Skerricks

Hello!

2011-10-03T07:41:00.000+11:00

Now if someone can just tell me where term 3 went....

Stuff did happen (oh my goodness yes) but not so much on Skerricks. For assorted reasons. But I haven't forgotten you, and plan to do more in Term 4.

I have been working with lots of teachers and classes - that's been fun. And the school now has a Plagiarism and Ethical Use of Information Policy (more later on that) which is launching into its initial implementation this term.

This week in the hols I'm at the ASLA XXII conference at St Ignatius this week, learning lots and looking forward to presenting on Tuesday (my topic is Re-imagining your school library - do come and say hello if you're at the conference).

Hope you're enjoying your hols. I plan to do more here on Skerricks next term. Really. I promise.

Cheers

Ruth

2011-07-22T06:10:00.001+10:00

There are some computer problems in the world that includes writing Skerricks. Term has resumed, the pace is as busy as ever at school and I hope Normal Programming (Blogging) will resume next week....

I was one of the winners in this week's Staff Appreciation Draw, so there's some good gnus around as well...

Cheers

Ruth

Picking over the bones: cheap library furniture

2011-07-09T15:25:00.003+10:00

Sad though it is to have two major Australian bricks'n'mortar bookshop chains closing (Angus & Robertson and Borders), I noted the other day at the store nearest me that they are selling off a lot of shopfittings, including perspex book holders, wire folding book holders, storage cubes and slatwall, that could be useful for libraries.

I got some perspex book holders (five linked units) for $10. The wooden storage cubes were $40, the slatwall $100 for a large section (which would suit the end of a shelving run, for example). Little hinged wire bookstands $2.

Don't know what your local store may have/may have left, but it's an opportunity to obtain some decent quality used bookstore/ library furnishings at bargain prices. (I said hello to the other local TL who happened to be in the shop at the same time...!)

Cheers

Ruth

What I did today

2011-07-01T16:20:00.000+10:00

In preparation for this afternoon (last day of term 2), I put this list together:

Wiggle and swim
Robot
Line up - wavy arms
Walk
Sideways shuffle
Kissy hands
Stop hands
Train whistle
Wiggle
Rock climb
Walk
Slow wiggle
Guns
Thump floor
Punch down
Flap arms
Crocodile claps
Line up and link arms
Step forward
Final pose!

And no, nobody at teachers' college EVER told us about preparing lists like this. It's a choreography list. And before you ask, as a dancer I am a FABULOUS teacher librarian.

We have a concert on the last afternoon of term 2; performances from students and staff. It's the finale to Spirit Week, when there are special events on each day as well as dress themes, and the kids are fundraising for charity. So this week I have done my poor best to garb with bling, rock and roll, ninjas or pirates, and horror. The kids have done a great job (my fave was the kid in jeans and a hoodie on the pirates or ninjas day. I'm a software pirate, he said. That's clever!) and enjoyed themselves.

If you look at this video, and imagine gaffer-taped stuffed animals, costumes made up of salad-cover headwear, shower-curtain dresses and headwear, balloons stapled to a garbage bag dress and, oh, a bunch more invention-of-the-moment Gaga costumery - well, you have a flavour of the part of this afternoon in which I was involved (together with one of the two faculties who did a faculty performance).

(Link: http://youtu.be/Z_bRDeY89A4 )
We finally rehearsed at lunchtime, minutes before.... we did have a colleague holding up cue cards from that list, which helped. The students liked it, anyway!

I showed the choreography list to the dance teacher a couple of days ago. She was very very polite; but the slight widening of her eyes was a giveaway. Guess I haven't nailed the terminology yet....!! (but you know, it was clear enough for my equally non-dance expert colleagues, so that's what matters!)

The happy life of teacher librarians: so you think you can dance? (No. Entertain? More probable.)

It was fun. And now it's hols. YAY!

Enjoy your break, if you're having one. See you back here next term.

Cheers

Ruth

PS The longer I teach, the more I realise about how many things they didn't tell us/teach us about in teachers' college. Garbage bag/balloon couture, for example.

PPS I discovered how to date myself instantly among younger teaching colleagues. Use the term "teachers' college".

A new film of Romeo & Juliet

2011-06-28T06:03:00.032+10:00

I'm researching Romeo & Juliet trailers and video bits for a lesson (will share 'em later - found some Amazing Stuff!) and tripped over mention of a new film. I still think Baz Luhrmann's 1996 Romeo + Juliet is fabulous, but this one looks interesting too. Cast includes True Grit's Hailee Steinfeld as Juliet

Image source

and Douglas Booth (who was in Pillars of the Earth) as Romeo - both young, but probably close to the given ages in Shakespeare's play.

Image source

Benvolio is played by young Australian actor Kodi Smit-McPhee, from Romulus my Father, Let Me In, The Road.

Image source

Release date is given as 2012, so don't hold your breath, and the script is by Julian Fellowes (Gosford Park, Downton Abbey). Director is Carlo Carlei.

More at IMDB here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1645131/

Cheers

Ruth

PS. Luhrmann's film is 16 years old now? Yikes!

Photos from their respective IMDB profile pages

The happy life of teacher librarians: the late note

2011-06-27T16:51:00.000+10:00

The scene: a school library. Busyish lunchtime over, a few students in the library on study periods etc.

Polite young Year 7 boy clutching a novel: Miss?
Yup?
Miss, can I please have a late note?
Um, for what?
To get into class...
(I check the time: it's 25 minutes AFTER the end of lunch bell)
Lunch finished quite some time ago.
I know.
So...
So I was reading in one of the seats upstairs Miss, and I didn't hear the bell.

He looks sorta apologetic, and rueful, and what the heck? Isn't it great to know he was so comfy and happy (in the seats we have scrounged and recovered and set into a reading layout) and had so disappeared into the world of a book that the world beyond didn't register? Yup. It is. A lovely compliment to the library. He got his late note (with a cheerful explanation for the teacher). Not that it would be good to be writing them every day, but he was genuine and it was a delightful moment.

The happy life of teacher librarians: best late note ever?

Cheers

Ruth

Quirky Book Week: It's a Book

2011-06-24T18:01:00.007+10:00

Today's book is a book (which I can also share with you via a video) about books.

Books remain wonderful bits of technology. The day after I bought Press Here and All My Friends are Dead (Quirky Books blogged about earlier this week), was a Friday. Staff morning tea at recess. I brought them with me and slid them like contraband to this person and that. Just try it. Go on. It's funny. And they did. PE teachers and Art teachers and History teachers and English teachers and more. Not just people with a practical teaching need for a quirky fun picture book, but colleagues and friends who would enjoy the fun of them, their gift of laughter. I didn't need a screen or a battery or a lead. Just the books. Which is kinda the point of Lane Smith's book.

Here's a book trailer that covers the whole book, pretty much, and will give you a good flavour of it.

And here's the link, if that doesn't work:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4BK_2VULCU

For all the things books don't do, there is so much that they do so well.

One thing is share laughter, provide a shared experience. That's what Quirky Books can offer, and how they can add value and fun to your library, as they do here. I've already blogged about books with legs: http://skerricks.blogspot.com/2011/06/happy-life-of-teacher-librarians-books.html and they certainly qualify as Quirky Books too.

The wonderful local independent bookshop I mentioned yesterday was the one that got me onto this book, so props to them (after I bagged them yesterday!).

Hope you've enjoyed these five Quirky Books, and I hope to learn about more candidates from your comments - do leave one!

Cheers

Ruth

Quirky Book Week: Press Here

2011-06-23T06:42:00.003+10:00

Today's Quirky Book is deceptively simple. You will probably say, I could have thought of that. But you didn't. Nor (dangit!) did I. But hurrah and hurray that Herve Tullet did.

But what happens when you open the book and press the yellow dot?

This, for starters:

What's not to like about a book that draws a crowd?

The Amazon.com page for this book has some pictures from inside. It also has a link so you can create this minibook version (only a few of the many fun pages in the complete book, but enough to show you how it works).

On one of the pages, the instruction is to clap to make something change in the book. I can track the progress and location of this book around the library by the clapping...

Another one to make the library a fun place for happy discoveries.

My wonderful local independent bookshop and I disagree on this book. I'm enormously amused (and so are the people at school, kids and teachers, with whom I share it). The normally smart bookshop folk say, 'meh'. So it's lovely and gorgeous to have people say to me, Where did you get it? and I can direct traffic to the wonderful local bookshop, adding that I hope the buyer will let the bookshop know that Ruth showed them this book.... 'meh' my Aunt Fanny!

I learned about this book from friends who had learned about it from the Children's Bookshop in Beecroft NSW: Paul McDonald from there always has good recommendations (as does my wonderful local independent bookshop; just on this book, they're wrong and I'm right!!).

Tomorrow, another favourite Quirky Book. Have you enjoyed them this week? Do leave a comment with your own favourite Quirky Books!

Cheers

Ruth

Quirky Book Week: Cherise the Niece

2011-06-22T06:29:00.007+10:00

After yesterday's sweet little girl, today you can meet Cherise:

A sweet wee thing. Well, kinda. I was going to do a blog entry about books with n@ughty little girls, until I considered what search engines and their bots might do with that particular concept...

On the Amazon.com page for this book, you can take a look inside. You can also buy a Kindle ebook edition, and download the first chapter free. The product description on Amazon says:

The bloody footprints leading out of Cherise’s bedroom are the first clue that perhaps the little darling with the bow in her hair is not an angel. As Cherise is shuttled from one aunt’s home to another, her aunts vanish, meeting inventive and hysterical ends. With a killer punch line on its final page, Jim Benton’s Cherise the Niece will leave readers laughing.

I myself feel that it's important to let you know that there is a note at the beginning of the book advising that no aunts were harmed in its making...

Definitely black humour; if you're not in a high school, maybe one to read before adding to the collection.

But fun? Heck yes! It's caused lots of chuckling in our library.

Tomorrow's Quirky Book is one of my favourites.

Cheers

Ruth

Image from www.bookdepository.com

Quirky Book Week: Constance and Tiny

2011-06-21T06:19:00.004+10:00

Another Quirky Book for your delectation!

Meet Constance, and her adorably sweet cat, Tiny:

Absolute angels, they are. Take a look inside the book with this preview from the Book Depository website.

There is an utter (and very recognisable) disparity between what Constance says (in the text of the book) and what Constance (and Tiny) do. Could be exploitable for English. My name is Constance. I am locked up in an evil mansion...

But mostly, it's just gorgeous fun.

Picked this up from a sale table, but it's orderable from bookshops in Australia or overseas. Not expensive.

What are your fave quirky books? I have three more to share this week - enjoy! Constance and Tiny have another adventure in Constance and the great escape.

Cheers

Ruth

Here is the reality of teaching

2011-06-20T15:36:00.000+10:00

Terrific article in today's Sydney Morning Herald, from Leon Wright who teaches in western Sydney. My favourite paragraph from "Waves of guff wash over the modern teacher" is this one:

Here is the reality. This morning, tens of thousands of teachers will go to work. They each have their strengths and weaknesses. There are motherly types, coaches, IT experts, role models, adventurers, martinets, inspirers, storytellers, social workers, academics, craftsmen, performers and, of course, a few time servers, incompetents and babes in the woods. Only the gullible and ambitious among them will uncritically embrace the passing fads. The rest will just get on with it.

But it's all worth reading. Smart observation, this:

Once you have begun teaching, there is no let-up. At staff development days, we watch highly paid experts give presentations on how the judicious use of painted egg cartons and paper clips has transformed education in Barbados. We invariably apply one jaundiced criterion to evaluate this stuff: would it work with my year 9 class on a Friday afternoon?

Read it all:
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/waves-of-guff-wash-over-the-weary-teacher-20110619-1g9yu.html

Cheers

Ruth

to whom some, but not all, of the above descriptions apply.

Found via the paper paper: the SMH as broadsheet, while I scarfed down a quick sandwich before a lesson with Year 7. Seize the day (and the lunch!)

Quirky Book Week: All My Friends Are Dead

2011-06-20T06:52:00.003+10:00

Welcome to Quirky Book Week on Skerricks!

Five books that are just great fun - the kids like 'em, and I like 'em, and they make the library a happy place.

Which you might start to question when you see the first book:

Cheer up. It's a really really funny book.

You can take a look inside here (Google preview on the Book Depository website). I rather like the pirate saying all his friends have scurvy....

Just make sure when you read the book that you read all the way to the very very last page.

It's a smallish book, gifty-sized, and not expensive. It's making lots of friends here. Another way to make this library a place where there is laughter, and fun to be had, and discoveries to be made. So it's about library PR, too.

Tune in tomorrow for another Quirky Book!

Cheers

Ruth

Image from www.bookdepository.com

The happy life of teacher librarians: HI MISS!

2011-06-17T17:33:00.001+10:00

So last Friday I spent all day at the library in the downstairs seminar room (glass walls, next to the computer area) with a group of teacher librarians for a mini-conference.

We had all brought food for recess and lunch; after recess, there was still quite a spread on the table, cake and biscuits and sandwiches and cheese and... we grazed, and talked of cabbages and kings. Hosting this meeting, I had made sure we had peppermints on the table, because what is a seminar/conference without peppermints???

In the period before lunch, 10E8 English came to the library with their teacher for their regular fortnightly period. Being Otherwise Engaged, I didn't spend the time with them as I usually would have done.

