Author Archives: slav

Promoting reading

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Australian publishers such as Penguin and Allen and Unwin are now providing some really great content on their websites for YA readers.

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Between the lines blog is Penguin’s offering while Allen and Unwin’s Teen page is their home for YAs.

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These sites are fantastic for promoting reading as they contain:

  • book trailers
  • author blogs
  • opportunities for students to review books and have the reviews published online
  • sneak peek
  • enewsletters
  • news

and more. All of these resources make it easier to promote reading to students. I would love to hear what other publishers are doing.

Out of this world – a Prezi

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Heather Stapleton, the Library Technician at St Joseph’s College Geelong has created an excellent Prezi. She explains why she developed the Prezi:

The following Prezi has been created to support the Year 9 English unit on Science Fiction. The boys study The giver in this unit and are also required to read a sci-fi novel of their choice. The latter can be difficult for some of our reluctant readers so I thought I would do a trial run with a Prezi presentation. The boys are familiar with PowerPoint and use it regularly so I wanted to present the book suggestions in a different way and not risk ‘death by PowerPoint’. The book selection caters for a wide range of reading abilities and interests.
Science Fiction is a genre that is very rich and varied. I have loosely grouped the selections in sub-genres but many of the titles crossover. The presentation was done this way to assist the boys and act as a guide for them to find a book of their own choosing.

Out of this World on Prezi

Best viewing of this Prezi is Fullscreen in manual mode. To achieve this press the play button and once it loads move your cursor over More and click onFullscreen that appears above. Press the arrow keys to move through the presentation at your own pace. To improve the quality of the YouTube book trailers reduce their size by using the scroll button on your mouse. You can also use your mouse to pan and zoom freely within the presentation.

The Maze runner book trailer featured in this presentation is an Animoto creation by Sarah Ehlers. This could be an excellent activity for students.

Thanks Heather for showing readers your excellent Prezi and the motivation behind its development.

Weekly links (weekly)

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Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Update and final thoughts on Tania Sheko’s Flickr project

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You may remember reading about Whitefriars College teacher librarian Tania Sheko‘s collaborative learning project using Flickr. The project has now concluded and a few of the students have shared their thoughts, reflections and ideas about what they loved most about the project.

Tania explains:

As part of the evaluation of this project, I interviewed a few students to get their feedback. You have no idea how long it took me to convert the interviews to film and embed them in this blog. Sorry about background noise!

Thanks to Tania and her students for a number of posts about the project from the beginning right through to the end. Sounds like it was a great success and thanks for sharing.

Supporting learning through reading lists

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Librarian extraordinaire Dr Joyce Valenza has (yet another) great idea for supporting and encouraging reading in her school.

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By developing this wiki with reading lists, information on texts, study guides, rubrics, book trailers, book reviews, directions and general requirements, students in years 9-12 (and their parents) have a head start on the year’s required reading for English classes.

What a terrific way for students to be prepared for the year ahead. As always, Dr Valenza’s wiki is an example that we can use as a basis to develop our own ideas for supporting our students’ learning.

Virtual revolution: how the net shapes us

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Have you been watching the SBS documentary? Airing on Tuesday evenings, there are two more episodes to go in the series.

Over four themed episodes that criss-cross the globe, journalist and academic Dr Aleks Krotoski explores the meaning of a phenomenon that is transforming everything from how we learn to how we shop, vote and make friends. The series reveals astonishing facts about how the web is rewiring our society, our economy and – drawing on a unique experiment conducted specifically for the series – maybe even our brains.

The series brings together everyone who’s anyone on the web – from its inventor Tim Berners-Lee to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg; from Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales to Amazon’s Jeff Bezos; from web pioneers like Grateful Dead lyricist John Perry Barlow and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak to digital media barons like Arianna Huffington and Twitter founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams.

If you have missed any episodes, they are accessible online (for Australians at least, unsure about access overseas.) And you can read the full synopsis here.

This series is a must see for anyone involved in education.

Upcoming Virtual Conference Centre sessions

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Here is a list of upcoming web conference sessions on the Educators’ Guide to Innovation to be held over the next two weeks.

For a complete list of future events go to http://guidetoinnovation.ning.com/events


Tech Talk Tuesdays: Digital Chatting:favourite websites/online tools/challenges etc

Organized by Anne Mirtschin – November 2, 2010 from 3:45pm to 4:45pm

eT@lking: Empowering Student Learning with Technology

Organized by Anne Mirtschin and Carole McCulloch – November 3, 2010 from 8pm to 9pm

Act4Nature with Zoos Victoria

Organized by Rick Hammond – November 9, 2010 from 2pm to 3pm

Tech Talk Tuesdays: Blogging Isn’t Just For Big Kids!

Organized by Anne Mirtschin – November 9, 2010 from 3:45pm to 4:45pm

21st Century Learning: Biodiversity in the classroom. How to Integrate Interactive and Traditional Teaching Methods.

Organized by Leigh Hofman – November 9, 2010 from 4pm to 5pm

21st Century Learning: Biodiversity in the classroom. How to Integrate Interactive and Traditional Teaching Methods.

Organized by Leigh Hofman – November 10, 2010 from 9am to 10am

The Burke and Wills track: past and present

Organized by Eleanor Whitworth – November 11, 2010 from 4pm to 4:45pm

All welcome!

Bialik College Futures Forum

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David Feighan, the Director, Libraries and Learning Resources at Bialik College has kindly shared the following information:

I can confirm that the podcasts of the Bialik Learning Futures Forum, which we promised to share with the wider school library community, are now available.

The Learning Futures / Learning Spaces Forum focused on the changes to the physical and online learning spaces in Australian schools. The forum considered:

  • How the new school libraries being built in Australia work within current and emerging education pedagogues.
  • How the physical library and online library and learning spaces work together to best meet the needs of schools.
  • The rise of learning / information commons in universities and schools, and
  • The rise of social media platforms in education settings.

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Speakers include:

A. Professor Leon Sterling, Chair of Software Innovation and Engineering, Swinburne University

B. Jon Peacock, General Manager, Learning Environments at University of Melbourne

CoLABorateC. Dr Scott Bulfin, Lecturer, Monash University Faculty of Education

D. Jenny Luca, Head of Information Services, Toorak College

E. Mary Manning, Executive Officer, School Library Association of Victoria

F. David Feighan, Director, Libraries and Learning Resources, Bialik College

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If you are involved in planning a new library or wanting to revamp your resources and services, this forum is a must listen source! Thanks David and Bialik for sharing this wonderful information and to the speakers for their knowledge and ideas.

Weekly links (weekly)

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Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.