Not quite tech-related, but if you work in a school library and want to know what books are coming out next year for kids and young adults, this is how to find out (also, there are drinks, nibbles and goodie bags):
Publishers’ showcase
Tuesday 29 November 2011, 6pm – 8:30pm
State Library of Victoria
Bookings required.
A little reminder about the range of search tools now available on Google, which enable students to search much more actively and in a more targeted fashion. Some of these tools have been around for a while, but Google is always refining and enhancing (and sometimes removing) both the underlying algorithms and the functionality so it’s worth taking another look if you haven’t used these for a while.
Students can explore the search tools in the left hand column on any page of search results. The options include some self-explanatory tools such as Dictionary and Sites with images (handy for homework), but also:
Timeline
This has changed recently, and as of last week you no longer get the graph of event dates (or the News timeline, sadly). Now, the timeline function allows you to refine your search results according to the date of publication or indexing. It does help you sift through results on broad subjects if you are looking for recent announcements, a particular historical event or something published in a particular year.
Verbatim
This new service allows you to search for the exact keywords you want, over-riding Google’s normally helpful attempts to correct your bad spelling or include synonyms and words from the same stem, which can clutter up your results. It still suggests correct spelling, but its default results are those that precisely match your keywords.
Social
This function focuses on search results that have been shared or linked by social and community networks. This is a taste of the future of search, as we move towards search engines placing higher value on web sites shared around between people and, specifically, shared by trusted people – that is, those in our own social networks. If you have a Google or Gmail account and are signed in, your results will include sites that have been shared by you or your friends, or from blogs to which you subscribe in Google Reader. As Google+ expands as a social network, and more people use the Google +1 button, you will see these intertwine with Google search results.
Reading level
Introduced late last year, Reading Level allows you to refine your search results according to very rough reading levels: basic, intermediate and advanced.
There are two ways to do this: either through the menu on the left-hand column, or through Advanced search – look for the little wheel icon in the top right corner of the search page.
Continuing from our previous guest post by Bev Novak: a list of great tools that help students find books to suit them.
A simple but terrific site is What should I read next? Start typing the title or the author of a book you like and select the link that comes up to see heaps of suggested titles to read next. By selecting the little book icon next to the book title, the screen flips to Amazon where it’s possible to read reviews of the book prior to purchasing or searching for the book in your favourite library.
Maybe students would prefer locking into a social networking site such as You are what you read? Find out what others are reading – celebrities, authors, educators or librarians – by creating and sharing a ‘bookprint’ based on your five favourite books. See which books have been listed and liked the most. Search by book titles or people’s names and see others who have similar reading interests as the reader you are browsing. Alternately select a book cover to read more about it and then identify it as one of your favourites.
I also came across whichbook – a tool which allows you to find that elusive book to suit your tastes. Have fun playing with descriptors which help narrow down a book that fits with your taste or mood. Select descriptors such as ‘happy or sad’, ‘funny or serious’, ‘easy or demanding’ , ‘optimistic or bleak’ and then move the indicator tab to reflect how happy or sad you want the book to be, select GO and voila, book recommendations flow onto the screen. Not interested in creating your own book list? No worries! Just select anyone of the catchy categories such as ‘Slapstick’, ‘Short and sweet’, ‘Laugh your pants off’, ‘Weird and wonderful’ to see prepared recommendation lists. You’re bound to find something that tickles your fancy!
Literature Map is another cool way to help put your hands on a next good read. To use, just type in the name of an author you enjoy reading and then watch a bunch of author names spiral onto the screen. The closer the names, the more similar the writers. It’s a great way to prod the memory for ‘like’ authors. And don’t be shy – add authors not already in the database so that the many quality Australian authors get recognized on this great website.
Use these websites and tools to entertain, impress, excite and entice students about the wealth of literature that is just waiting to be read. Answer students’ requests by not only recommending a good book that you’re pretty sure they’ll like, but by teaching them how to use these sites to find the next good book for themselves. After all, isn’t that what it’s all about?
Currently working as a Teacher Librarian at Mentone Grammar, Bev Novak is former Head of Library of two other Independent Schools in Melbourne. You can read more of Bev’s posts about books and reading on BevsBookBlog.
This week, a two-part post on encouraging reading, by Bev Novak
How many times have you been asked for a good book recommendation?
I don’t know about you, but often times, I go blank and quickly dive for the nearest computer so that I can trawl through my lengthy book log – the one I started many years ago – to jog my memory of books I’ve read.
But nowadays I find I can respond to that request in a much more exciting way. There’s a plethora of sites out there that are fun, colourful, appealing and current. Not only do students get a kick out of exploring these sites, but along the way, they can be enticed and inspired to read.
One that immediately springs to mind is BookFlavor which greets you with an array of book covers – lots and lots of them – just waiting to be browsed and explored.
By selecting a book cover, you will be taken to not only a summary, but also a host of reviews of the book – some of which are taken directly from GoodReads.
Know the name of a book? Type it in and see what appears! It’s amazing to see the range and number of book covers for the same title. Don’t find anything enticing? Just keep pulling the scroll bar down. The more you scroll down, the more book covers load.
BookFlavor allows you to search not only by title and author, but also by genre – science fiction, fantasy, horror, thriller – you name it they are all there. Try adding in the search term ‘Young Adult’ ahead of the genre. You’ll be pleasantly surprised.
