Speechless and QR Codes

Library Lessons for the Year 7s have started and will be running for the next few weeks.  This week was all about where to find things in our Library - and a QR code Hunt using the ipads.  The class really seemed to get into the idea of a 'treasure' hunt using iPads and scaning the bright yellow and black little squares that had been stuck up all around the area. 
This idea is one that would work for most subjects, I think and is very easy to put together with all the free on-line sites for generating QR codes - and can be anything from text to URLs.


New title in the Library this week:

‘Speechless’    -    Genre:  Issues

"Saying she’s sorry isn’t enough.  Everyone knows that Chelsea Knot can’t keep a secret – until now. Because the last secret she shared turned her into a social outcast – and nearly got someone killed.
Now Chelsea has taken a vow of silence – to learn to keep her mouth shut, and to stop hurting everyone else.  And if she thinks that keeping secrets is hard, she has no idea how hard not speaking up when she is ignored, ridiculed or even attacked is going to be.
However, there is strength in silence and new friends coming her way. A boy she may even fall for.  If only her new friends can forgive what she has done........if only she can forgive herself."

 Well worth a read - after all communication is a huge part of our lives and talking involves at least a good half of it.

 

The School Swimming Carnival is on tomorrow, so good luck to all. 
GO STUART!!

Have a wonderful weekend - week 6 next week so almost halfway through the term.

 

 

Free Resources

ABC 'Splash' is a new education website, packed with hundreds of audio and video clips as well as games.  All of which are linked to the Australian Curriculum.

There are sections for parents as well as teachers and it is all free.

See volcanos erupt and microbats fly. Investigate fossils, megafires and worm farms. Meet fairytale monsters. Unwrap an Ancient Egyptian mummy and explore the Great Barrier Reef without getting wet!

Check out the link below:

http://splash.abc.net.au/home

 

Happy Library Lovers Day

Happy Library Lovers Day.  I hope you make some time today to gain some of that work-life balance we need and spend some time READING.

Mrs Spina's StepUp class spent some time making posters and bookmarks for our 'Love Your Library' display, and have done a wonderful job.  Come and take a look.

We have a new book in the library that I couldn't resist when I read the blurb.  Check out the details below.

'Breathe'          Genre: Science Fiction

'Oxygen is essential for most living beings.  For 2.5 million years, it was the most abundant chemical element on earth.  Until the Switch.
When oxygen levels plunge in a treeless world, a state lottery decides who will live inside the Pod.  Everyone else will slowly suffocate. 
In a world with NO TREES, NO AIR and NO TRUTH - there is NO CHOICE but to FIGHT BACK'

Well worth a read if you like dystopian stories and there will be more to come as this is the first in a series.

It is on the shelf and ready to borrow.

Digital Resources and Information

Below are a couple of links to some more Web 2.0 tools that may come in handy. 

The first is a link from the Resource Hound blog.  This time it is for Interactive History Maps.   They start with Pre-History, such as the Continental Drift Theory and end with the  Roman Empire.  They have a good audio and easy to follow instructions
http://theresourcehound.wordpress.com/2013/01/17/interactive-history-maps/

Dropbox is a free service that enables you to bring your photos, documents and videos anywhere and share them easily.  You will never have to email yourself a file again.  I use this one myself quite a bit if I have to work on things at home.  It also has the capabilities to allow you to collaborate on things with colleagues. 
This is cloud computing - so remember to BACK IT ALL UP on your computer.  Don't just rely on the cloud to take care of it or you may be in for a nasty suprise. Of course, this is also sheer common sense.
https://www.dropbox.com/

Content Curation is something has always occurred in schools - resources were gathered around the topic being taught to help explain and to expand student's understanding.  The difference is that previously it was always 'hard' content - books, posters, kits etc while nowadays there is a huge wealth of digital resources.  Many of these are often found while searching for something else and often cannot be located when needed.  This blog article offers 6 different methods or tools to help you to collect, collate and share what you have found.  Curation is about collecting, but it is also about explaining, illustrating, bringing in different points of view and updating the view as it changes.
http://resourcelinkbce.wordpress.com/2013/02/01/6-ways-to-keep-track-of-digital-information-a-resolution-for-2013/

Enjoy.