The boys (they're all boys in that class) are a bunch of larrikins and characters. They were naturally curious about these unexpected goings-on right next to the computers they were working on. And food.... (hmm, maybe a lot of their interest centred on the food...). Being the opportunistic thinkers that they are, a couple bent their minds to exploiting this situation.

So I'm sitting facing the library, and a couple wave hello. I smile back, and refocus on the discussion.

A couple of the boys are typing something on the computer. They turn the screen so I can read it, big smiles on their faces:

HI MISS

I grin acknowledgement, and refocus.

More typing. The screen is turned back towards me:

WATCHA DOIN?

Couldn't help myself, I laughed aloud. They grinned back. I excused myself from the meeting, picking up the bowl of Seminar Peppermints as I went, and went out for a minute or two to let those larrikins know just how obnoxious they are...and to remind them, as I offered them a peppermint (they took two, naturally) that it isn't OK to eat in the library. They agreed, as they chewed, and I returned to the meeting. (They can do Contradiction just fine). Thanks, miss!

I haven't had the heart to tell them that the last of the food was hoovered by the public stomachs of the same teacher's Year 7 class at the end of the day.

The happy life of teacher librarians: HI MISS

Cheers

Ruth

Newspaper Map: find, translate, read

2011-06-17T06:52:00.006+10:00

How cool is this?

Every balloon is a different newspaper, the languages indicated by colour. You can use the hand icon to move around the map (so yes, it does have Australia).

Great, you say, but what if I only speak English?

No worries.

Let's try an example There's a little Spanish balloon in the middle of the sea of English in the US. When you click on it, you can choose the language in which you wish to read that newspaper. Sure, Google Translate ain't perfect, but it's not bad.

Lots of ways this could be handy! Let your teachers know... http://newspapermap.com/

Found via Twitter: @newsfromtengrrl who posts lots of useful links.

Cheers

Ruth

Screenshot images from the site.

Auslan Signbank (is this a perfect use of the internet, or what?)

2011-06-16T06:47:00.012+10:00

Many moons ago, I learned some Auslan - Australian Sign Language, as used by the deaf community. As you may know, this is not the same as the sign language used in the UK or the US, even though our countries all share English. As it happens I haven't used it much, or (to be honest) retained a lot of what I learned twenty years ago, but some has stuck, and come in handy from time to time. (And one of my best true funny stories is about an unexpectedly handy application of Auslan...!)

Working with a slightly tricky kid the other day, where something lateral and quirky was more likely to catch his attention than plain vanilla, I used some fingerspelling. It did catch his attention when I repeated a word in this unexpected way). But his attention drifted when I had to attend to other students, and when I had time to get back to him, he was definitely grumpy again. Hmmm, I thought, I wonder if...? Less than a minute of googling and I'd found the Auslan signbank online.

How to sign 'grumpy'?
http://www.auslan.org.au/dictionary/words/grumpy-1.html

This is an utterly brilliant use of the internet. Many moons ago, I had a couple of books (the more comprehensive one hugely bulky) that contained signs. Trapped in drawn diagrams, because that is what print books can do. But on this page, the little video shows you the word/idea being signed. You can replay it as often as you like. You can search for any of the other over 4000 signs listed via the alphabetical list or just the word you want. You can search on medical terms only. You can see in which parts of Australia a particular sign is used.

Here's what the site includes:

a dictionary
a special medical and health dictionary
grammar examples on video
videos of deaf people using Auslan naturally
information on the deaf community in Australia
links to Auslan classes

To my knowledge, there aren't students using sign at my school (ie. I don't know if we have any who use it at home, but it's not used at school) - my use of it is as an attention-getter, something different, a way to cut through and get a kid's attention (which I can then deploy in the direction I'd like it to go...); and as a window on another way of looking at the world. The grumpy sign certainly illustrates the frustration/crankiness/grumpiness of the student who prompted this search.(He'll be back and I'll be ready!). Maybe I'll get to use this sign instead.

One to share with other teachers - English/drama, for example.

Cheers

Ruth

Blue eyes, brown eyes: Jane Elliott's exercise in prejudice

2011-06-15T06:58:00.000+10:00

Photo used under Creative Commons license. LINK

Jane Elliott, a teacher, first tried her blue-eyed/brown-eyed exercise with her class in an Iowa school in the 1960s, in response to the assassination of Martin Luther King. You may have come across mention of it in your teacher training, or after. While Wikipedia isn't the be-all and end-all of research, it's not a bad source for an outline of what she did, and what happened next (and check the citation list for further links).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Elliott

Photo used under Creative Commons license. LINK

This came up at school recently when one of the seniors, from a Society and Culture class studying belief systems and associated -isms was asking me to help her locate information*. Blue-eyed/brown-eyed came up in the discussion, and while looking for information we came across this 29 page pdf which covers the blue-eyed/brown-eyed exercise and after in great useful detail (the Wikipedia article seems likely to have drawn on it, and it's not Stephen G. Bloom's only article on this topic). Find it here:

Blue-Eyes, Brown-Eyes:

The Experiment that Shocked the Nation

And Turned a Town Against its Most Famous Daughter

By Stephen G. Bloom

http://www.uiowa.edu/~poroi/seminars/2004-5/bloom/poroi_paper.pdf

Here's an interesting fact from that document:

It was Jane, for instance, who complained to the Crayola Company about its single flesh-color crayon, and today there are ten flesh-color crayons — from ebony to sand. It was Jane who complained to pantyhose companies about nudecolored pantyhose, and today there are dozens of nude shades hosiery companies manufacture.

I have tried a version of this exercise with a senior class, some years ago: not as intensely/intensively as Jane; but it still had a distinct impact on the kids, got them talking and thinking.

So, a link to share with your History/English/Society and Culture teachers, or any you think might find it useful. Seemed a waste not to blog it.

The student also went away with a copy of The Wave, by Morton Rhue, a fictionalised version of a similar exercise. Lots of different ways to approach and consider an idea.

Cheers

Ruth

* when we'd finished this discussion, the student remarked that the Pew Internet research site I'd referred her to for an earlier assignment had been just what she needed, so she had come back to me. Nice to get repeat business from confident customers! - I hadn't remembered that occasion, as we have so many kids here and it's hard to recall every detail of every day's discussions and conversations. I appreciated knowing. The happy life of teacher librarians: repeat business from happy customers!

The Periodic Table of Storytelling

2011-06-14T06:27:00.004+10:00

You don't believe me that there is a Periodic Table of Storytelling? Behold!

I know, it's hard to read detail. But it's worth it. Toddle over to this link:
http://computersherpa.deviantart.com/art/Periodic-Table-of-Storytelling-203548951
and click on the link on the right there that says, "Download this image" to view it on your screen.

If you love it, you can buy a copy here:

http://www.deviantart.com/print/19205959/?
(the photo print is cheaper than the fine art one).

Here's the Artist's Statement:
Get a poster-size print of the Periodic Table of Storytelling! Writers, hang it up on your wall in a location where you can stare at it for inspiration and/or throw darts, if necessary. Fans and bibliophiles, keep a copy handy for easy reference so you can keep track of hairy plot twists. English Lit teachers, get one for your classroom and watch student interest soar!

These prints have a white, sciencey background (lab coat sold separately) and the box of examples at the bottom has been removed. 16-inch prints look good; 20-inch prints and larger appear truly impressive. I recommend clicking Photo Prints on the right--that'll get you a good 20-inch print at a lower price than the Fine Art prints offer.

This poster emits high quantities of Sciencium rays. These do not interact with matter in any detectable way, with the sole exception of making the person standing in front of this poster feel smarter. Bask in the tropey, sciencey, awesome-y rays!

This is but one example of the burgeoning field known as infographics. As with any other sort of information, they can be used for good or evil; but the many good ones out there attest to their usefulness in providing a pictorial representation of information that kids can enjoy, relate to and learn from.

Share this one with your English teachers!

Cheers

Ruth

Breaking Dawn : film poster and movie trailer

2011-06-09T06:34:00.000+10:00

Over at the lovely Bookshelves of Doom, I discovered the first Breaking Dawn movie teaser poster.

Yup. That's all folks. No brooding vampires or werewolves, no brooding/angsty Bella. Guess they're relying on the font and title then? I wonder if the book cover designer who chose this font for Twilight got the pat on the back they deserve for such a distinctive font (and that iconic hands/apple cover)?

I will be interested to see what the reaction is from the kids.

They'll be keen to see this...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbPxK5Zj9J4
if the above doesn't work for you.

The books have hardly budged this year, or most of last - borrowed here and there, but it seems as though most who want to read them have, (and more primary age kids have read them than was the case when they were new, so we haven't had new Year 7's leaping on them as we did a couple of years ago), others have seen the films so far and are happy with consumption of the story, and lots of kids, I'd guess, own them to read as and when they wish. Still, Twilight and its sequels got a lot of kids reading, and they've been a useful springboard/marketing device.

Found the trailer via Twitter.

Cheers

Ruth

GIFSL* 66: Requests (made public) (+ Eragon, book 4)

2011-06-08T06:56:00.014+10:00

(Two years ago)

Miss, I want to reserve Eragon book 4
Um, as far as I know it's not written yet - ?
No, it isn't.
So is he going to write it, do you know?
Probably. Maybe. I hope so.
Well...
I'd really like to reserve it, Miss.
OK then...

The kids know I have a collection of requests on post-t notes on a laminated sheet in my office . This is what it looks like pretty much all the time:

It's very much in plain sight, where the kids can see it and I can too. When a book has been requested and ordered, if it's orderable; Eragon book 4 clearly wasn't) it goes onto a post-it note with the kid's name and goes on here (the white sheet was a rather long list a kid brought in with her). When the book comes in, we marry it up with the note and the kid/s on the list get to borrow it first.

It's also really effective (in terms of me remembering and in terms of the kid making the request feeling nicely important and valued) to, if you can, ring your wonderful local independent bookshop at lunchtime while the kid is there, to ask them to get in/put aside a copy of this title. Kids have this happy shine when what they want is treated this way - it's good library PR too.

I put a lot of my orders through a wonderful local independent bookshop - they know their stuff, especially with young adult fiction, and are fabulously helpful. And it puts money back into the local area's economy. And they put up with lunchtime phone calls when I order a single book or two at a time; so the kids also are alerted to a wonderful local helpful bookshop, which is not a bad thing either.

So cut to this week. Same kid, two years taller, two years older (but still at school. I'd kinda begun to wonder if he'd still be at school when Christopher Paolini got around to writing book 4....) bounces into my office with a happy smile on his face:

MISS!
Yes?
ERAGON BOOK 4!
Yup, I know, that post-it note is still there...
It's coming out in November!
What, he's written it?
YES!
Really? Wow.

We look it up. He has. It will.

The happy life of teacher librarians: wishes do come true.

Cheers

Ruth

GIFSL* 65: from top stand-up comedians. Yes, really!

2011-06-07T06:10:00.014+10:00

Photo used under a Creative Commons license

I am happy to get ideas and inspiration from wherever I can find them, and so clicked through on a Twitter link to read Michael Bierut's design column on Seven Things Designers Can Learn From Stand Up Comics.

What did I find? Seven things teacher librarians re-imagining their libraries and looking for design ideas and inspiration and all sorts of things can learn from stand up comics. Really truly.

This is the brief version, with my own comments.

It's all about the basics. Librarywise, stuff being shelved and findable. A welcoming, helpful atmosphere and friendly staaff. A library that encourages and inspires. Resources and services that the kids want and need. You know. So do the kids
Once you've mastered the basics, make the work your own. Every school library, like every classroom, bears the stamp of the personality of the teacher/teacher librarian in charge of it and responsible for it. The art and science of teaching is a juggle of personality and knowledge and human relations and all sorts of other alchemies. I know, in another library space, that I wouldn't do exactly what I have done at my present school. I know that another teacher librarian, in my current library, wouldn't do things the same either. It's not about better or worse, but different. Playing to your strengths, with the goal of making it as effective as you can for the kids.
Respect your audience. That's kids, and teachers, and parents. Kids, because sometimes they're so easy to respect, and sometimes difficult to respect: although I have found that exquisite, courteous interest from a teacher librarian can completely discombobulate a noxious student, opening the way to achieving a positive outcome for both. Teachers can be irritating (late and lost resources, forgotten bookings etc) but like anything, there's a story both sides (teacher librarians can be irritating too: let me count the ways...or not; you know). I'm not keen on a them and us mentality. It's us, all teachers (whether teacher librarians or other classroom teachers) working together.
Know your tools. The standard stuff - cataloguing and other organisational tools. The teaching tools - methods and strategies and ideas. More resources in print and digital form and more than we have ever had before. The tools of character and style - patience, interest in kids, enthusiasm... We have a huge toolkit, as big and Tardis-like as the mother's bag in the Swiss Family Robinson (I've never forgotten that - whatever they needed, she'd popped in that sailcloth bag before the shipwreck).
Honour your craft. Work hard, create challenges for yourself, aim to never coast and always improve. Use your personal learning network, your willingness to be a lifelong learner hunting out new ideas from blogs, Twitter, email lists, the media, anywhere you can.
Don't be afraid of failure. Not everything I try works out. Last week I planned an exciting lesson and realistically, on reviewing how it went, would barely give myself a pass grade. And a prac teacher watched it. So, why didn't it work as well as I'd planned and hoped? How can I do better? If we don't model coping with failure, valuing failure, using it as a launch pad, how can we expect kids to learn how important it is, learn to be resilient, learn to be brave?
Finally, never forget you have a special gift. How much fun is it to work in a school library? Huge fun! Barack Obama in a speech to librarians some years ago, talked about libraries as being a magic threshold. We not only get to cross that magic threshold each day, we get to influence the experience of everyone who crosses it too. Teaching is an amazing gift - that alchemy when it works, the pleasure of the company of so many different, engaging personalities and dreams and ideas. Lucky lucky lucky (as I remind myself on the days when I end up tired and dispirited; because tomorrow is another day, and plenty of good things happen even on the tough days).

