research:

SLAV’s FYI journal – Summer 2014 – Theme- Makerspaces – the changing nature of school libraries includes numerous articles and a list of further reading
What does the next generation of school libraries look like? – Mindshift article by Luba Vangelova
Linking for learning – Makerspaces – list of resources
Makerbridge – an online community for everyone interested in makerspaces and maker culture
Edutopia – Maker education – a range of resources and practitioner advice including an excellent article by Vicki Davis
Makers as innovators – a series of books produced by the Michigan Makers, plus a list of ideas to consider
Invent to Learn – Making, tinkering and engineering in the classroom by Sylvia Martinez and Gary Stager.

Creating a Virtual Learning Commons

Posted on September 14, 2014 by SLAV Connects

At the recent SLAV Conference Building a Participatory Learning Community, school library leaders Dr David Loertscher (USA) and Carol Koechlin (Canada) presented the concept of a Virtual Learning Commons. School libraries have become familiar with the model of ‘learning commons‘ which considers the library as place, an environment that enhances social interaction and cross-disciplinary learning outside the classroom. This conference transferred that idea to a virtual space in keeping with the changing nature of library services where visiting the library is no longer a necessity when online access is available.

David and Carol demonstrated the depth to which a Virtual Learning Commons can support the organisation of library resources and bring a community together. A template is provided to simplify the process of making one for your own library.

The SLAV Learning Commons includes the template and all the resources to you need to bring together learning resources, thinking skills, examples of best practice for library innovation and much more. Take time to explore these resources and you will find a wealth of ideas and support to enhance the learning experience for your school community.

World War I through other eyes

Posted on August 31, 2014 by SLAV Connects

Set aside some time to explore the European Film Gateway which provides access to hundreds of thousands of historical documents preserved in European film archives ranging from photos, posters, and censorship documents to rare feature and documentary films and newsreels.

The virtual exhibition European Film and the First World War is particularly recommended as representing a unique European view of history through another set of eyes. Organised under the headings:

* At the front
* Film and propaganda
* Science and technical innovation
* Suffering in and after the war
* Beyond the trenches
* Neutral countries
* Commemorating the war

This site is ideally suited to senior students who have an understanding of the complexity of World War I and are seeking to gain an understanding from the Axis point of view in addition to the British Allies.

It explains the purpose of film and propaganda for instance, and provides examples:

To keep spirits and morale high during the hardships of war, film was discovered as an ideal medium to influence the masses. All nations fighting in the war used moving images to influence their own people.

In the video, ‘For the Empire’:

Britannia posed beside the figure of ‘Belgium’ and her dead children. What are others doing for us? A soldier sets out for war leaving his parents in a country cottage. Muddy conditions on the Western Front are shown. A letter from the front pleads for God’s sake don’t let us down.

European Film and the First World War addresses the Australian History curriculum by:

providing opportunities for students to engage in the analysis, interpretation and evaluation of historical sources,
assisting students to progressively engage in higher order tasks, for example, building an historical argument using evidence.

Through exploring and sharing their knowledge, students will expand their understanding of the World War I and view it with a more global perspective. Recommended.

Google Cultural Institute – art, history, geography

Posted on August 25, 2014 by SLAV Connects

If it’s been a while since you last visited the Google Cultural Institute, it’s time to revisit but be sure to leave time for exploration.

The Institute now consists of:

Google Art Project: Containing artworks, sculpture and furniture from large and small galleries across 40 countries. See the art in situ in galleries with a walkthrough using Google Street View. Explore the interiors of landmarks such as the Palace of Versailles or, build and share your own virtual art gallery
Historic Moments: Glimpses of significant moments in history have been created from primary source materials by people who have a story to share. The Solidarity and the Fall of the Iron Curtain: Poland 1980
World Wonders: Bringing modern and ancient world heritage sites to life using Street View and 3D modelling. Explore the natural wonders of Kakadu National Park and the historic archaeological areas of Pompeii.

See Collections:

Commemorating the First World War – background to the war, historic moments, documents and recollections
Stories of the Holocaust – perspectives from those who lived through the experience

An added experience for those who have become, or wish to explore Google+ Hangout is to host your own virtual tour and become a Tour Leader in the great art galleries of the world. Simply go to Google+ (you’ll need to sign in to Google with your account) and ‘start a video Hangout’. You’ll see the invitation to take a tour presented on the screen.

This value of this resource as a learning tool is immense. Whether the activity be historical, artistic or geographical, Google Cultural Institute offers the opportunity for students to interact with the content and to create their own objects by exploring the work of others. It’s highly recommended and supported by lesson plans for a range of year levels. Start exploring today!

Shift Alt Story – how we tell stories online

Posted on August 18, 2014 by Linda Angeloni

Whether it’s ebooks, gaming or graphic novels, we’ve all encountered new forms of storytelling.

The Centre for Youth Literature’s new online course, Shift Alt Story explores how stories have changed (and stayed the same) as they’ve collided with new media in all its forms.

Shift Alt Story is a four week online course, delivered in a similar way to the Victorian Personal Learning Network (VicPLN). Each week participants explore different aspects of story and how they work and change in different online platforms. With a weekly toolkit of handy web tools, professional resources and guest speakers, Shift Alt Story connects your passion for reading to the exciting new world of digital storytelling and transmedia.

Here’s a excerpt from the first unit of the course.

Sometimes it can feel like storytelling and publishing are changing at break-neck speed: we wanted to create a safe space where we could explore these changes together, to play and discuss the challenges and possibilities of digital storytelling with teenagers and children. This course will be a shared experience. We know that young people are playing in this space, and so can we. It’s an opportunity for teachers, librarians, creators and young readers to learn from each other in a new environment.

The course starts on the 1st September. For more information or to book your place in the course, visit the Shift Alt Story page on the State Library of Victoria’s website.

School Library Association of Victoria

Yearly Archives: 2014