 

New Fiction Titles

We have had a few new fiction books arrive and they are processed, on display and ready for loaning.  Below is a small blurb about a few of them. Come in, take a look, maybe borrow some for reading.

If there is something that you particularly want and we don’t have it, just ask.  I may be able to get it from somewhere else on loan for you.

 Life in Outer Space:  Genre: Love

 Sam is a geek and he is totally cool with that.  He has his horror movies, his nerdy friends, World of War craft and unless Princess Leia turns up in his bedroom, he doesn’t have to worry about girls.

Then Sam meets Camilla.  She is beautiful, friendly and completely irrelevant to his life.  Sam is determined to ignore her – except that Camilla has a life of her own and she has decided that he is going to be part of it.

Sam believes that everything he needs to know, he can learn from the movies – but maybe he has been watching the wrong ones.

 When We Wake:  Genre: Science Fiction

16 year old Tegan was loving life – she was joining friends to protest the wrongs of the world, she was playing the guitar and she thought that maybe she was falling in love for the first time. She didn’t plan on the best day of her life being her last.

When she wakes, 100 years in the future, she is locked in a government facility with no memory of what happened. As the first person to be cryogenically frozen and successfully revived, she is an instant celebrity. And all she wants is a ‘normal’ life back again.

When terrible secrets come to light, Tegan must make a choice: should she keep her head down and survive – or fight for a better future?

What the Raven Saw:   Genre: Family?

I dare anyone to read this and give me a definitive genre for this book.  I have made it Family, but it could be Mystery, Love, Issues, even Animals. 

Even the blurb leaves you wondering......

“The Raven doesn’t want you to read this story. What if you find the location of his hidden treasure? Or worse – learn his secret? But you should read it, even though the Raven wants to be left alone. A pesky pigeon, a beady-eyed weatherhen, a ghost boy and a lovestruck scarecrow will make sure that this book isn’t just about one grumpy raven.”

Web 2 Resources

Below are a couple of links to Web 2 Tools that may be handy. These were mentioned on the teacher librarian listserv today and got good recommendations from others as well.

http://kidblog.org/home/

Kidblog is designed for teachers who want to provide each student with an individual blog.  Students publish posts and participate in discussions within a secure classroon blogging community.  Teachers are able to maintain control over student blogs and user accounts.   

You can use Kidblog to:

• Create classroom discussions
• Learn digital citizenship
• Reflect on learning
• Practice writing skills
• Assess writing

 http://www.voki.com/

Voki is a free service that allows you create avatars, give them a voice by recording speech and then publish them to a blog, website or a profile.  Voki itself is free, however if you decide to upgrade to Voki Classroom, there is a small charge.  I guess it depends on what services you want from it.

http://www.wibbitz.com/

Wibbitz is a text-to-video platform that can apparently change any text based article, post or feed into a short video. This seems to be in beta mode at the moment, but turned the titles of my blog posts into a headline type announcment and made choices of pictures to add to it.  Quite fun to play with. Again, a free service.

Have a great weekend all.

Welcome Back / 2013 Challenge

Welcome back to all students and staff – especially the new people who have joined us.  Here’s hoping that you had a fantastic break and are all refreshed ready for the school year.

I managed to cover 4 states, 2 territories and 10,000 kms over our break.  We got to catch up with lots of family and friends, handfeed meerkats (probably my highlight!), dodge bushfires and floods, and generally got to see a whole lot of Australia I hadn’t seen before.

(I’m so NOT ready to be here!!)

 However, having said that – some time was spent on browsing lots of library blogsites – as you do, of course – and that’s where I came across the 2013 Challenge.  The weblink is below if you are interested. Most of the ideas suggested I have ‘borrowed’ from this site.  I would love to think I was that creative but I’m not.

 The idea has been floated that 20+13 = 33 and if you change 2013 seconds into minutes, you get 33 mins and 33 seconds.  Just a really neat little block of time for students and staff to spend READING.