Click on to read the article in full here, with Michael Bierut's designer observations rather than my teacher librarianish ones:
http://observersroom.designobserver.com/oblog/post/seven-things-designers-can-learn-from-stand-up-comics/27038/

Cheers

Ruth

*GIFSL= good ideas for school libraries. An ongoing series on this blog. Find more of them by clicking here.

The happy life of teacher librarians: should you argue with me?

2011-06-06T17:29:00.026+10:00

Used under a Creative Commons license.

I was having a discussion with an argumentative Year 7 boy this afternoon about some work he needed to do. Maintaining my cool and staying amused. He didn't want to work, and kept arguing. The word "No" was implicit in what he was saying.

I stopped a couple of seniors walking past from the senior study in the library. "Will he win if he keeps arguing with me?" I enquired cheerfully.

They turned to the boy and instantly said, "NO! You won't!".

And we all laughed, and they went on their way, and the discussion with the boy was able to become a conversation, and some progress with his work was possible.

Teaching is made up of so many small, momentary transactions, and human moments, and funny moments every day.

The happy life of teacher librarians: discussions are fine, but think carefully before you argue with me!

Cheers

Ruth

I don't own this Tshirt, but maybe it could be rather fun (until I got caught out at something I really don't know!!)

It's from this shop on Cafe Press:
http://www.cafepress.com.au/+i_am_a_librarian_womens_dark_tshirt,339317322
And there are lots more librarian T shirts you might like offered by a multitude of folks with Cafe Press shops. Try searching on 'librarian'.

One of the English teachers pointed me in the direction of this - said it reminded her of me. Very kind!

The story of a Twitter hashtag: #YAsaves (in defence of young adult literature)

2011-06-06T06:08:00.071+10:00

So yesterday I'm pootling through my Twitter stream, as you do, and read this:

Just now reading this @wsj piece on YA books. Awful. http://t.co/w485J0I Glad @neilhimself has joined the rebuttal.

(note: for the sake of brevity I've edited the tweets quoted here so they're just the tweet without the tweeter or time/date stamp; you can find the original tweets on Twitter, all but one at #YAsaves). Tweets are in red. (there are a LOT of links in this post, and I was having trouble with the html on one (couldn't work out which one among so many). I 've reformatted this blog post so for now you'll have to cut and paste the links within the tweets rather than clicking through. Figured I'd rather have this published and readable and useful than have it saved as a draft while I finetoothcomb the html, which I ain't got time to do right now! You have got the article and hashtag link hyperlinked.)

What? I wonder. WSJ is the Wall St Journal (in which I've read a bunch of interesting articles before). @neilhimself is the Twitter username of author Neil Gaiman, who you might remember weighed in on the side of the angels in the recent interrogations of teacher librarians in Los Angeles. If he's rebutting this article... and there's a link to follow, so I follow it.

The article is "Darkness Too Visible : Contemporary fiction for teens is rife with explicit abuse, violence and depravity. Why is this considered a good idea?" by Meghan Cox Gurdon. Here is an extract:

How dark is contemporary fiction for teens? Darker than when you were a child, my dear: So dark that kidnapping and pederasty and incest and brutal beatings are now just part of the run of things in novels directed, broadly speaking, at children from the ages of 12 to 18.

Pathologies that went undescribed in print 40 years ago, that were still only sparingly outlined a generation ago, are now spelled out in stomach-clenching detail. Profanity that would get a song or movie branded with a parental warning is, in young-adult novels, so commonplace that most reviewers do not even remark upon it.

If books show us the world, teen fiction can be like a hall of fun-house mirrors, constantly reflecting back hideously distorted portrayals of what life is. There are of course exceptions, but a careless young reader—or one who seeks out depravity—will find himself surrounded by images not of joy or beauty but of damage, brutality and losses of the most horrendous kinds.

Now, whether you care if adolescents spend their time immersed in ugliness probably depends on your philosophical outlook. Reading about homicide doesn't turn a man into a murderer; reading about cheating on exams won't make a kid break the honor code. But the calculus that many parents make is less crude than that: It has to do with a child's happiness, moral development and tenderness of heart. Entertainment does not merely gratify taste, after all, but creates it.

If you think it matters what is inside a young person's mind, surely it is of consequence what he reads. This is an old dialectic—purity vs. despoliation, virtue vs. smut—but for families with teenagers, it is also everlastingly new. Adolescence is brief; it comes to each of us only once, so whether the debate has raged for eons doesn't, on a personal level, really signify.

It didn't take long for this discussion to take off on Twitter, and the hashtag which emerged to tag tweets about this was #YAsaves. If you're a teacher librarian reading this (or a librarian), then you'll know what a subject heading is. If you're a library user, you've used them. On Twitter, hashtags help you follow conversations and discussions and topics. Some examples: #austl for tweets of interest to Australian teacher librarians; #YAlit for young adult literature; #tlchat for teacher librarian topics generally, and also scheduled teacher librarian chat sessions on Twitter. And so on. Anyone can invent a hashtag, and sometimes people use them for fun (#sorightnowihavehadenuf).

OK, back to our controversial article. Within minutes, this was in my Twitter stream:

follow #YAsaves for some amazing stories about how books change kids' lives, in response to a negative @wsj article about teen fiction.

There's the hashtag, to facilitate the discussion. @YAsaves.

The tweets started coming thick and fast (and while every tweet tagged with #YAsaves would be findable with that tag, remember that all I get in my Twitter stream are tweets from people I follow and tweets they have retweeted, which are signified by RT or via).

As the discussion matured, it travelled from initial reaction to analysis:

RT @NovelNovice: Staffer Steph responds to @WSJ attack on YA: RT @Steph_Lawton: A dissection of the latest att… (cont) http://deck.ly/~YS59J

And the Wall St Journal was paying attention, as any business using social media should; interactive, dynamic communication is what it's about. I was dipping in and out of Twitter during the day, so while I do follow @WSJ, I find out about their response from a RT (their tweet was retweeted by someone else I follow):

RT @WSJ: We hear your tweets about this YA review: http://on.wsj.com/mD7f7Y Comments welcome on Facebook, too: http://fb.me/wsj cc

A lot of tweets were individuals commenting on how important particular YA books were to them, how important it was/is to them to have books of all sorts and topics and themes to read. The discussion was a blend of personal stories, perspectives on censorship and more. Authors were weighing in to the discussion:

If you haven't seen them all together, here are @libbabray's (awesome) tweets defending YA fiction: http://bit.ly/krRKfG

How big was this discussion getting? From another tweet:

Guess what? #YAsaves is now the third highest trending topic in the US. That took all of about 20 minutes. Get it, @wsj? Book banners?

That tweet was twelve minutes after the very first tweet I quoted at the start of this blog entry. Shows how fast the impact of a topic can be on Twitter, and also how many people are passionate about young adult literature.

Author Holly Black wrote this:

Honestly, @wsj, do you think we just make this stuff up? The darkest parts of many of my books came directly from my teenage life. #yasaves

From author Scott Westerfeld:

You guys on #YAsaves are all so awesome. Seriously, I can't imagine a better bunch of people to work for.

and from author Justine Larbalestier:

#yasaves is trending world wide. @libbabray; @maureenjohnson started something incredible @wsj claims 2 be listening. Wow.

The Wall St Journal was indeed still paying attention - this is a mere 64 minutes after that first tweet I quoted:

What young-adult fiction means to you: a selection of touching #YAsaves tweets http://bit.ly/myZFgt (Scroll with arrow keys.)

This opinion made me chuckle. I know kids who'd agree!

And sometimes teens just need a freakin' awesome vampire/demon/werewolf/fallen angel/ghost/love story/dystopian. OKAY??? #YAsaves @wsj

And here's a quote I'll have to save for future use in other situations...(as well as another link to follow related to this #YAsaves discussion):

"Books are, at their heart, dangerous." by @wsj (featuring @libbabray) http://t.co/AVoxOtZ

The discussion goes on: I had lots of other things to do yesterday, so was only dipping into Twitter from time to time.

If you go to look at the #YAsaves discussion on Twitter, be aware that the downside of a trending (popular) topic is that the bots and spammers and rubbishfolk get onto it. If some of the tweets listed under this hashtag look like gobbledegook, ignore them - they are rubbish - and scroll down through the list to the relevant ones.

I'm sure this discussion isn't over. It will flow on into blog entries (for example, like the one you're reading now, and I'm sure many many more) and other commentary. The tweets I've used here were written over less than two hours, and demonstrate the dynamic and exciting possibilities of microblogging (140 characters max per tweet? Plenty!) and its immediacy. I didn't contribute to the discussion (then: guess I am now!), just watched and read and followed links and considered the issues, all relevant and important to teacher librarians.

Cheers

Ruth

Have I persuaded you yet of the educational value of Twitter for teachers' professional development? Yes? No? Stay tuned....

Later this tweet came through:

Excellent slideshow compilation of #YAsaves tweets. Powerful. http://t.co/RLZvVBG

and these:

I should be reading. Instead, I just blogged my response to the @wsj article http://goo.gl/J5Gpf #YAsaves

Persnickety Snark: YA Saves: WSJ thoughts... http://t.co/FaAqrG8 - - - so I dusted off the blog...

RT @maureenjohnson: The @wsj has about 20 comments. Here are our 15,000+. http://dft.ba/ /-yasavestweets #YAsaves

RT @melissa_marr: RT @lbschool: "And here is an awesome response to the @WSJ article. Preach it! http://fb.me/CnxI0XGW " oh, YES #YASaves!

The beauty of YA is that it’s filled with books & authors who are not afraid to tell the truth to teens #YAsaves - http://wp.me/pIc5A-5lr

http://on.wsj.com/kctOKS Here is a link wherein you can see the comments to the @wsj article. Thanks, @ColleenLindsay! #YASaves

Death. Loss. Pain. Anguish. Joy. Love. Sex. Freedom. Growth. Wonder. Sorrow. Bliss... disguised as "kids' stuff." #YAsaves

(To find the originals, go to the #YAsaves hashtag on Twitter).

The happy life of teacher librarians: the books with legs

2011-06-03T06:30:00.012+10:00

My school assistants and I have been having a lovely giggle in the last few weeks about a couple of books that seem to mysteriously grow legs every lunchtime. They start off innocently enough - placidly sitting on the picture book display stand, usually. But at the end of lunchtime, they're down the side of a sofa, under a comfy chair, shoved in a shelf somewhat haphazardly - anywhere but on that picture book stand, face-out.

Any guesses as to why?

See, what's really funny is that any of us can trot up to the fiction section upstairs on a given lunchtime and find the group - and it's pretty much always a group, sometimes huddled and reading together, sometimes with a designated read-alouder, a different assortment of kids pretty much every time - enjoying these picture books. And they don't stop and pretend to be busy and important with something else when any of us appear. They carry right on, with half an eye on us to see if we're going to react (I just grin!). I've had some, smirking, tell me these are appalling and rude books, and shoudn't be in the library. I say I'm appreciative of their input, and did they enjoy them?!

Actually, they're charming and fun and convey accurate information in a friendly and accessible format. Mummy Laid an Egg is another one in this category. I've written about them before, here: http://skerricks.blogspot.com/2009/06/gifsl-30-naughty-books-about-sex.html.

I love having books with legs in the library!

We used to have one with the immensely promising title, Boys & Girls & Sex, which started lunchtime on the nonfiction shelf in the 613s and rarely if ever ended lunchtime there. Another group read, although it was drier nonfiction, with some drawn illustrations (sadly added to so often that it was one of the reasons it had to be disposed of from the library). Its thumped condition attested to its keen readership (and they could work the catalogue and library systems well enough to find it independently, because sex isn't the first topic a kid's going to enquire about from a teacher librarian. Besides, it's a well-known fact - ask any teenager - that no teenager's parents have EVER had sex, because the thought is just too gross and embarrassing for their kids to contemplate. Immaculate conceptions, pretty much every kid in high school. Remarkable, really.) but it had rarely been borrowed. By gum it got to travel around the library though! - we'd find it tucked into all sorts of unlikely shelf locations. And reshelve it in the 613s, and wonder where we'd find it next...

Ah, the happy life of teacher librarians, enjoying the books with legs!

Cheers

Ruth

2011 APA book cover design winners

2011-06-02T06:03:00.002+10:00

Among the children and young adult book cover winners at the 2011 Australian Publishers' Association awards, you can find:

Best designed children's cover of the year

Best designed children's fiction book

Joint winners of the best-designed children's nonfiction book

Best designed children's picture book

Best designed children's series

Best designed young adult book

Best designed secondary education book

See all the awards, adult and children's, with the authors/designers and all on Fancy Goods, the Bookseller and Publisher magazine's blog here:

http://www.fancygoods.com.au/fancy-goods/2011/05/20/2011-apa-book-design-awards-winners/

It's interesting to see what gets industry awards like these; they're not always the ones the kids grab first. I'm sometimes hugely disappointed in book covers - the blurb sounds promising but the cover just ain't gonna grab the customers. We get some great ones, but others (if I know that what's inside is worth the work) I'll do my best to hand-sell; but I can't hand-sell everything, and covers certainly matter.

