Tag Archives: Clustrmaps

Library dragon!

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St Michael’s Grammar School teacher librarian Sally Bray developed a very good fiction blog and has kindly agreed to share her blogging journey with readers of Bright Ideas.

I originally began this blog as part of a Professional Development course looking at e-learning tools and web 2.0 in education. After some playing and making inane posts that even I wasn’t interested in, and some leaving it alone to fester in the back of my mind, I decided to use the blog to track and share my reading of Children’s and Young adult fiction (with the occasional adult book thrown in, just to prove I could still read adult stuff)!

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Over my years as a Teacher Librarian, I found my focus moving more and more to research and inquiry skills and ICT, with my reading of Children’s Literature falling by the wayside. I originally became a TL because of my love of literature, and I wanted to recapture some of that love, passion and sheer enjoyment of reading. Hence the blog.

I have spent numerous hours trawling through other people’s blogs, not leaving comments but voraciously taking their recommendations, thoughts and ideas and following up on them. Now I am giving some of that back! Many of the books I have read I have found through other Blogs and Twitter (it all depends on who you follow)!

I have always been a fantasy buff and dragon fiend, so now I have turned to similar areas of Children’s and Young Adult Literature. Paranormal and urban fantasy and romance seem to hold sway on my blog – with lots of vampire and werewolf action! Even my adult reading has taken on a decidedly fanged appearance… it has all come in very useful now. I have even used my blog as an example when showing students how to (or how not to) write blog posts and when leading discussion about different books  and forms of literature.

I don’t post as often as I should, but I do post the majority of my reading, often in batches! Please visit and enjoy! Oh – and leave a comment or two – I sometimes feel I am blogging in a void (except for my cluster map which shows a healthy amount of activity – Thank Goodness)!

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Thanks for sharing your fantastic work Sally. Your blog is bright and visually attractive and is joining my list of must-read blogs!

Feature blog St Martin of Tours – Rosanna

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Kim Yeomans of St Martin of Tours Primary School in Rosanna has allowed Bright Ideas to gain insights in to the development of her library blog.

Kim says:

I did the SLAV Web 2.0 course last year and decided this year to set up a blog for our LRC. The LRC already has an active presence on our school intranet but I felt the blog and Web 2.0 tools might let me do a little more. The Library already has a MyClasses page (intranet), but I was looking for other engaging ways to share what we do in the LRC and promote reading.  The Web 2.0 online course offered by SLAV last year introduced me to many new and exciting tools.  Attending the SLAV conference with Will Richardson earlier this year provided the impetus to actually begin our LRC Blog in mid February.

Homepage
Homepage

The main aims of our LRC Blog are to

  • Share the activities and learning we do in the LRC
  • Promote books and reading
  • Encourage students to participate in an online community
  • Introduce students to appropriate Web 2.0 tools
  • Develop student understanding of a global classroom

 It has been really encouraging seeing the students embrace the blog and add their comments.  Even our Principal who is on Enrichment Leave is contributing her learning on our blog and adding dots to our ClustrMap!  I have found Slideshare and Animoto are great Web 2.0 tools that enable us to share our work. This term I’ve added to our blog with the New LRC and Websites pages.  I am currently trialing SimplyBox for our website collections (even though it is blocked at school) because it is simple for me to set up and visually easy for the students to use at home. 

Ripper reads - student comments
Ripper reads – student comments

Our LRC Blog is evolving along with my own skills and knowledge and will continue to do so to meet the needs and interests of both the students and our Library program.  It is trial and error seeing what works on our blog, but I’m really enjoying the process!

Congratulations to Kim on inspiring both students and staff to become a part of the Web 2.0 world! Well done Kim.  (Don’t forget that Kim had previously shared some excellent photos of previous Book Week displays that might prove inspirational.)