 You could do it for 13 occasions during the school year, which would work out to about once every three weeks. We could call these ‘Literary Lunches’ (or whatever) and invite people from the community to come in and read to/with the students. Maybe introduce students to different genres, authors or series and challenge them to try out 13 new ‘things’ and then to share them with their classmates, school or the community.  It could go on this blog, or we could make up a wall in ‘Wall Wisher’ for the purpose or....

 Please have a look at the link below and let me know what you think – and whether you would be interested in helping to get this up and running? You may have a totally radical way of putting it in place.

 http://hubinfo.wordpress.com

Genres and Holidays!

It has been a busy time in the Library just lately. Along with all the usual end of year cleaning, sorting and reorganising - we pick now to decide to catalogue all the SOSE and English resources and put them into genres.  I guess it comes under sorting and reorganising!

All of the resources are now catalogued so they can be checked out properly (and we can keep a better track of who has them) and have been placed into genres.  The idea being that if you are looking for poetry or drama for example - you just have to check that area.  We hope it will make it a lot easier for all.

So you will now find all of SOSE and English resources in their special category - Poetry, Drama, Reading, Financial Literacy, Citizenship, Techitracy and so on.  It will be a good way to start 2013.

As this is our last day of term - I would just like to wish you all a wonderful Christmas and a safe and happy New Year. 

Look forward to doing it all again next year.

New Fiction Books

There has been some new arrivals of Fiction books in the Library in the last week or so, which are all now processed and on the display shelves for loan.

Some of the titles include:

'Vulpi' - Kate Gordon.  

This is the second one in the series and is just as brilliant as the first.  It is all about shapeshifters - Tasmanian tigers and Tasmanian devils along with foxes from England.  Lots of battles, blood and friendships.  Awesome.

'Little Manfred' - Michael Morpurgo

This book tells the story of two prisoners of war and talks about how people could help each other even when they were enemies.  At the end of the story, we move forward in time to 1991 when a dog carved from apple wood was given to the Imperial museum.  This is based on a true story.

Ned Kelly's Secret' - Sophie Masson

Hugo and his father are travelling through Australia, hunting up tales of the gold rush. But when they are ambushed on the road by the notorious outlaw, Harry Power, they decide to chase up stories of bushrangers instead.  
In Benalla, Hugo makes friends with a boy from the bush... a boy who is brave, bold and will do anything for his family... 15 year old Ned Kelly.

Rise of Nine' - Pittacus Lore

When the nine Loriens first arrived on Eaarth, a powerful charm prevented them from being killed out of order by the evil Mogadorians.  However, that all changed once Numbers Four and Six combined forces.  This partnership led to the discovery of more Loriens, Numbers Seven and Nine and in a surprise twist, Number Ten.  The fact that they are working together doesn’t mean that they will survive and it turns out that there is some unfinished business to take care of.

'Inside out and Back again' - Thanhha Lai

Readers should know that this book is written in a series of short verse poems, which are easy to read, fast-paced, descriptive, and poignant. Though it is never preachy or instructional, the short verse poems give much information about life in Vietnam, including the foods, clothing, traditions, the encroaching war, some politics, family structure, and much more. 
Readers will also learn about life as an immigrant as Ha struggles with a new language, eats new foods, meets new kids, deals with attitudes toward Vietnamese immigrants  -- and tries to blend Vietnamese customs with new American customs.

Come and give these a try - or there are plenty more new titles on display.  If there is something in particular that you would like, just ask us and we will do our best to try to find it for you.

Year 7s and Speed Dating with Books

Last week of Library Lessons for Year 7s - and today was Speed Dating with books.

We covered all the tables with a huge selection of books.  This included Fiction across all genres, and a wide range of Non-Fiction.  There were also a number of Picture Books and Graphic Novels for our lower literacy students.

The class was handed a sheet to be filled in with the title of the book, the author and then a rating.  Truly, Madly, Deeply if you REALLY wanted to read this book, Maybe Another Night Darling if it was okay and Sorry, not my type if it didn't interest you.