One book I wish someone would re-issue with a modern, appealing cover is a teenage fiction book called, "A time to love, a time to mourn" by Paige Dixon (which I think was originally published with a title like, "Will you cross my golden river?". It's a superb, well written family story, an unsentimental tearjerker - I still have a copy in the library, but it's a hard hard sell, so dated does the cover look. Any publisher listening - ???

Congratulations to all those involved in the books above.

Cheers

Ruth

The happy life of teacher librarians: Inspiration for your library is everywhere...

2011-06-01T12:44:00.001+10:00

As I type this, I'm on hold to a major newspaper publisher (problems with our subscription). Instead of hold music, they are advertising at me.

"Subscribe to [publication X]," the smooth tones of the voiceover guy says, "and you'll never miss an issue. In both senses of the word." (or words to that effect).

My ears prick up. There is inspiration for your library everywhere. That's a tag line/slogan that a library could burgle and adapt...

[brainstorming here]

Come to your library and you'll never miss an issue

Research at your library and you'll never miss an issue

Learn at your library and you'll never miss an issue

Ask at your library and you'll never miss an issue

.....

lots of possibilities.

Fancy it up into a sign, and you've got free promo material (it could go on bookmarks, too) that Big Newspaper Company paid good dollars for from a smart advertising agency... and you borrowed for nix apart from being attentive

(or being on hold for longer than one would wish, if I take the half-empty glass view, which generally I don't!)

What have you seen in marketing/advertising that could be adapted to use in a library?

The happy life of teacher librarians: inspiration is everywhere (and sometimes, being on hold can be useful!)

Cheers

Ruth

Film/Movie news: The Hunger Games

2011-06-01T06:55:00.006+10:00

Tintin may be out at the end of 2011, but you'll have to wait till the end of 2012 for the film being made of Suzanne Collins' very successful book, The Hunger Games. I have five copies of this in the library (and two or three of the sequels, Catching Fire and Mockingjay) and they are constantly either out or on reserev - it would be one of the most popular books in the library at present (five copies tells you that, doesn't it?). Some of the kids are already starting to talk about the film.

Here's a glimpse of Jennifer Lawrence, who has been cast as Katniss:

Source is http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20493206,00.html. She got great reviews in Winter's Bone.

There are several people on Twitter who are avidly following (and tweeting about) the film - casting, locations and more. @HungerGamesExam is one of them. She also has a website here with regular updates. Filming has started, but I'm guessing any trailer is a fair way off. But it will come...

Cheers

Ruth

Trailer: Tintin and the Secret of the Unicorn

2011-05-31T06:28:00.001+10:00

What it says. Out Christmas 2011.

URL for the YouTube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=X0tfWj24eVY

Found via Twitter

Cheers

Ruth

What does a writer do? (great sources on Twitter)

2011-05-30T06:00:00.002+10:00

Photo:This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 License LINK

I have been a storyteller since the beginning of my life, rearranging facts in order to make them more significant.

JOHN CHEEVER

Found this excellent quote via @AdviceToWriters on Twitter. For the teacher librarian, as having a place full of written stuff (in print and digital form) and English teachers (who teach creative writing), there are some useful people to follow on Twitter for information/ideas/inspiration about writing. Microblogging (such as Twitter) = short snapshots of information, quick to read and investigate and use or skip over, depending on what interests you.

Some other folk who tweet about writing:

@elizabethscraig: check her stream of tweets for all sorts of useful links about writing eg.:
Elizabeth S Craig @elizabethscraig
5 ways to avoid an info dump: http://bit.ly/kvLUMo #amwriting

SydneyWritersCentre @SydneyWriters
26/05/11 4:43 PM
10 ways to completely screw up your novel: http://bit.ly/lm5fi7 #amwriting

This is not the only writers' centre (in Australia or overseas) with a Twitter presence. Some post more about their centre's events, but others include writing advice tweets to, that you can use in teaching English. Hunt for them on Twitter, or by googling their sites and checking to see if they are on Twitter.

OZ SF+F Writers Assc @awritingjourney
26/05/11 4:19 PM
The ASFFWA Daily is out! http://bit.ly/fzVIKj ▸ Top stories today via @bloomsburysyd @harpernz @bothersomewords @shearersbooks

The Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Assoc regularly tweets useful stuff. This tweet is one about their "Daily". Some folk on Twitter use a site such as paper.li to collate tweets from their twitter stream (ie. tweets from people they follow and are interested in) into a digital newspaper. So if you follow the ASFFWA Daily link in this tweet, you are getting pre-sifted/curated content focused on topics that tweeter is interested in; so if you're interested in what they are, you're getting the benefit of their twitter stream.

And of course many authors are on Twitter: their Twitter streams can be extremely various: as varied indeed as the writers themselves. Best idea is to follow ones that might interest you, and if you're not finding their tweets useful/engaging, then unfollow them. Some writers will tweet everything from what they had for breakfast (that Twitter stereotype) to stuff about their writing process. Some will be more focused on writing. Stephen Fry's tweets (he's one of the most followed people on Twitter and tweets often) cover an extensive range of topics, daily life, thoughts, ideas. You can't make a writer write what they want, in books or anywhere else; on Twitter, if you follow them, you have to accept that they write what they do. Neil Gaiman @neilhimself has a lot of followers and tweets on a range of topics: he was one writer tweeting about the interrogation of teacher librarians in LA.

There are writers whose books I adore and whose blogs I find unreadable; and writers whose output, in whatever form, I generally find interesting. Nowt as varied as folk.

But am I finding good information about writing via my education/professional/teaching Twitter stream that I can use with students and share with English teaching colleagues? Yup. You can, too.

(OK, I'll admit it: this blog entry about useful info on writing is in fact a sneak evangelical moment for the educational possibilities of Twitter).

Cheers

Ruth

@ruth_skerricks on Twitter
I'm also on Yammer, but will only be found there if you work for the same employer as I do, because that is how Yammer works.

GIFSL* 64: Cheap Bookmark Week (Friday)

2011-05-27T06:37:00.009+10:00

This is one of my favourite ideas. It taps into libraries as places with facts and information: facts and information can can be fun and light as well as heavy. It offers the opportunity for some fun interaction when you hand over the book and bookmark. It recycles something you can find in op shops on a reasonably regular basis.

See that price tag? $4. The most I've paid for a box of Trivial Pursuit is $6. And what's inside?

No, they're not question cards, they're bookmarks! Lots and lots of them! No guillotine work today, just some fun to be had.

It's probably a slightly pricier idea than some of the other ones from this week, but here's a comparison. A commercial library supplier I checked had quite a few bookmarks which came in bundles of 200 bookmarks for $40. In this box of Trivial Pursuit I got 200 bookmarks for $4. A tenth of the price. Still cheap as chips, and fun! (This idea is part of my presentation about Re-Imagining your School Library: I've presented it in Newcastle and south-western Sydney in the last month, so I know there are TLs in those areas scouring their op shops and garage sales for Trivial Pursuit!)

Links in again with a theme of the library being a place where you find facts and information (and fun, the unexpected, a happy moment) - oh, there are lots of ways you could tie this in to a wider promotional theme.

Hope you've enjoyed the Cheap Bookmark Week ideas on the blog this week - do comment, your feedback is always appreciated.

Cheers

Ruth

*GIFSL = good ideas for school libraries, an ongoing series on this blog.

More on the interrogation of teacher librarians in LA

2011-05-26T07:15:00.001+10:00

In case you missed it, please check out the link in this tweet.

ruth_skerricks Ruth Buchanan

A TL's spirit broken by prosecution from LAUSD & lawyers: http://t.co/YcfgtMp #savethelibrarians via @_capedcrusader #yam #austl #APPALLING

It's the same mizzmurphy blog I cited as giving a TL's view of the interrogations: Are teacher librarians teachers? The same teacher librarian whose phrase, "the nuanced beauty of pedagogy" I admired, and shared this week with one of our seniors who is planning to be a high school history teacher. What happened next? Read and find out.

I don't think I can blithely type, Cheers

Ruth

GIFSL* 63: Cheap Bookmark Week (Thursday)

2011-05-26T06:27:00.047+10:00

Kids have an ongoing fascination with name definitions - hardly surprising, as they are, as in the subliminal story of Possum Magic and a gazillion other books, discovering and refining who they are in the world. I myself as a teacher librarian have had enormous fun solemnly assuring Kid A that the name of their best friend/ boyfriend/girlfriend could well mean "Viking vomit", but if they looked up this wonderful book it might be able to reassure them..... Oh miss, it DOESN'T mean that!

Parents have an enthusiasm (or used to, maybe most use the internet baby name sites now?) for baby name books, which become ripe for the culling when their baby-naming days are over. Which is why you don't have to hunt extra extra hard to find a baby name book in an op shop/charity shop/garage sale.

This one cost me a whole $3. 571 pages. Two bookmarks per page for most of it, four for others.

That's over 500 bookmarks for peanuts (571 pages is of course half that number of actual paper pages) with a bit of guillotining.

Find New Characters At Your Library

There's a theme to which this could be tied, easy-peasy. Book promotion ideas based around characters. Have you met Severus Snape? What about Harry Crewe? and on and on with book characters as a way into encouraging students to try reading something new.

I know some teacher librarians prefer to laminate bookmarks - yes, it's more durable, lets you have two different sides stuck together and so forth. I mostly don't laminate our bookmarks, for several reasons. One is cost - we hand out hundreds of bookmarks in any given week, and laminating each would add significant cost; I'd rather be able to hand out as many as possible without worrying about how much they're costing, as I'm on a tight budget. What I save on laminating can buy more books/resources. Another is time - running the laminator, guillotining/trimming the results etc. all takes time. A third is value - kids are kids are kids, and even if we give them a precious lovely laminated bookmark, I'm not so sure that most of them would treasure it as they ought. Better a shorter-lifespan item that I don't have to stress about and they don't either (much easier to get a new bookmark with a new loan than have a 'dragon in pearls' interrogate them about the lovely bookmark they got last time, where is it, they should have brought it, well OK here's another but you take care of it this time, etc etc). As I said in my first post, these are bookmarks I can hand out like confetti with a cheery smile on my face, and ones that can bring a smile to a kid's face because they're amusing/quirky/unexpected/fun.

I did have a couple of girls who were enquiring about when our next 'new' bookmarks would be out - and nobody was more surprised than me to find that they had a complete collection of the themed cardboard bookmarks I devise - Valentine's Day, Harmony Day, ANZAC Day, thrillers, holiday borrowing, winter reading etc.... It was heartwarming to know they liked them that much. But for most of our kids, a bookmark isn't valued/collected like that. But they do use them and appreciate the gesture/convenience/courtesy/kindness/fun of them, and that's the most important thing.

These bookmarks aren't just on a stand on the counter, we put one with every loan - wand the loan, stamp the due date, dezap the security tag and add a bookmark, that's our loan routine, whichever of us is doing it. It's an active gesture. Here you are. Enjoy. Here's a bookmark to help you (and amuse/interest you too - I've never had one that just has the name of the library on it and no more. It's too valuable real estate not to make it work harder and smarter). These bookmarks are part of our library's PR.

Tune in tomorrow for one of my favourite cheap bookmark ideas (if you know about it, you'll be able to jump the gun on your colleagues who don't....)

Cheers

Ruth

GIFSL* 62: Cheap Bookmarks Week (Wednesday)

2011-05-25T06:09:00.005+10:00

From an op shop/charity shop/garage sale, find the right sort of dictionary, with pages of reasonably thick paper, and a size of book/column width that lends itself to bookmarks:

...like this one, and you have hundreds of bookmarks for a few dollars. Just some slicing with the guillotine. (Or do you have a suitable dictionary that is overdue for being culled?)

Libraries Define Your World:
there's a theme you could tie in with it. I think definitions have a lot of scope for use for display purposes in libraries. A department store book section featured this, in big print, high on the wall:

And they used definitions on their lampshades:

There's an idea worth adapting/borrowing: how could you use definition decor in your library? Think of the rich (and amusing) words you could define. Not just Book, or Reading. Student. Work. Study. Learn. Adventure. Discover.... lots of potential there, isn't there?

Cheers

Ruth

*GIFSL = good ideas for school libraries, an ongoing series on this blog.

GIFSL* 61: Cheap Bookmarks Week (Tuesday)

2011-05-24T06:00:00.001+10:00

Before you cry, "VANDAL!" let me point out that this hardback copy of Harry Potter fell to bits after being loved to death by our library borrowers. Pages falling out all over, irreparable. But not useless. Oh dear me no. Because every left hand page of the book has the header, "Harry Potter". The pages are a reasonable weight of paper. And the knowledge of Harry Potter among children is extensive. And J.K. Rowling created with these books a world and vocabulary that is highly recognisable. Character names, spell words, place names and more.

So if you take a page with Harry Potter as its header, and slice down either side to a bookmarky sort of size, you'll get, pretty much every time, some bit of recognisable vocab on the page (as well as the Harry Potter cue at the top). Lupin. Hogwarts. butterbeer. Expelliarmus. And you will also get a bookmark that kids like and which hasn't cost you a bean.

And there are lots and lots of pages in Harry Potter books, so you have lots and lots of bookmarks which you can share generously and without a qualm. It's recycling and it's useful and fun.

