Primary sources and the ANZACS

Posted on April 27, 2015 by SLAV Connects

The commemoration of the centenary of the Gallipoli Landing during World War I has stimulated an explosion in the digital content available online. Photos from family and institution collections contribute to a comprehensive overview of the period from the images on the battlefront through to the homeland and everyday life.

These images make possible a range of rich learning activities that can extend a student’s understanding of the experience of individuals and expose them to resources to explore further in their own time, for example:

Use Ergo, State Library of Victoria – Australia and World War I to study topics such as enlistment, conscription, the homefront and propaganda supported by primary source artefacts including diaries.
Document analysis worksheets designed and developed by the education staff of the [US] National Archives and Records Administration are an excellent resource for use with primary sources. These worksheets are not new and have been refined over time. They’re in a convenient .pdf format for use either online or as printed hardcopies. Worksheets are available for the analysis of a printed document, photograph, cartoon, poster, map, artefact, motion picture and sound recording. Highly recommended.
It’s not news to any teacher to say that students love Google Images. A lesson in the Advanced Search function of Google Images is an opportunity to experiment with various search terms; with learning how to separate World War I from World War II images; how to isolate propaganda images; locate images relating to women; find images of a particular colour or from the region ‘Australia’ only. Use with Google Search Education lesson plans to enhance your own search skills and those of your students.
The number of public institutions uploading resources to Flickr: The Commons has grown steadily over the years. As Creative Commons resources, students have a wealth of resources to work with. Once again, using a range of key terms such as ANZAC, Gallipoli, World War I, WWI, students can become familiar with this constantly developing database of original images.

This centenary year can be a launching point that introduces students to an authentic range of resources they can revisit time and time again……. now they know they exist. Explore!

ImageCodr: Easy Attribution for Flickr CC Photos

Posted on October 26, 2012 by Catherine Hainstock

Correctly citing an image with a Creative Commons licence can be a tricky task for both educators and their students. ImageCodr is a website that aims to help by providing a generator that will construct attributions for Flickr Creative Commons photos that can be embedded into blogs and websites.

Simply paste in the url of the Flickr image and click Submit

To use ImageCodr, simply copy the URL of the desired Flickr photo and click on the Get Code! tab. Drop the URL into box and Submit. There is also an option to install a shortcut in your menu bar which will automatically attribute any Flickr photo you are viewing. You are provided with a preview and some information about the CC licence as well as the image code with proper attribution.

Here is an example of a Flickr image attributed with ImageCodr. Too easy!

by Adventures in Librarianship

Manifesto for 21st Century School Librarians

Posted on September 23, 2010 by slav

School library guru Dr Joyce Valenza has written an inspiring post entitled A Manifesto for 21st Century School Librarians. Covering our responsibilities to students regarding:

reading
information landscape
communication and publishing and storytelling
collection development
facilities, your physical space
access, equity, advocacy
audience and collaboration
copyright, copyleft and information ethics
new technology tools
professional development and professionalism
teaching and learning and reference
into the future (acknowledging the best of the past)

this is a must read, must react, must reflect post. Thanks to Helen Boelens for directing me to this post.

Fotobabble

Posted on April 9, 2010 by slav

Recently, The Nerdy Teacher Nick Provenzano posted an article on Fotobabble on his excellent blog.

Further uses include narrated postcards for Geography, commenting on photos for History, quick book reviews, commenting on art works – the uses are endless!

Fotobabbles can be embedded into blogs, wikis and other websites and shortly there will be the option of creating slideshows.

Students can use their own photos or those from copyright free or Creative Commons websites and then record a narration. Fotobabbles may be kept private, just remember to ensure the privacy box is ticked and click ‘save’. As with most social media sites, there is a way of reporting objectionable content, but there is no way of ensuring students don’t find any, unless you investigate first and supervise use.

Using Fotobabble in class could be a good introduction to Creative Commons and the moral and legal use of images.

Wikimedia Commons

Posted on April 6, 2010 by slav

Wikimedia Commons is an amazing site full of images, sounds and video clips that can be freely used as long as attribution is included. Many languages are supported and there are approximately six million files available on the site. The Welcome page explains more:

Wikimedia Commons is a media file repository making available public domain and freely-licensed educational media content (images, sound and video clips) to everyone, in their own language. It acts as a common repository for the various projects of the Wikimedia Foundation, but you do not need to belong to one of those projects to use media hosted here. The repository is created and maintained not by paid archivists, but by volunteers. The scope of Commons is set out on the project scope pages.

Unlike traditional media repositories, Wikimedia Commons is free. Everyone is allowed to copy, use and modify any files here freely as long as the source and the authors are credited and as long as users release their copies/improvements under the same freedom to others. The Wikimedia Commons database itself and the texts in it are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution – Share Alike Licence. The licence conditions of each individual media file can be found on their description pages. More information on re-use can be found at Commons:Reusing content outside Wikimedia and Commons:First steps/Reuse.

This is a great site to use to not only teach students about digital citizenship, but also for them to consider adding to the site by contributing their own images.

It’s not about the tools, it’s about the skills

Posted on January 22, 2010 by slav

Author of the wonderful award winning Langwitches blog Silvia Tolisano (Twitter name is @langwitches), has written a must-read post. Looking at the advent of Web 2.0 and the way it is perceived by parents, Tolisano addresses the skills developed and used by students in using tools such as blogs, creating podcasts and adding to wikis rather than the tools themselves. To read this post, go to Silvia’s blog now!

Pru Mitchell’s ‘Open and Social’ SLAV conference presentation

Posted on November 26, 2009 by slav

In October, Pru Mitchell, the Senior Education Officer at educaton.au delivered an interesting presentation to the delegates of the SLAV ‘Skills for School Libraries v2.0’ conference.

Open and Social

View more presentations from Pru Mitchell.

Pru discusses the idea of mass innovation and creativity and shows the tools that can help establish these skills. Well worth viewing and considering.

School Library Association of Victoria

Tag Archives: Creative commons