The Centre for Youth Literature has come of age this year, reaching the ripe old age of 21.
In celebration, the Centre is hosting two events, one for library professionals and another for students on Tuesday 21st and Wednesday 22nd February respectively.
Authors involved in both days’ events include Melina Marchetta, David Levithan, Michael Pryor, Alison Goodman and Simmone Howell.
For more information, visit the Centre’s blog Read Alert.
As the year draws to a close we come to the last Bright Ideas post for 2011. It’s been a wonderful year of sharing and collaboration and a big thank you goes out to all of our guest bloggers and contributors who worked with us this year. Thanks especially to Rachel, who did such a fantastic job with the blog early in the year.
Most importantly, thanks to all of our readers who make our community vibrant and exciting. We’ve welcomed many new followers through programs like the VicPLN and the work of SLAV, who do such an amazing job in supporting educators everywhere. The strength of Bright Ideas is the wonderful sense of sharing and community that exists amongst our readers, who constantly inspire us with their willingness to help each other.
From all of us at the Bright Ideas, we wish you and your families a safe and happy holiday season. Enjoy your break, recharge those batteries and we’ll see you back here in 2012.
Hamish Curry, Education Manager at the State Library of Victoria, explores his feelings about the film Connected:
It was back in early September at a Gathering ‘11 event organised by David Hood that I first watched ‘Connected’, a film about “love, death and technology” by Tiffany Shlain. The film stimulated a whole bunch of complex thoughts and ideas I’d been having around the ways in which we relate to one another, and the tools of technology we’re using to help improve these relations. A tweet response from Tiffany afterwards, along with some email networking led me to organise the State Library’s own screening of the film on November 23. I’ve seen Connected four times since September, and each time something new resonates. I love the shock value of Albert Einstein who said that “if honeybees were to disappear, humankind would be gone in four years.”
Connected weaves a myriad of personal, historical, and global issues and challenges together, showing us that patterns are emerging amongst these random pieces. From the evolution of language, to our reliance on machines and the demands we’re placing on the hemispheres of the brain, humans are making more and more rapid decisions, connections, and discoveries. The film’s premise is that while technology is changing the way we communicate, relate, work and consume, it is having unintended impacts on our well-being and that of the planet around us.
I think all of us familiar with technology sense this, and no doubt all those who have been involved with the VicPLN program experienced various levels of anxiety and excitement around the tools of the web as well. Yet the film also highlights how technology is enabling us to make better and faster connections to issues confronting us and to the people who share our passions. Technology has helped us visualise data, trends, thoughts, and images in new ways. As such, the film promotes deeper thinking and reflection. There have been some great posts from people like Judith Way and Jenny Luca. Some see Tiffany’s story being quite self-indulgent, others see her experiences as being symptomatic of our struggle to connect.
For me it has stirred up a passion around a radical rethink of how we approach education. The traditional system broke learning down into disconnected but measurable chunks and pieces, which mirrored our thinking around literacy, numeracy, and sciences. Now more and more educators are realising that we’ve reached a point where we need to put these back together, creating an integrated, blended, and connected education system, where the school is simply a node in a much bigger community, both locally and internationally.
Another big node is libraries. They are at cross-roads too. Their ability to be hubs of information and community connections is beginning to be leveraged in new and exciting ways. It’s a nice time to be part of libraries and education; change is an expectation. So in closing, I’ll leave you with a Connected thought for 2012 from John Muir, who said “when you tug at a single thing in the universe, you find it’s attached to everything else.”
The next Personal Learning Network (PLN) program will run for 12 weeks beginning 5th March 2012. For more information visit State Library website page or email learning@slv.vic.gov.au
The program, run by the State Library of Victoria in association with SLAV, is part of a network of inspired and inspiring people embracing technology and social media in schools around the world.
This self-paced, online learning program developed by and for teacher librarians, teachers, and school library technicians features practical how-to sessions and online mentoring.
Anne Fraser, a recent alumni of the program created this Prezi – PLN Learning Network using comments and feedback from her new network, discussing the program itself but also using her PLN to do it.