Tune in tomorrow for another cheap bookmark idea!

Cheers

Ruth

*GIFSL = good ideas for school libraries, an ongoing series on this blog.

Final Report: School Libraries and Teacher Librarians in 21st Century Australia

2011-05-23T14:27:00.000+10:00

The final report has been released today.

The full report pdf is here:
http://www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/ee/schoollibraries/report/fullreport.pdf

Here are its recommendations:
List of recommendations

2 Impact of recent Commonwealth Government policies and investments on school libraries

Recommendation 1

The Committee recommends that the Commonwealth Government partner with all education authorities to fund the provision of a core set of online database resources, which are made available to all Australian schools.

Recommendation 2

The Committee recommends that the Commonwealth Government work with the states and territories to develop a discrete national policy statement that defines the importance of digital and information literacy
for learning in the 21st century, which can be used as a guide by teachers and principals.

3 Potential of school libraries and librarians to contribute to improved educational and community outcomes

Recommendation 3

The Committee recommends that the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority include statistical information about the breakdown of all specialist teachers, including teacher librarians, on the My School website.

Recommendation 4

The Committee recommends that the Commonwealth Government support additional initiatives to promote reading, such as a National Year of Reading. The Department of Education, Employment and Workplace
Relations should collaborate with the Australian School Library Association, Australian Libraries and Information Association and other education stakeholders in developing these initiatives.

Recommendation 5

The Committee recommends that the Commonwealth Government initiate an Australian-based longitudinal study into the links between library programs, literacy (including digital literacy) and student achievement, including their impact on improving outcomes for socioeconomically disadvantaged students.

Recommendation 6

The Committee recommends that the Commonwealth Government support promotional activities undertaken by ASLA and ALIA that demonstrate to the school community the valuable work that teacher librarians are doing in respect of e-learning in their schools, including those that highlight their leadership capacity.

4 Recruitment and development of teacher librarians

Recommendation 7

The Committee recommends that the rollout of the new national curriculum, which is to be made available online, include a component of training for teacher librarians.

Recommendation 8

The Committee recommends that the Commonwealth Government commission a thorough workforce gap analysis of teacher librarians across Australian schools.

Recommendation 9

The Committee recommends that the Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth, through the Ministerial Council for Education, Early Childhood Development and Youth Affairs, establish a national dialogue, including with tertiary providers, on the role of teacher librarians today in schools and into the future. The dialogue should include an examination of the adequacy of the pathways into the profession and ongoing training requirements.

xx

5 Partnering and supporting school libraries and teacher librarians

Recommendation 10

The Committee recommends that the Commonwealth Government, through the Ministerial Council for Education, Early Childhood and Youth Affairs, discuss ways to enhance partnerships with state and territory and local levels of government to support school libraries and teacher librarians.

Recommendation 11

The Committee recommends that the Commonwealth Government partner with ASLA and ALIA to produce a document that showcases some of the successful partnerships and programs between school
libraries and other libraries, and joint-use libraries. The document should be made available to government and non-government education authorities and school principals.

The whole report is 180 pages plus. Haven't yet had time today to read/digest, but certainly will.

Cheers

Ruth

GIFSL* 60: Cheap Bookmarks Week (Monday)

2011-05-23T06:42:00.010+10:00

We hand out a bookmark with every student loan at our library, for all sorts of reasons. Because kids like to know what page they're on. To make it easy for students to know what page they're on without bending book corners (to make it easy for them to do the right thing). As a freebie. As a promotional item promoting the library and our current theme. Because we can.

If you follow the tag for bookmarks on this blog, you'll find a bunch of the ones we've made using Publisher and coloured cardboard (click here or over on the tag cloud on the right on the word 'bookmarks').

With a limited budget (but a confetti-style approach to bookmarks) I'm always on the lookout for inexpensive and clever ways to create fun bookmarks. By and large, I don't go for laminated-precious, but ones we can hand out with generosity and enthusiasm: so they need to be inexpensive.

One thing we're about in the library is facts and information. So, get yourself one of these:

...which isn't a tricky find in an op shop/garage sale for a couple of dollars. Study the pages:

and realise that the column widths line up on either side of the page (in this edition: check if you have a different year's edition). A bit of guillotine work slicing along the space between the columns and you have hundreds of bookmarks for less than five dollars. Bargain! Fun facts and information which the kids enjoy (and which can be tied into a wider library promotional theme if you wish). The columns lining up means you can read front and back, and if a pic gets sliced, oh well - read the current entry in the current copy of the Guinness Book of Records, waiting for you at your school library!

Here's another facty-book find with equally good potential:

That one cost me a whole four dollars at an op shop. Thick and full of bookmark potential, hundreds more for very little money.

Tune in tomorrow for another cheap bookmark idea.

Cheers

Ruth

*GIFSL = Good Ideas For School Libraries

Why teach?

2011-05-22T21:32:00.001+10:00

...discovering the nuanced beauty of pedagogy...

Nice description of what teaching is about. It's from an article I referred to earlier this week.

http://mizzmurphy.blogspot.com/2011/05/settle-in-its-long-one.html

Cheers

Ruth

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

GIFSL* 59: Shhhhhhh! (in the senior study)

2011-05-20T06:26:00.003+10:00

Accustomed (and happy) as I am as a teacher librarian to engage with the idea of 'working noise' (let's be real about it, very few school libraries are hushed temples of learning at all times), the senior study area upstairs in our library is a different matter. There, seniors are expected to be doing silent, individual work; if they want to discuss work or work as a group, they must be elsewhere in the library so the senior study remains a haven of silence and academe. At least this is my goal (and appreciated by students seeking silence and academe). So while I wouldn't put this picture up in the main part of the library, it's handy-dandy and apt in the senior study.

Aren't I a clever pop-artist? Um no, I'm a clever shopper. It's from Ikea, measures a decent 50cm x 70cm, the item name is Solmyra and you can find it here for a mere $19.99:

http://www.ikea.com/au/en/catalog/products/00177923

Bargain. Looks good.

(the three other pictures you can see were from Ikea As-Is a couple of years ago at a mere five bucks each).

I'm tempted to buy two more of these Solmyra ones to reinforce the message (it's an ongoing work...!) and have them going down the wall as a nice repetition....

Cheers

Ruth

*GIFSL = Good Ideas For School Libraries . An ongoing series on this blog (and gee whiz, I'm up to #60???)

The happy life of teacher librarians: recorded

2011-05-19T16:20:00.000+10:00

We're preparing for a debate, miss, and we'd like your help.
Sure. What's your topic?
All we know are four general topics, and the one I am prepping for is politics.
So -
Excuse me, miss, before you start...
Yes?
(she produces an iPhone) Do you mind if I record you? That means I'll have all of it and we can check back on it later. If you don't mind?
No, um, OK.

Interesting how self-conscious I feel launching into my spiel - terminology, definitions, general sources, specific sources. Every now and then that sense of self-consciousness recurs. Speech is a different beastie to the written word. More sprawling, this kind of conversation certainly doesn't involve, as a formal speech might, neat tidy sentences. So she goes back to her table with a satisfactory bundle of sources and ideas, leaving me reflecting on a new experience. I'm not used to being recorded as I toddle about my daily work. More than that, I'm interested in how this is her choice of method for 'making notes', like the kids who'd rather see how to do something on YouTube than read about how to do it.

The happy life of teacher librarians: recorded. Well, today, and likely not for the last time.

Cheers

Ruth

Whose life is it anyway? - a transplant story

2011-05-19T06:13:00.001+10:00

I subscribe to several free weekly newsletters from the New York Times - health, books, movies. The health one this week included an article about one family's willingness to allow their loved one's death to become the opportunity for transplants for others. And on Monday this week I'd had a senior English class in looking for material on medical ethics/issues in relation to their study of the play Whose life is it anyway?. Serendipity? Dunno, but I've joined the dots and the teacher is very happy to have an additional resource.

The article includes a video of the (unusual) meeting between the donor's widow and the people who received transplanted organs, as well as an illustration/graphic about transplantation.

Permalink to the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/17/health/17organ.html

One to pass on to your English and PDHPE teachers?

Cheers

Ruth

Pecha Kucha: 20 web 2.0 tools in 20 slides

2011-05-18T12:20:00.000+10:00

Pip Cleaves from the DET presented this PechaKucha at the MANTLE teacher librarian conference in Newcastle last week. In the PechaKucha format of 20 slides, with 20 seconds for each, she covered a bunch of web 2.0 tools you might like to explore.

Mantle Conference 13th May, 2011

View more presentations from Pip Cleaves

Here's the link in case the above doesn't work for you:
http://www.slideshare.net/piphowell/mantle-conference-13th-may-2011-7938859

Cheers

Ruth

Isaac Asimov on libraries: a space ship & a gateway

2011-05-17T06:37:00.006+10:00

In 1971, an enterprising children's librarian in Troy, Michigan, wrote to dozens of important people to ask for a letter to the town's children, celebrating the opening of the new library.

Isaac Asimov was one of the 97 respondents. Isn't this great?

You can read more about the Letters to the Children of Troy here, a few on Flickr here and there are pdfs of all the letters here. Some names I know, like Edward Ardizzone and First Lady Pat Nixon, and others I don't, but it will be fun to take time to read them and see what they say about books and libraries and reading. And then see how I can use these ideas forty years later for the library here.

Cheers

Ruth

PS. This is the letter from Dr Seuss. Both letters are from the Flickr set linked above.

Found this via Twitter.

ANZAC Day display, 2011

2011-05-16T06:54:00.008+10:00

Our ANZAC Day display for 2011.

Flags acquired around Australia Day, when they're plentiful and inexpensive. Bunting is four sheets of coloured cardboard, cut into pennants and stapled to string. Photos using Hipstamatic (Kodot Grizzled/John S.)

On top of the bookcase is this picture of ANZAC Cove:

and two great quotes related to the day, the ode and Ataturk on how our sons are now theirs too.

The bookmarks we use feature these two quotes - I designed the bookmarks a few years ago (using Microsoft Publisher, they are printed eight to the page on brown/green cardboard) and they work nicely each year. It's good to put both those pieces of writing in the hands of our students each ANZAC Day.

The school, of course, has ANZAC Day remembrance assemblies for the students and staff. The library's display is in support of this. It's good policy and practice to work in with school/national events like this; sometimes libraries can be perceived as being islands/apart/disconnected. Better to be at the heart of things.

Lest we forget.

Ruth

Are teacher librarians teachers?

2011-05-15T18:45:00.002+10:00

Just retweeted this.

RT@walkyouhome: The disgraceful interrogation of L.A. school librarians latimes.com/news/local/la-… #savelibraries #austl #tlchat #APPALLING #yam
Twitter for iPhone • 15/05/11 6:31 PM

Go read that article, dear teacher librarian colleagues, and ponder having to be in their shoes.

Alternate link to same article:
http://t.co/S73bqhq

Here's an extract from it:
A court reporter takes down testimony. A judge grants or denies objections from attorneys. Armed police officers hover nearby. On the witness stand, one librarian at a time is summoned to explain why she — the vast majority are women — should be allowed to keep her job.

The librarians are guilty of nothing except earning salaries the district feels the need to cut. But as they're cross-examined by determined LAUSD attorneys, they're continually put on the defensive.

"When was the last time you taught a course for which your librarian credential was not required?" an LAUSD attorney asked Laura Graff, the librarian at Sun Valley High School, at a court session on Monday.

"I'm not sure what you're asking," Graff said. "I teach all subjects, all day. In the library."

"Do you take attendance?" the attorney insisted. "Do you issue grades?"

I've seen a lot of strange things in two decades as a reporter, but nothing quite as disgraceful and weird as this inquisition the LAUSD is inflicting upon more than 80 school librarians.

And here's a teacher librarian's account of those proceedings:
http://mizzmurphy.blogspot.com/2011/05/settle-in-its-long-one.html

Cheers (for those brave souls). I'm appalled for what this may mean for the kids in that education system.

Ruth

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Trove: researching Australia

2011-05-12T06:43:00.001+10:00

Have you discovered Trove yet?

It's a project from the National Library of Australia.

Trove is a new discovery experience focused on Australia and Australians. It supplements what search engines provide. If you are researching in the fields of the social sciences, literature, local or family history, or need inspiration for your school assignment, then this is the tool for you.

For example if researching images relating to Edmund Barton, our first Prime Minister, results will include descriptions such as people, book, manuscript, map and newspaper articles. A researcher searching for information on Nellie Melba will be presented with a range of results including biographies, pictures, music, newspapers, books etc.

Find out more on the Trove Australia site here. You can follow them on Twitter: @TroveAustralia

One to pass on to your history teachers and others doing work involving Australian history (like maybe that science assignment that focuses on Australian scientists?)

Cheers

Ruth

The happy life of teacher librarians: OMG is this 1995???

2011-05-11T10:07:00.000+10:00

(Two girls with a camera walk into the library and up to my office door)

Hey miss, do you mind if we take some photos?
No, of course not. What are you looking for?
It's for art, we're doing stuff with lines so we thought we'd take photos of books and spines.
Great idea! Take them in different areas - the fiction book spines are different to the mixed sizes of nonfiction, and don't forget the graphic novels either.
Thanks miss. (They head off).

(Some minutes later, they're walking down the steps from fiction.)

Hey, those steps could be a good lines photo too.
We can't, miss
Oh?
We ran out of film...

