Another hot hit from the VCE Advantage vodcast series – Online databases at the State Library of Victoria.

A wealth of information is available to students via the State Library of Victoria’s online databases, cataloguing a range of journal, magazines and even videos and e-books!
This video tells students what’s available to them and how to remotely connect to these via the SLV web site.This vodcast also has handy information about joining the State Library of Victoria.

A must for any VCE student! Make sure you show your students (and not just VCE students) and tell the teachers.

If you’re not in Victoria, your own state or national library will offer similar databases, as do many public libraries.

The vodcast is available via the VCE Advantage link on the merspi front page, directly from the merspi YouTube channel and through FUSE for all schools – search for it by title.

Thanks to Jenny Sergeant and SLAV for these updates on the new Merspi videos.

The State Library of Victoria has put together an amazing presentation for students about effective research:

• Sources on the internet you can trust
• Finding reliable resources online
• Tips on questioning research, identifying bias and evaluating bias.

A must for any VCE student! Make sure you show your students (and not just VCE students) and tell the teachers.

The vodcast is available via the VCE Advantage link on the merspi front page, directly from the merspi YouTube channel and through FUSE for all schools – search for it by title.

Studyvibe is a new free resource for students between the ages of 13 – 17.

It has been designed by a small group of teacher librarians and teachers from Perth, including Leonie McIvenny.

The site focuses on research and study skills, from motivation to referencing to suggested iPad apps.  It also offers many downloadable documents and subject specific resources (for maths, sciences and English amongst others).

A Teachers’ Lounge is currently in the works and should be available in the next month.

Take a look: www.studyvibe.com.au

More helpful resources from the VCE Advantage vodcast series.

In these two vodcasts Joy Whiteside, Teacher Librarian at Overnewton College, guides students through the important steps to writing an essay that is clear and well structured and explores aspects of the language of questions: do you know the difference between questions that ask you to compare and those that ask you to contrast? Can you discuss and also evaluate a point of view? (with reference to the State Library of Victoria’s Ergo site).

The vodcasts are available via the VCE Advantage link on the merspi front page,  directly from the merspi YouTube channel and through FUSE for all schools – search for them by title.

Use them to support students who are struggling with essays and alert your teachers to them. Great for students at lower secondary levels too.

Ria Coffey, from St Patrick’s Secondary College in Ballarat, offers her take on last week’s SLAV conference.

‘The Game Changer’ a professional development opportunity hosted by SLAV and featuring the dynamic teacher librarian Dr. Joyce Valenza was held at the MCG on Friday. Valenza over whelmed the audience with her plethora of ideas, innovations, inspirations and motivations for the teacher librarian and all those connected to school libraries. Valenza encouraged her audience to create ‘transliteracy’ opportunities in their school libraries, this being, literature across multiple media. The mind boggled as Valenza then proceeded to offer slide after slide of links and resources that assist in developing connected, collaborating, and communicating school libraries.

Throughout the day twitter ran wild as an online feed was open for discussion of ideas (#slavconf11).

Participants could also contribute to a slideshow of ideas which were then showcased.

All this and much more can be accessed at Joyce’s wikispace.

Two new videos from the VCE Advantage series.

These two fantastic vodcasts contributed by Di Ruffles, from Melbourne High School, are perfect for VCE students but also for students at any secondary level. They will instantly improve online searching strategies!

Use them in your information literacy program, with your classes and alert students and teachers (and parents) to them. Power Searching 1 explores the power of effective searching using Google – a handy resource for those who complete research online! Take at look at the impact of quotation marks in searching, title searching and the list goes on.

Power Searching 2 explores Google searching in more detail and builds on Power Searching 1 with URL, file type and timeframe searching becoming the focus.

The vodcasts are available via the VCE Advantage link on the merspi front page,  directly from the merspi YouTube channel and through FUSE for all schools – search for them by title.

We’ll bring you more of these new merspi vodcasts over the coming days and weeks.

Some great reading for us today, from the latest edition of Synergy – SLAV’s online journal.

The journal is available in full to members, but one key article is available to everyone. This month it’s by Dr Ross J Todd and recent research on school libraries and the work of school librarians in the educational landscape of New Jersey.

While this is a state-specific study, findings have salience for the broader landscape of education and school librarianship. The research sought to provide a comprehensive picture of the status of public school libraries in New Jersey: their infrastructure, personnel, resource and information technology provision, and the instructional and administrative work of the school librarians. Its results hold lessons for us all.

A key finding, highlighted by Dr Todd, centres around the role of school librarians in the development of the intellectual capacity of students.

You can access the article through the latest Synergy edition’s contents page.

Today’s update comes from Ria Coffey, teacher librarian and Head of House and Reading Coordinator at St Patrick’s Secondary College in Ballarat. Ria is currently completing her Masters in Teacher Librarianship.

Dr. Helen C. Barrett has created a site for individuals to access that provides tutorials in Web 2.0 and particularly how to create an e-portfolio.
Her website offers modules for participants to work through at their own pace and in their own time. The modules are designed for users who have no prior knowledge and without using ICT jargon explain the process step-by-step with audio and video tutelage.
In a mini version of our PLN, Dr. Barrett covers RSS feeds, blogs, Flickr, social networking and much more. Let’s hope a Web 3.0 tutorial is coming soon!

We’re sorry to say that Rachel Fidock, who has been ably steering the good ship Bright Ideas this year, has decided to leave us, to spend more time with her young family.
We’d like to acknowledge Rachel’s work on the blog and being Bright Ideas in other forums such as Twitter, bringing great new resources and ideas to people in schools all over Victoria and beyond.
Thanks, Rachel!
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be treated to guest posts from a number of SLAV members and other special guests.
We’re also planning a range of content ideas for the coming months, including an ongoing roster of guest bloggers, and we’ll be introducing extracts from leading journals, made available especially for Bright Ideas readers.
So stay tuned.