Leanne Hampson (aka The Resourcehound) from Brauer Secondary College recently completed the PLN program and is experimenting with web tools in her library and classroom. Her guest post today talks about how to create poetry mash ups with students.
Recently I was studying poetry with my year 9 English class, mainly focussing on analysing particular poems. Most students seem to find it difficult to create their own poetry and I certainly find it very difficult to assess (poetry is such a personal thing, don’t you think?). Then I happened across a Bright Ideas post about the Phat Poetry site and although I couldn’t seem to get the mash up function to work (more investigation required!), it was the spark I needed.
One thing I have discovered is that while students can use some computer programs well, they needed a lot of guidance and suggestions on how they might present their mash ups. Whenever I promote a particular web tool or program I like to demonstrate it to the students as well (the old, ‘and I expect yours to be much better than mine…’). This meant creating some mash ups of my own. This was quite addictive and I spent far too long on my ‘demos’ when I should have been writing reports…oh well.
Students used two texts with a similar theme but they could choose these themselves. I recommended they select song lyrics they felt strongly about and then we went to the library and searched the poetry collection for something that matched. Then students had to take lines from each text, find images and music to match the feel and atmosphere and then decide on a program to create their mash up. I recommended to students that they use either Photostory, Animoto, Movie Maker or Glogster. All of these have the capacity to combine text, images and sound together. I made examples in Photostory, Animoto and Glogster to show them.
Some issues we had were that Animoto tended to ‘eat’ their internet quota pretty quickly and its ability to add text is limited. But it does come out looking absolutely smashing! Glogster is also simple to create but I did struggle with how to let students share their work. I think this was because I was unfamiliar with the new Edu Glogster though, rather than a limitation of the site. Photostory was very straightforward and was probably the most successful of the three. We worked together to solve issues and had a great time in class looking at everyone’s work.
Overall the students were very engaged. They loved using their computers and the final products were impressive. It is amazing how effective the new texts were. One student used poetry written by her grandmother and even the ‘I hate poetry’ boys got enthused. I also used Rubistar to create an assessment rubric for the task (if you’d like a copy, contact me via my blog, The Resourcehound, or Twitter, @LHampso).
Here is an example I made using Animoto. It features ‘Been Caught Stealing’ by Jane’s Addiction and the poem ‘Stealing’ by Carol Ann Duffy.
This year’s Personal Learning Network (PLN) program recently ended with over 150 people taking part. In the next few weeks Bright Ideas will feature guest posts from PLN alumni with the first being from Catherine Morton from Whitefriars College.
This year l completed the Personal Learning Network (PLN).
In May I wrote my first blog post…
“I’ve recently returned to teaching after working in the wonderful public library world. In my new position as a teacher librarian in a secondary college, l’m interested in exploring and learning the Web 2.0 world and am excited about the potential applications in my work with students and teachers. I’m feeling a little hesitant as l’m sure there’ll be challenges along the way. I’ve had some already. So the opportunity to learn from you all and my colleagues, who are well along the Web 2.0 road, will help my travels. Look forward to meeting you along the way”.
But by my last post in November…
“To think l’ve completed the PLN and about to post my digital story! It’s a great sense of satisfaction and achievement. It’s interesting that the frustrations, the enormity of the workload and the feeling of being overwhelmed have faded into the background.
I chose Animoto as it’s relatively easy to use and l’m quite happy with the results. There are some features that could be improved, however it’s a tool that l would use with students. The PLN program has been just like travelling, being introduced to new places and people, experiencing things for the first time and all of the emotions associated with travelling. The music l selected is titled ‘Flying’ by Mike Strickland, which l feel is quite a reflective piece and also a very appropriate title. Not that it was always a smooth flight as l weathered storms, heavy rain and grey days, along with sunshine and blue sky!
It’s been a year of so many learnings. Thanks to the PLN support team at the SLV. Your guidance, encouragement and support have been greatly appreciated. Thanks to the wider PLN community for your generosity in sharing knowledge and supporting my journey. There are improved outcomes for both me as a teacher and the students. I’ll always continue to travel.”