(And we all laughed like loons over suddenly being in 1995, and not 2011 where one just EXPECTS that you can take, like, a gazillion photos on a digital camera, and hadn't had the 'run out of film' experience for years...)

The happy life of teacher librarians: OMG is this 1995??? The good new days and the good old days sometimes collide; and there's always something amusing in each working day. Love a library with laughter in it.

Cheers

Ruth

Free Comic Book Day + Supanova

2011-05-11T06:55:00.003+10:00

And yes, the sharp-eyed amongst you will have noticed that this was last weekend. But my comic book fiends at school only told me about it on Monday... So I thought I'd let you know about it now, and I'll mention it on this blog before the 2012 event.

Find out all about it on the Free Comic Book Day website here. It happens across North America and around the world.

My comic book fiends went to King's Comics and Kinokuniya in Sydney. The site has a FAQ page and a store locator so your comic book fiends can find out about any local stores that are participating and toddle along to acquire freebies.

Said one, "Miss, you should go to Supanova this year."

Supanova?

Supanova Pop Culture Expo is where the adoring public comes face to face with Supa-Star celebrities and the creative talent that inspire their imaginary worlds under one big roof.

Gathered from the wonderful worlds of science-fiction, pulp TV/movies, toys, console gaming, trading cards, animation/cartoons, fantasy, comic books, entertainment technology, books, internet sites and fan-clubs, the result is an amazing celebration in an atmosphere tailor made for expessing your inner geek and where getting into cosplay (cos-tume role-play) is the obvious thing to do!

Cheers

Ruth (who thinks she is flattered to have been perceived as having an inner geek).

How do I write a resume, miss?

2011-05-10T06:46:00.002+10:00

From Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license

She couldn't find the Careers Adviser, so I was her next port of call. "How do I write a resume, miss? I have one, but I don't think it's very good, and I want a better part-time job."

OK. Some quick searching later, and we landed on the Youth Central site from the Victorian government and hit paydirt:

An outline of what to include in a resume
A list of sample resumes covering various situations (eg. some work experience/none, finished school/not)
And here's the sample she's working with - not finished school but some work experience.

The samples can be downloaded as pdfs or as Word files.

She went away happy. I've bunged it on here so it can be useful for others. It's all good.

This site looked useful too: http://www.how-to-write-a-resume.org/

Cheers

Ruth

Earth Clock

2011-05-09T06:49:00.002+10:00

Found this here:
http://www.poodwaddle.com/clocks/earthclock/

There are a bunch more free embeddable clocks and applets on the site. Useful for Science, Social Science, Geography etc.

Cheers

Ruth

The secret life of libraries

2011-05-08T06:04:00.008+10:00

(The Mitchell Library in Sydney:: photo used under Creative Commons license)

From various sources on my Twitter stream, I have been following the stories about library closures in the UK. The Guardian has a thoughtful, thought-provoking and sometimes rather amusing article about the secret life of libraries; it's by Bella Bathurst. They have always had a dusty image – and never more so than now – but libraries are at the heart of our communities. With the axe about to fall, Bella Bathurst reveals just what we're about to lose.

Some more quotes:

Discussing the types of books stolen in various parts of the country, she observes: among all communities and in all parts of Britain, our old passion for self-improvement remains vivid.
...
But the cuts also underscore a deeper confusion about what libraries are: what they do, who they serve, and – in an age where the notion of books itself seems mortally flawed – why we still need them. What's the point of buildings filled with print? Isn't all our wisdom electronic now? Shouldn't libraries die at their appointed time, like workhouses and temperance halls?
...
The great untold truth of libraries is that people need them not because they're about study and solitude, but because they're about connection.
...

(Seattle Public Library::photo used under Creative Commons license)

...reading seems to be becoming an increasingly alien concept for children. "The pace of life is different now, and people expect art to happen to them. Music and film do that, a CD will do that, but you have to make a book happen to you. It's between you and it. People can be changed by books, and that's scary. When I was working in the school library, I'd sometimes put a book in a kid's hands and I'd feel excited for them, because I knew that it might be the book that changed their life. And once in a while, you'd see that happen, you'd see a kind of light come on behind their eyes. Even if it's something like 0.4% of the population that that ever happens to, it's got to be worth it, hasn't it?"

The article concludes thus:
The libraries' most powerful asset is the conversation they provide – between books and readers, between children and parents, between individuals and the collective world. Take them away and those voices turn inwards or vanish. Turns out that libraries have nothing at all to do with silence.

It's a terrific article, very much worth reading in its entirety. I want to think some more about its ideas, such as connection, and conversation, and art happening, the sort of engagement involved in the act of reading. This week, as every week, I will have the joy and pleasure and sheer bloody fun of putting a book in the hands of a kid and watching their eyes light up, or (they are teenagers after all) their body language just relax that small bit that is (in reality) a decibels-loud acknowledgement that the book and the transaction and the library were good things for them. And so many of them have fabulous smiles, don't they?

Cheers

Ruth

10 ways libraries matter in the digital age

2011-05-06T06:35:00.001+10:00

From Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Greg Landgraf has a short, sweet, to the point and pointed blog entry about 10 ways libraries matter in the digital age. Here are his main points:

Libraries serve the disenfranchised.
Libraries are a gathering place.
Libraries are a first step to literacy.
Libraries are there for all ages.
Libraries help people use the internet.
… And libraries help people use the internet better.
Libraries are interested in your privacy.
Libraries are hubs for preserving the past.
Libraries are there in a crisis.
Libraries offer the human touch.

Read the whole article here on the American Libraries site. I find lists like this useful to reflect on what my school library does, what my work is, what both are and could and should be.

Cheers

Ruth

100 years' footage in 100 seconds

2011-05-05T06:50:00.001+10:00

From Getty Images:

Here's the YouTube link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxqG2etM63Y

Short, sharp, and one to share - English teachers, History teachers....

Cheers

Ruth

Bloom's Taxonomy

2011-05-04T06:07:00.009+10:00

If you've been kicking around the education game for any time at all, Bloom's Taxonomy would have grazed your consciousness.

Knowledge
Comprehension
Application
Analysis
Synthesis
Evaluation

At my regular fortnightly meeting this week with my Year 12 student mentor group - half a dozen fabulous kids! - I used this to get them thinking about how they learn, not just the ever-demanding what they learn. We went round the table, with each nominating one subject and the level at which they thought they were currently operating in that subject. From thinking about themselves, and considering the answers of their colleagues, it gave them food for thought.

I used the version I found here. (There are a whole bunch of great links and content on that site about study skills). It includes very handy lists of verbs associated with each level in the taxonomy; verbs that the students could link to the wording/requirements of questions/assignments etc.

For senior students, there is real value in encouraging them to take that step back to consider how they learn, and thus how they might develop/improve, and Bloom's Taxonomy is but one tool that helps this process.

Cheers

Ruth

PS I know the picture (taken using Hipstamatic!) is a pretty bad pun - but at least it's pretty!

President Obama's speech on the death of Osama Bin Laden

2011-05-03T06:58:00.005+10:00

It's likely to become a Famous Speech; it's a carefully-structured piece of rhetoric worth considering in the English classroom (I'm thinking of how Earl Spencer's speech at his sister Diana's funeral was part of an English HSC paper a few years ago). News reports say that Obama wrote it himself.

The above YouTube link from the whitehouse channel:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNYmK19-d0U

A transcript of the speech can be found here.

Another one to share with your English teachers.

Added later: I had been talking with our English teachers about this, and one came back to me today (4 May) with this article by Pamela Gerloff of the Huffington Post: The Psychology of Revenge: Why We Should Stop Celebrating Osama Bin Laden's Death. Said it generated excellent discussion in her classroom.

Further information/opinion is from respected human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC, on the ABC website: Bin Laden's killing 'a perversion of justice'.

Cheers

Ruth

The happy life of teacher librarians: solving problems

2011-05-02T14:30:00.001+10:00

Miss, is onomatopoeia a word?
Yes, it sure is.
Really?
Yup. It means words that sound like what they mean, like BANG!
oooooooh (strong resemblance to the little green chappies in Toy Story)

Miss, could you settle an argument for us?
O-kay.....
Who would be a better Fuhrer, him or me?
Define Fuhrer for me - leader in general, or replacement for Hitler?
Miss, you've changed the question.
Yes. Define 'better'...

The happy life of teacher librarians. Solving problems of all sorts.

Cheers

Ruth

12 life lessons you can learn from Jane Austen

2011-05-02T11:04:00.000+10:00

How much fun is this???!!!

Find the whole slideshow here. It's from Bill Deresiewicz at the Huffington Post. Share it with your English teachers!

Cheers

Ruth

Holidays.... and learners inheriting the earth

2011-04-09T13:00:00.000+10:00

Well, you can tell the last week of term went by in a gallop! Not a peep from this direction - too busy with everything else!

Also, I do love the tentacle in the last blog entry. So very much.

A bonbon to leave with you to tide you over till the holidays end.

Will Richardson at TEDxNY in March 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ni75vIE4vdk

A screenshot of my favourite slide from his presentation: a quote I was using years ago, and which still (despite all that has changed) applies.

If you're on holidays too, enjoy. If not, we will for you. Ain't that kind?!

Cheers

Ruth

NSW public schools resume on the Wednesday after Easter for teachers, and the Thursday for students.

A beginner's guide to steampunk (+ a tentacle)

2011-04-04T06:14:00.004+10:00

Abebooks.com, a large online second-hand bookselling site, has a useful beginner's guide to steampunk literature.

I recognised some of the titles highlighted on the page, and found others to follow up, for the school library and for me. (The image above is a screenshot - click on this link to go to the page and see it in readable detail).

The Wikipedia article on Steampunk is another place to start - not only the content, but also the links. One of the footnotes, for example, takes you to this article from How Stuff Works, canvassing the genre and steampunk art/craft works/creations.

Searching the handmade craft site (beautiful beautiful things!) Etsy.com with the keyword 'steampunk' yields over 70,000 pieces of jewellery, clothing and more reflecting the steampunk aesthetic (as this screenshot demonstrates - what you see will vary constantly as items are sold and new items listed).

Cheers

Ruth

PS. If you narrow your Etsy search on steampunk to the most expensive items in the 'geekery - weird' category, you get some corkers.

I think the wall tentacle is my favourite. Wouldn't that be a talking point in a school library??? (hmmm, would need to be on a high wall so it didn't put a student's eye out...!!)

Habits and senior students

2011-03-30T06:22:00.004+11:00

I've been part of a team presenting a study skills program to Year 11 students this term, aiming to bed them down effectively with the tools they need to handle the demands and requirements of senior studies effectively.

Image source

The habits they have, and the habits they need are not always the same thing. And change is never easy.

Came across this blog entry about habits and how to change them - and why it is so hard; which will be worth sharing through study skills and with my Year 12 mentor students.

The summary is this:

1. Most of our day-to-day actions are ruled by habit, custom, and environment.

2. Reflective thinking/planning goes a long way towards finding new things to do, but it’s still very easy to default to habits, custom, and environment.

3. The process of changing habits and customs takes a while. I call it “scratching and clawing forwards” – that’s what it feels like sometimes.

4. Set small, achievable goals on habit/custom change. I recommend aiming for 70% success rates, and making consistent incremental progress.

5. The biggest bang for your buck in the short term is moving your environment around. This can be big stuff like finding a new place to hang out after work, or little stuff like setting your gym clothes by your shower the night before. It works.

Cheers

Ruth

Found indirectly via Twitter

Image is Creative Commons licensed, from Flickr.

Creating effective surveys

2011-03-29T06:09:00.000+11:00

I've just been compiling/creating the evaluation survey for the senior study skills program for Year 11 in which I've been involved through this term.

SurveyMonkey (mentioned previously on this blog) is what I've been using; the school has subscribed to this so we can create more detailed surveys than the free option allows (note that there is a free option, though!).

Toddling around the FAQ, I discovered that there is a fabulous freebie there, an information booklet pdf, Smart Survey Design.

Here's what that text says under the title:

This guide provides information on writing successful and effective survey questions, creating survey flow and layout, calculating response rates, tips for increasing response rates, and the pros and cons of online surveys. (Plus an appendix of links and works cited for additional help in survey design.)

And doesn't that sound handy-dandy for all those students in subjects like Society and Culture who create surveys as part of the process involved in their PIPs (personal interest projects) etc?

I've filled out some doozies for those (teacher librarians being notoriously easy to find at break times/study periods, so they can be asked to fill in surveys). My fave are the ones that divide the world into ages in this kind of style:

12-13
14-15
16-17
18-23
over 23

(because over 23 is, of course, OLD! Sometimes they might go, 24-30, 40-60... Bless!)

I'll be popping this link on over to the Society and Culture teachers, and any others with subjects where the kids have to compile surveys.

Cheers

Ruth

Writing activities aplenty!

2011-03-28T06:42:00.000+11:00

Digging around for some material on behalf of one of our English teachers, I came across Linley Stace's blog - in particular, her excellent collection of blog entries on writing activities. She lives in Australia and this is how she describes her blog:

This is a blog about writing and reading, with an emphasis on New Zealand and Australian fiction. I am especially interested in short fiction, approaching stories from a writing point of view rather than a strictly literary one. Also a place for my random opinions on movies, books and stuff.

One worth sharing with your English teacher colleagues (the one I was helping was very excited!).

I've also been following @AdviceToWriters on Twitter; check out the website with often concise, pointed and from-real-writers advice here: http://www.advicetowriters.com/.