They had about 3-4 mins to grab a book, check out the cover and read the blurb and then scan a few pages - and make a decision.  Then they moved to another table and another book and continued on. 

At the end of an hour most of them had rated around 20 books and there were lots of comments about the different stories, genres and some of the non-fiction materials. 

A few students wanted to know why we had 'true' stories in the fiction area instead of the non-fiction, so we explained that it was a fiction story based on something that had really happened - so it wasn't ALL true, just some of it.

One little cherub asked 'So how do you tell then Miss - just make a clever guess?' He looked a little shaken when we told him we read them.  'What, ALL of them?' 'Yes' 'Ahh never mind, Miss - bet they have to pay you REAL good for that' 
You have to love Year 7s.

Carrie and I have enjoyed our lessons with the Year 7s and hopefully they will remember some of the basics.  At the very least, we hope to see lots of them in here borrowing books, reading magazines and hanging out.

Library Classes and QR Codes

Well, we are into week 3 of our Library classes and we have had a few successes.

The QR Code Hunt in week 2 was very popular - I'm not sure whether it was the iPads or the QR code hunt itself, but the students got right into it.

We had 22 QR codes pinned up around the Library and they used the iPads to read the codes and then answered the questions that came up on the screen.  It was a fun way of them getting to know the layout of the Library and some of the different resources available here.

With all the free QR code generators out there it is so easy to make up your own QR codes with whatever you want the students to learn or revise - and they love it.  The senior students in the Library watched it all happen and are now asking questions about QR codes and checking out the magazines and book trailers using the codes. 

Just to give you a idea of what I am talking about, read the QR code here and send us a comment with the answer to the question.  You can download a free QR code reader onto your iPhone or smart phone - quite handy as most magazines, books etc all provide loads of information via QR codes.

This week has been about research skills and using Boolean operators to refine your search.  I think the highlight there was sticking words to the window - way out of my reach as they are at least as tall than me, and can jump higher -  but hey, whatever works for them.  Obviously they learnt something as well because no-one had a problem with the worksheet.  (And I found a Year 9 student to get all the words off the window for me!)

We have just finished processing a pile of new fiction books which are now on display and ready for borrowing.  So come and take a look.  If there is something particular that you would like, come and talk to us and we will do our best to get hold of it for you.

Have an awesome week.

School Holidays and Stocktake.

Well, we are on school holidays for the next four weeks - actually 3 now as we have spent the first week of the break stocktaking the collection.  This includes everything in the Library, the storeroom and the Bookroom in F block.  (And I just realised we forgot all the resources in Science!) Looks like we are back on Monday to finish the job. 

The job has also meant lots of cleaning, reorganising and some new ideas for displaying said resources.  Everything feels fresher and more inviting, and hopefully the staff and students will feel the same way.

Next task on the agenda is to get the Library and Literacy lessons ready to go for the Year 7s.  We have been updating the program and trying to make it more technology based.  I have been taking part in the Web 2 course provided by Syba Signs so we have lots of new ideas to play around with.  We are looking forward to trying them out with the students.

Hope everyone is enjoying their break.  See you all again in 3 weeks time.

United Nations & Library Lessons

Lots of work has been happening in the Library recently - especially with the end of Semester 1 on the horizon.  Even though 4 weeks break is coming up fast, there is lots still to do and some very busy little bee's working hard.

 After a visit from the UN Youth delegation, the Year 10s have been learning about the United Nations as well as Human Rights issues and have begun to put together a display in the Library. Their task is to have an in depth look at human rights ledgers.

Coming up next semester is a display on the 2012 Olympics, and we are also in the throes of creating a brand new and improved Year seven library lesson program. QR codes, Wordles, the Dewey rap song and playing around with Prezi. Carrie and I are both very excited about things that are coming up in the next couple of months.

We will do our very best to keep this blog updated with the things that are going on. Next week will be a post about stocktake, and a report on how many people we have had to hound to get items back. It would be good to make it a complete return of items with nothing outstanding. We are happy to tag anything and re-issue it next term.  You just have to ask!

Have a great weekend - and week 10 next week.  Bring it on!