Some of my reflections on the PLN – I’ve gained more confidence with Web 2.0 tools, and have used some of these tools, both in the library and in my teaching. Now l feel l’m one step ahead of the students. I used the SLV ergo website to teach research skills to Learning Support students. I’ve benefited professionally by joining Twitter. I’ve also benefited personally from the PLN as I’m setting up a blog for my upcoming overseas trip! My goal is to continue to explore, learn and assist with educating students and colleagues in using these tools. If we have the ability to locate information, we can find anything.
The PLN program will be running again in 2013. For further information email learning@slv.vic.gov.au
Our space is a website providing education resources for exploring the ethics of digital citizenship with students.
Developed as part of the GoodWork project and in collaboration with Harvard Graduate School of Education and Project New Media Literacies, the website offers pages of lessons and fact sheets to support students’ use of social media and the web.
Lessons are grouped under five themes – participation, identity, privacy, credibility and authorship/ownership.
Ethical engagement is at the centre of the program so the focus is on students’ personal responsibilities and behaviours. A great resource to share with colleagues and to potentially look at when planning for 2012.
This Friday at 12pm AEST time, Steve Hargadon will be hosting a panel discussion on search literacy as part of his Future of Education series.
The panel for the session includes Google Search Education Fellow, Tasha Bergson-Michelson and Debbie Abilock, multi-award winning librarian, curriculum advisor and content developer for Noodle tools.
The group will be addressing questions like:
Sessions are run in Blackboard Collaborate (formerly Elluminate) so you can ask questions and be involved in the discussion if you’re able to log in at the scheduled time. Otherwise all the sessions are recorded and you can listen to them in your own time.
Future of Education is an interview series which features many significant thinkers from international education and technology communities including the likes of Sir Ken Robinson, Will Richardson and Howard Gardner.
Ria Coffey from St Patricks College (SPC) in Ballarat talks about a simple but effective way to support broader staff use of technology and to increase the library’s profile in your school.
As part of our library’s strategy to be “fierce” (Dr.Joyce Valenza), to become experts in e-learning and to suggest tools to help develop information literacy school wide, I send out a weekly email to all staff called ‘SPC Bright Ideas’. It’s modelled on the Bright Ideas blog and talks about online tools and how to use them in the classroom.
I keep it short and consistent in style, it’s emailed at the same time each week and it’s always checked over by the school IT staff. I get ideas from lots of different sources including Twitter, Bright Ideas and Dr. Joyce Valenza and Buffy Hamilton’s wikis. I also subscribe to a number of weekly feeds that generate heaps of ideas.
Staff at the school have been very receptive, especially those who’ve found an idea relevant to their work and have connected it to their teaching and learning. Ideally, I’d get to more Faculty meetings so I could discuss how and where these ideas could be implemented into curriculum.
All the SPC Bright Ideas are also added to the Library website for reference.
Here’s an example of a recent SPC Bright Idea.
SPC Bright Idea
This week’s SPC Bright Idea focuses on the use of Wall Wisher. Wall Wisher is an online tool that allows contributions via sticky notes to a collaborative “wall”. The teacher sets up a page, instructs students to access the URL and then contributions can be made by teacher and student. (The notes posted by students must be approved by the teacher before they are displayed publicly). A great tool for brainstorming and discussions, it is accessible at http://www.wallwisher.com/
Here is one my Year 9 class and I did this week:
danah boyd, academic and senior researcher at Microsoft, recently posted her responses to a Wall Street Journal interview on privacy and social media.
Some of the ideas she discusses include how people (particularly teens) use complex strategies to maintain their privacy when it matters to them. They’re still public but are deliberately ambiguous so they can control who understands their meaning. Will Richardson in a commentary piece on danah’s post talks about how these skills are a kind of literacy educators need to think about.
There’s also some discussion of how social media environments are easily as complex as day to day social interactions and require the same sophisticated skills we use to make sure our behaviour suits the situations and people we’re with.
danah boyd’s blog is definitely one to follow if you’re interested in social media, privacy and how communication is changing in an online world.