Cheers

Ruth

GIFSL* 58: Enchantment and your school library

2011-03-25T06:33:00.011+11:00

@brainpicker on Twitter, and the associated blog Brain Pickings, provide a constant supply of inspiration and ideas on a huge range of topics. Not narrowcast "teacher librarian-focused stuff", but all sorts of things from left field and out there and what about?, and hey, here's something to think about. I love foraging among the wider world to bring back good things to inform my teaching (eg. this blog! - see the intro reference to a flypaper mind).

Take this infographic from a recently published business book, Enchantment: the art of changing hearts, minds and actions, by Guy Kawasaki. Not something I've tripped over in education circles, but a great lens to use in thinking about our business as teacher librarians, promoting our libraries and their services.

Read the whole blog entry on Brain Pickings here, including links to an enchantment aptitude test, an interview with the author, and more.

As school library staffing is being challenged, our work as teacher librarians evaluated, the ill-informed happy to spout that 'it's all on the internet now' and so forth, this infographic is, to me, valuable professional reflection for considering what I do and why and how, and how I can do it better.

Cheers

Ruth

*GIFSL: good ideas for school libraries

Rick Riordan's new book: sneak peek chapter

2011-03-24T06:21:00.001+11:00

If your Rick Riordan fans who loved Percy Jackson have kept going with the Kane Chronicles (Red Pyramid is out, Throne of Fire is out soon) they may like to get hold of sneak peek of Throne of Fire via Amazon. At time of writing (these things change, so don't get cranky if the freebie is gone!) you can preorder a Kindle e-book edition of "The Throne of Fire Chapter Sneak Peek" for $0 (not $18.99) and it will be delivered on May 3, 2011.

You don't need a Kindle e-reader to read it, you can read Kindle-formatted books via iPhone app, on your PC/Mac etc - the page has links to these.

Here's the link!

Great chance to offer your students a freebie by a popular YA author.

Cheers

Ruth

Image source: Amazon, as per link above.

Display of banned books

2011-03-23T06:01:00.013+11:00

Searching through Flickr for something else, I came across this image of a display of banned books.

Toddle on over to the image source to see it in larger sizes, and check out what's been included. (It has a Creative Commons license).

Click here to see more of this school librarian's displays.

Click here for my recent GIFSL about displays of banned books.

Cheers

Ruth

Fiction reviews, straight to your inbox

2011-03-22T06:51:00.004+11:00

The very excellent Fiction Focus blog from CMIS in WA has an email subscription option so you can find out about new fiction reviews. Find out about all their sub options, and sign up by clicking here.

One to share with your English teachers?

Cheers

Ruth

A free sci-fi e-story (still!): Boojum

2011-03-21T11:58:00.000+11:00

So this morning I had a conversation with an English teacher who wanted to plug his senior English class into the many science fiction options in our fiction section...

And I remembered as well this blog entry from two years ago:

A while ago I read the anthology of pirate stories, Fast Ships, Black Sails, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer: they've edited a number of anthologies in the fantasy/steampunk genres, generally pitched at an adult audience (which isn't to say the stories aren't good for kids, but is to say that the anthologies aren't constructed to eliminate that which might not be considered by some suitable for an adolescent audience).

My favourite story in this anthology, without a doubt, was Boojum by Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear. Black Alice is a space pirate, not a wet pirate, on a ship that is a creature (a boojum); it's a clever clever tale with a twist. It was one I lent to senior Extension English students to look at as an idea of how a longer short piece of writing might be constructed (since a number of them were writing prose fiction for their major works).

And tootling around on Google in the hols, I discovered that of all the pirate stories in all the world, this one is available online (as described in this blog entry) as an e-story pdf, Hurrah! Click here to read BOOJUM!

It has a couple of bits of contextual coarse language in it, so if that's a concern for you read it first before sharing with kids (read it anyway, just because it's good). It's high school level in its ideas, rather than primary school. But if you're looking for an e-example of a story to share, try this.

Knowing I'd blogged about it here on Skerricks, I went back to the entry and you know what? The link still works! So if you didn't read/use it then, or had forgotten about it, here's a reminder of a spiffing story. You can save a copy of the pdf, too...

Cheers

Ruth

Image source: the story's pdf.

New US Dietary Guidelines

2011-03-18T06:15:00.026+11:00

A simple map to the land of wholesome, by Jane Brody in the New York Times, discusses the new US Dietary Guidelines.

The article begins:

For the first time since it began issuing dietary guidelines, the government offered new recommendations last month that clearly favor the health and well-being of consumers over hard-lobbying farm interests.

The new science-based Dietary Guidelines for Americans, released Jan. 31 by the Departments of Agriculture and of Health and Human Services, are comprehensive, sensible, attainable and, for most people, affordable. They offer a wide variety of dietary options to help you eat better for fewer calories without undue sacrifice of dining pleasure.

Now it’s up to consumers to act on this advice and put the brakes on runaway obesity and the chronic diseases that cost billions of dollars before they kill.

The article continues:

Here is a summary of the guidelines, which combine the goals of fewer calories — and especially nutrient-poor calories from sugars, fats and refined grains — with more emphasis on nutrient-dense foods:

Eat lots more vegetables and fruits, filling half your plate with them.
Choose lean meats and poultry, and replace some of them with seafood.
Consume mainly nonfat or low-fat milk and other dairy products.
Choose low-sodium products and use less salt and salty ingredients in food preparation.
Eat more fiber-rich foods; replace most refined grains and grain-based foods with whole-grain versions.
Use vegetable oils like olive and canola oil instead of solid fats like butter and margarine, but remember that all fats have lots of calories.
Eat out less; cook at home more often.
Drink water, calorie-free beverages like coffee and tea, and 100 percent fruit juice instead of regular sodas, fruit drinks and energy drinks; limit alcoholic drinks to one a day for women, two for men.
Eat less and exercise more to achieve a better balance of caloric intake and output.

Find the full pdf of the new Dietary Guidelines for Americans by clicking here. Want to compare with the local version? Find the pdf of the Dietary Guidelines for Australians by clicking here. A blog entry to share with your Home Economics, PDHPE and science teachers; not just for the basic content, but for the implications about the influence of vested interests on public health initiatives.

Cheers

Ruth

Images: my own, using the Hipstamatic iPhone app (see my blog entry about this for more information) and a few moments at a local supermarket. From memory, John S. lens and Kodot film.

Elizabeth Bennet's email inbox

2011-03-17T06:56:00.000+11:00

You didn't know she had email?

Think again!

Apart from the fact that it's highly amusing, it's also got fabulous potential as an English exercise.

Find it here, and the site has more famous inboxes from literature (Dickens, Harry Potter, etc) and elsewhere.

Found via Twitter.

Cheers

Ruth

Library website design

2011-03-16T06:07:00.000+11:00

Browsing around various library blogs (as you do), I noticed on the Librarian in Black this image of the updated website for the San Jose Public Library.

http://www.sjpl.org/

I'm mulling over ways to have a library website that's accessible to the kids (we don't yet have Student Sharepoint active, many online wiki sites are blocked and we don't yet have a DET wiki option, Moodle is a possibility...).

This provides an interesting idea of how to format/divide/categorise such a site. It's easy to think, well, that would be useful to have, but the steps before that, the structure/organisation that will be durable and workable and effective - that takes more thinking out.

So, I'm thinking. And this was handy. Have you got any library sites you'd like to share in the comments, that you think are durable/workable/effective?

Cheers

Ruth

Should we organise books by colour?

2011-03-15T05:59:00.005+11:00

This is such fun...

...although perhaps it might not work for a library.

Original YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFnuP9niRUg&feature=player_embedded

Found via http://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/

Cheers

Ruth

Extreme weather events of 2010: slideshow

2011-03-14T06:05:00.000+11:00

It's always worth mining a site that has tossed up one useful thing as it's likely to have others. Along with the infographics I told you about a while ago, Good.is has slideshows, such as this one with excellent images and content on extreme weather events of 2010 - snow! drought! volcanoes! - and more.

Another one to share with your Science, Geography and Earth and Environment teachers. You could also suggest that students could do their own versions, sourcing their own images and content in this 12-slide format.

Cheers

Ruth

Image source is Flickr: Volcanic Eruption Eyjafjallajökull. Click on the image to go to the photographer's photostream. Creative Commons licensed.

A Glog of school library links

2011-03-11T06:53:00.000+11:00

Now and then I take a squizz at the blog stats, and look at the ways people find Skerricks - via Google, or Google Reader, or Twitter, or Bing, or Unknown...

And a little while ago I came across this source:

Which gives you a whole bunch of useful school library links. Thanks for including my name (and thus Skerricks!). If the above doesn't work for some reason, here is the original link:
http://edu.glogster.com/glog.php?glog_id=14697435&scale=100

Cheers

Ruth

Auschwitz museum revises its exhibits

2011-03-10T06:04:00.027+11:00

One for your history teachers discussing how presentations of history can change. The museum at Auschwitz is changing the exhibits, which were originally devised by former camp inmates. Read about the changes, and the why, in this article from the New York Times: Auschwitz shifts from memorializing to teaching, by Michael Kimmleman.

The article begins:

OSWIECIM, Poland — For nearly 60 years, Auschwitz has told its own story, shaped in the aftermath of the Second World War. It now unfolds, unadorned and mostly unexplained, in displays of hair, shoes and other remains of the dead. Past the notorious, mocking gateway, into the brick ranks of the former barracks of the Polish army camp that the Nazis seized and converted into prisons and death chambers, visitors bear witness via this exhibition.

Now those in charge of passing along the legacy of this camp insist that Auschwitz needs an update. Its story needs to be retold, in a different way for a different age.

Partly the change has to do with the simple passage of time, refurbishing an aging display. Partly it’s about the pressures of tourism, and partly about the changing of generations. What is the most visited site and the biggest cemetery in Poland for Jews and non-Jews alike, needs to explain itself better, officials here contend.

I've never been to Auschwitz, so to illustrate this blog entry I went to Flickr and searched for Creative Commons licensed images to use; which is what all the ones here are (click on any image to go to its Flickr location/photographer's photostream, where you will find larger versions; I used the Small size for them here). There is also a Flickr group for Auschwitz photos. Another idea to suggest to your history teachers, when they are seeking images to illustrate particular historical topics: chances are for many many historical sites, ancient or modern, someone's been there, photographed them and uploaded their images to Flickr. The images here are the gateway (Work makes you free), the shoes of inmates, the gas chamber and the monument at the site.

Two ideas in one blog entry! Double value today!

Cheers

Ruth

Margaret Atwood on the future of publishing

2011-03-09T06:12:00.019+11:00

At the recent Tools of Change conference, author Margaret Atwood spoke on The Publishing Pie: an Author's View. Agree? Disagree? Make up your own mind; you can watch her presentation on YouTube.

Here is the original link on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6iMBf6Ddjk

More of the conference proceedings, some with slideshows/video: click here.

Cheers

Ruth

Found via this blog, which consistently covers a whole lot of interesting links about ereaders, digital books and the future of publishing and books.

International Women's Day 2011

2011-03-08T15:59:00.000+11:00

We put up the banners and signs - it's great to have resources from previous years. Check out the entries here to see what they are!

Cheers

Ruth (who wore green today)

What is the view from the top of the Eiffel Tower?

2011-03-07T06:07:00.003+11:00

Fancy you asking that. I have the answer right here.

and if you toddle on over to the Arounder site by clicking here, you can take a 360 degree tour of the view. One to share with your languages teachers?

The Arounder site has 360 degree tours of art museums, world cities and more. Here's a glimpse of the Asia/Pacific/elsewhere selection:

If you'd like to take a squizz at the hometown of this blog, Sydney, there are twenty options, not only the (expected) Sydney Opera House.

If you want something more astronomical, how about Mars or the Moon?

So one for LOTE teachers, art teachers, geography teachers, science teachers and more. Share it!

Cheers

Ruth

Found via Twitter. @brainpicker consistently comes up with a whole bunch of great links. Definitely worth following.

Bookstore organisation, or dear old Dewey? or both?

2011-03-04T06:27:00.025+11:00

A couple of years ago, when I attended a day for teacher librarians when visual merchandiser Kevin Hennah was talking about his ideas for libraries, one of the ideas he put forward was about organising a library based on bookshop principles rather than Dewey. From memory, one example he put forward was a public library in New Zealand, where there were about ten major sections that aimed to connect readers and books more quickly and efficiently, by reflecting reader interests and associations rather than the library default of Dewey. One of those was a travel/places section, which included travel books (900s) and foreign languages books (400s) shelved side by side.

It would be a big big change to do, and in the context of being a NSW DET school library with all the support structures and organisation in place as part of a large education system, it's not something I'd jump into without a deal of thought.

But it's interesting to think about, to consider how else we could organise a library to make it work for our customers. There are advantages and disadvantages - as when cataloguing a book/resource, you can use several subject headings for the catalogue to help readers find it, but in the end the one physical resource has to get one shelf location (in our current system, one Dewey number); a decision has to be made on the main topic of the book, and thus its final shelf location.

Here's an article about libraries who have changed from Dewey to using bookshop merchandising style organisation. Food for thought.

One thing I wouldn't do (and have been asked for occasionally over my career) is grouping books by faculty/subject 'because it would be easier'. Sounds simple, but then it ignores the fact that the 'science' books may also be 'geography' books (eg. volcanoes/natural disasters). When I politely point this out, the teacher who is suggesting this usually looks thoughtful, and recollects an engagement elsewhere....