If you’re looking for something less flashy though, you may want to try Any new books?. Simply register your email address, select from an extensive list of genres that interest you and enjoy receiving a list of new book titles emailed to you on a weekly basis. How cool is that?
We’ll bring you more of Bev’s recommended reading tools later in the week.
Currently working as a Teacher Librarian at Mentone Grammar, Bev Novak is former Head of Library of two other Independent Schools in Melbourne. You can read more of Bev’s posts about books and reading on BevsBookBlog.
In collaboration with the National Gallery of Victoria, SLAV is presenting a conference on Friday, 11th November called Reading Culture: collaborate, create, celebrate, exploring the place where visual literacy, story telling and technology meet. The event contributes to the NGV’s 150th anniversary celebrations.
The full day program includes some of the following speakers:
A number of teacher librarians will also be speaking on the use of ebooks, iPads, online book clubs and digital story telling.
Some places are still available so if you would like to book, complete a registration form included in the conference flyer or contact SLAV directly on 03 9349 5822.
Europeana is a repository for thousands of digitised resources from some of Europe’s premier research institutions. Over 1500 institutions have contributed source material and high resolution versions of many items can be downloaded and viewed on the site.
You can also create your own account to save searches, tags and items relevant to your research and contribute to their online community via Twitter and Facebook.
The Europeana blog, curated by a team of researchers, includes information about interesting, hard to find themes running through Europeana’s collections, including recent posts on famous Venetians, Italian painter Caravaggio and art of the First World War.
Hamish Curry, Education Manager at the State Library of Victoria shares his reflections on Monday’s SLAV conference where he presented on how to create with library data.
About 200 library technicians and assistants arrived at Etihad Stadium on Monday 17th October to hear more on SLAV’s theme of ‘Activate the learning with emerging technologies’.
As always, the SLAV conference engaged us with tools, ideas, resources, and networks. There were a series of great presentations from the likes of Jenny Ashby (Epsom Primary School), Greg Gebhart (Australian Communications and Media Authority), and Camilla Elliott (Mazenod College).
Jenny Ashby took centre stage in the morning to help the audience ‘Activate your 21st Century Mobile Libraries’. There could have been no better example of this than in her great discussion of ways in which QR (Quick Response) codes could be adapted for and embedded in library practices. As her presentation progressed, with QR Codes displayed on the screen, audience members madly lifted their smart-phones into the air to decode and access the content. My take-away from Jenny’s presentation is how easy it now is to integrate mobile phones into the normal business and learning of the school environment. Some of her great links included:
QR Code generators – Kaywa and Gorillascan
QR Treasure Hunt Generator – Class tools QR treasure hunt generator
After morning tea, Camilla Elliott did an outstanding job filling in for John Pearce, who was a late scratching. With a strong focus on motivating us to learn more about how Google works, Camilla also highlighted some excellent search tools that acted as great educational alternatives to Google, such as Boolify , Sweet Search, and DuckDuckGo.
Greg Gebhart from ACMA woke us all up with some startling realities about young people engaging with social media and various networks online. It was hard not to feel frightened of the online environment and worried about the growing numbers of primary school students participating online without guidance from teachers and parents. Cybersmart provides some useful resources and information to address these concerns, but ultimately it is the challenge of educators and libraries to model and mentor digital citizenship and digital literacy for all students.
The afternoon was a mind-blowing smorgasbord of presentations from Judith Way (Kew High School), Tania Sheko (Whitefriars College), Tony Richards (IT Made Simple), Vincent Trundle (ACMI) and Camilla Elliott. I attended Camilla’s presentation and it was chock-full of great sites and resources around maps. Highlights included NearMap, ScribbleMaps and Google Lit Trips.
My own presentation was titled “I’m a Library Hack!” and aligned with a number of the topics from the other presentations around the use of maps, augmented reality, social media, and library data to help engage and enrich the experiences of teachers and students within the school and online environments. A key focus was the Libraryhack competition run by the National State Libraries of Australasia earlier this year. My presentation is available here.
You can also follow some of the conversation from the day on the Twitter hashtag #slavconf.
Some of Victoria’s leading cultural and educational organisations have created a range of innovative digital learning tools now freely available through FUSE.
Heath Graham will be presenting an Elluminate session exploring classroom applications for these resources on 27th October at 4.30pm.
To find out more, visit the FUSE Projects blog or register at DEECD’s Educators’ Guide to Innovation website .
Brad Ovenell-Carter, Head of the Think Global School recently posted on the integration of ICT in schools.
He talks about how visible new technologies are in the learning process in 2 simple ways to measure the success of your school’s tech program.
Do students use devices in a lab or are they available anywhere learning happens?
Do staff and students notice new technology or is it just another tool in the classroom?
It’s interesting to think what would have to happen in schools for devices like smart phones and tablets to be as ubiquitous as a pencil or notebook.
Or maybe they already are? What are your experiences?
Ngram viewer is a great new tool from Google Books that lets you search through individual words from over 5 million books digitised by Google.
The resulting graphs illustrate word usage trends over the past two centuries.
This TED presentation, by Erez Lieberman Aiden and Jean-Baptiste Michel from the team who created the Ngram viewer, shows some of the amazing things you can learn from 500 billion words.