There are, though, plenty of ideas from bookshop merchandising that we can borrow for school libraries. Which of the shelves below would you explore for longer? These...

or these?

We don't have enough space to put all our books face out; this is one of three bookcases like this, and not all will have everything face out. But it's better presentation to encourage reading than the first, isn't it?

Cheers

Ruth

Article found via Twitter.
Photographs of shelving from my library's browsing area on the mezzanine: first photo with iPhone camera, second with Hipstamatic iPhone app.

Why students should be blogging

2011-03-03T06:00:00.000+11:00

Blogging has the potential to reach and influence many. Furthermore, it has greater potential for being a life-long skill. And isn’t that our goal in education? People from all walks and professions blog for the purpose of teaching, creating, and informing. And in the masters courses I’ve taken, so far, I haven’t written a paper, but both have required blogs. Why? Because blogging is the new persuasive essay.

If we’re trying to prepare our students to think critically and argue well, they need to be able to blog. It allows for interaction. It allows for ideas to be tested. And the best posts tend to have a point that can be argued.

I think blogging across the curriculum, not just in Language Arts, allows for both formative and summative assessment. Blogs allow us to see the progression in the development of both thinking and writing. It may actually take more talent to create an interesting, persuasive post on the French Revolution, than a traditional essay.

Shelley Wright, in her blog Wright's Room, arguing that Blogging is the New Persuasive Essay.

When the DET in NSW released its blogging platform BlogEd last year, I took the time to play and learn and then to do a presentation at a staff meeting. I'm not sure that many of my colleagues took up blogging with their classes, and for many, it was probably because they saw it as another extra looking for space and time in an already full teaching program.

The angle of this blog entry is one that could help some of them review their approach, and hopefully integrate blogging into that already full teaching program as an alternative teaching strategy rather than an extra. I would guess that this is a common problem with new ideas/sites/platforms/programs/technology; unless a teacher tries it, or until a teacher sees its value in their classroom, it will likely be seen as an extra, with lower priority than the sheer busy dailiness of the classroom and its demands. It's an ongoing challenge to create the bridges/find ways to change this perspective.

One of the roles of the teacher librarian is to be a learner and teacher in relation to new technologies, and I am regularly consulted on technology matters by colleagues. One important aspect is being a user-friendly resource - I sometimes get the questions people are concerned may seem 'stupid'; they know I'll answer without judgement and will help. Me, I'm well aware that I am as much if not more a learner, so that's part of what drives my user-friendly, non-judgemental approach. I'll add this article to the staff blog I write for my colleagues (another avenue to share information and ideas).

Cheers

Ruth

What is a good book? Nancy Pearl's answer

2011-03-01T06:31:00.007+11:00

Nancy Pearl, yup, the one that's the model for the librarian action doll, was recently named Librarian of the Year. In Library Journal's article about this, Nancy discusses her idea of 'a good book'. I've highlighted a couple of bits that particularly caught my attention.

What is a “good book”?

As part of the author tour for her newest book, Book Lust To Go: Recommended Reading for Travelers, Vagabonds, and Dreamers (Sasquatch Bks.; LJ Xpress Reviews, 10/8/10), Pearl went to Westport, CT, to “talk about good books” to librarians and library patrons. “By good,” she says, “I don’t mean any literary canon, but just books that you might enjoy. A good book is a book someone likes and a bad book is one they don’t like. When someone doesn’t like a book, it doesn’t mean they will never like it. They don’t like it for that moment,” says Pearl.

“We shouldn’t be afraid to suggest a wide variety of books to people. I think libraries are the last democratic institution, small ‘d’ democratic. It wasn’t always that way. Librarians were gatekeepers.... When it comes to readers’ advisory, though, I think we need to validate a patron’s reading,” Pearl says.

“When people ask, ‘What should I read next?’ we should always try to give them three books. One should be pretty close to the one they loved. The second should be a little bit different, a bit of a stretch. The third book is the real stretch book, the reach book. The book they never would have found because it is nonfiction and they only look at Westerns,” Pearl says.

“People come into the library and head straight to the section where they have found the most pleasure.... It is our job to take them around to the rest,” she continues.

“I do believe that the more well-written books you read, the less tolerance you are going to have for bad writing, but the hardest thing to define is a well-written book. When someone tells you they liked a book because ‘I love well-written books,’ they usually mean books like award winners, for instance the Pulitzers. Those books win awards for the writing. You don’t have to understand what somebody means by ‘well-written,’ but you have to go beyond the awards we all know and see which books won the Governor General’s Award in Canada, or [Britain’s] Man Booker Prize. No one who reads for the story will say, ‘I like well-written books.’ They will talk about page-turners, books you stay up too late to finish,” Pearl concludes.

Lots of food for thought there. I'm going to try that three book idea... I think I've been more likely, when kids ask, to find three similar rather than that three book progression. Not always, but often enough that I should be trying to extend myself, as well as my readers. Always good to get a new perspective! Read the complete article here.

Cheers

Ruth

PS.

A few more thought-provoking quotes from the article:

...she is a passionate and diligent advocate for old and important library ideas: literacy, reading, entertainment, enjoyment.... She is neither snobbish about the old ways nor disdainful of new ideas. Ask her about audio or ebooks or gaming, and you’ll get an earful about the importance of stories told in their myriad forms,” says Janes.
*
says Pearl. “My fear is that we don’t recognize or will forget that library service is like a three-legged stool: information, outreach and programming, and reading.”
*
The book will never disappear as a piece of narrative fiction or nonfiction, according to Pearl, but it is obvious that the format, the way it is delivered, is changing. She knows people will always need escape, stories, and ways to look at the world through the experiences of others.

“I think the more you read, the better person you become, because you can see how other people respond, the way they think, and the way they behave in various circumstances,” Pearl asserts.
*
“When you read a book, it is just you and the author. Even when people read the same title, everybody reads a different book.... When you listen to a book, a third person enters the equation,” Pearl says. “It is a different experience.”

Need to Want: brilliant flashcards

2011-02-28T06:45:00.002+11:00

One of my most consistently useful Twitter contacts is @brainpicker. I'm often bookmarking links from those tweets. The associated blog, Brain Pickings, is also worth delving through for gems, ideas, inspiration. For example, this entry on Erin Hanson's Need to Want series.

I enjoyed Brain Pickings' analysis of these.

The ones I've chosen for here are the ones that most caught my attention as being of use for the study skills program I'm doing for Year 11 this term.

It's not what the kids will expect: always a good way to grab their attention and get them learning in spite of themselves. I suspect this next one won't be the most popular with them, though.

Find the whole set here (source of these images), and the philosophy informing it:

And can buy prints of these from the artist at her online shop here. (if you can't see the one you want, convo her (that's Etsyspeak for contact via Etsy email)).

Cheers
Ruth

Free images for education

2011-02-25T06:28:00.002+11:00

If there is a better list of images for educational use (that are free) than the one assembled and blogged on Edubeacon, let me know. But I suspect not. Don't forget to share this one with your teaching colleagues.

Cheers

Ruth

GIFSL* 57: Display banned books

2011-02-24T06:18:00.003+11:00

Another infographic from Good.is, this time on the most controversial books in the US.

Interactive mage link. Article/info link.

If you want a longer list, try the ALA site section about banned/challenged books.

One creative Australian teacher librarian of my acquaintance set up a display of banned books in her school library - To Kill a Mockingbird etc - items readily available in her library but which had been subject to censorship/challenge historically/currently. They were borrowed with great alacrity, and all sorts of interesting discussions ensued, in her student reading circle and beyond. I haven't tried this one yet, but it's on my list... Maybe a co-operative venture with the English staff?

Cheers

Ruth

App of the Week: Hipstamatic

2011-02-22T06:00:00.048+11:00

(oops, I missed a couple of weeks for apps. But this one's brilliant!)

Shortly after acquiring an iPhone, I was told in no uncertain terms that I MUST buy Hipstamatic. Essential. Brilliant. A mere $2.49AU for the basic app (you can add Hipstapaks for around $1.99 each).

What does it do?

It adds another camera option to your iPhone or iPod Touch. You get a variety of lenses (I use John S the most) and films (my faves at present are Kodot and Float). Choose a lens and a film (by clicking through your choices within the app), and take a photo. As opposed to the plain vanilla of the iPhone's ordinary camera, Hipstamatic adds mood and a different look - vintage, textured, not at all plain vanilla.

iPhone camera image of our library's entrance:

and here's a Hipstamatic version of the same:

I was in Sydney recently, and took this Hipstamatic photo at Circular Quay (it's with a different film to the one above):

Moody, broody, and a different look without fancy photo-editing. Walked past the head office of the Department of Education (my employer), which is one of the beautiful historic Sydney sandstone offices, and here's how it can look:

So how can you use it for education?

Take photos. Not just for art, but for all sorts of other things. One of our English teachers wanted to use the images from a book of fantasy landscapes to inspire his senior students in their creative writing. Sure, we could have just scanned the images from the book for a photo slideshow; but take them with Hipstamatic, and they acquired another level of mood and inspiration:

Photo from Drawing and painting fantasy landscapes by Rob Alexander and Martin McKenna

But it's not a serious camera, is it?

How about featuring in a Visual Arts major work selected for inclusion in Art Express 2011 (click for more) and currently on display at the Art Gallery of NSW?

Yup. All those portraits were taken with Hipstamatic. Find these two images on the Art Express website here.

I've barely scraped the surface of what I might try with Hipstamatic, but it's an app I've been enjoying, for myself and for its educational possibilities. If you'd like to see more images, there's a Flickr pool with thousands of Hipstamatic photos here. Would a 'serious' photographer use Hipstamatic in preference to 'serious' camera gear? New York Times photographer Damon Winter used it to illustrate a story about the Afghanistan war. Read all about it by clicking here.

Find Hipstamatic in the App Store; the Hipstamatic website is here.

Cheers

Ruth

PS. Disclaimer: Laura Buchanan, who created that artwork, is a relation. And she was the one who told me to get Hipstamatic. With the evidence above, why argue? She's clearly an expert! We're very proud of her.

Film trailer: I Am Number Four

2011-02-21T06:36:00.043+11:00

Exciting a certain amount of interest among the kids is the book I am Number Four by Pittacus Lore (Pittacus Lore is the pseudonym for the writing duo James Frey (author of "A Million Little Pieces") and Jobie Hughes). The film which was in previews in Sydney cinemas this weekend might have had something to do with it.... I've put a couple of articles from Empire magazine and elsewhere (there was a whole page in last Friday's SMH Metro section) in our display cabinet by the stairs, and a number of the kids have stopped, read, and asked for the book (it's now got a waiting list).

I've been using the trailer as one of several in a lesson about adventures that I've been doing with Year 8 English, and it's one that gets their attention:

YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5djHG3hPu0

Neither Roger Ebert nor the New York Times reviewer think particularly highly of the film (click on those links to go to the reviews) but that is unlikely to dampen enthusiasm....

The film stars Alex Pettyfer, who also stars in the remake of Beauty and the Beast, Beastly, based on the book by Alex Flinn (click on that link to my blog entry about Beastly; the release date of Beastly has apparently been delayed to see if Alex Pettyfer's performance in I Am Number Four can up the box office appeal of Beastly. imdb.com still shows no Australian release date for Beastly; its US date is 4 March, hard on the heels of I am Number Four). Beastly official site: click here.

The I Am Number Four book's publishers are keen to set it up as a series with a following: there is an 'official home' (click here) and it has also generated at least one fansite. Find the official film site by clicking here.

Cheers

Ruth

I am Number Four sourced from the NYTimes review linked above. Beastly film poster from imdb.com, linked above.

Bloom's Digital Taxonomy

2011-02-18T06:35:00.002+11:00

Find the original here. I discovered it via Twitter. Another image to share with my senior students when discussing study skills. Maybe a task that gets them to work out the hierarchy?...... And of course one to share with my teaching colleagues.

Cheers

Ruth

21st Century Learners

2011-02-17T06:07:00.011+11:00

and this

are both by Peter H. Reynolds and can be found at Thinkfinity.org here.

Wonder what the kids would say about themselves? Hmmm, that could be an interesting task for the Year 11 study skills program...

Cheers

Ruth

16 things kids should know about social networking

2011-02-16T06:24:00.006+11:00

Useful list from Deb Ng on the Kommein site of tips about social networking. No harm for some adults to review them either. I remain astonished at what people choose to share, and how trusting some are.

OK, so you and I can read this. And then what? Why not find several ways to share it? Email to students, put on your school/library website with other resources on online safety, make a few points into a library poster (that you don't display forever, because then it becomes invisible...). This is as much a wakeup call to me, to use all this stuff I am finding as much as possible.

Cheers

Ruth

Powering a lightbulb: Infographics

2011-02-15T06:54:00.007+11:00

Are you looking for some dandy graphics to explain ideas to your students (or are your teaching colleagues looking to you to do this??)?

Good.is has some useful transparencies, including this one. Site link. Image only.
Share this with your Science, Geography, Maths etc teaching colleagues, then investigate what else you can find on the site to share among their infographics (some fairly US-centric, but not all).

Cheers

Ruth

The happy life of teacher librarians: Today I... (a late Day in the Life)

2011-02-14T16:32:00.000+11:00

Today I...

supervised the library before school and at lunch, and throughout the day
worked with a teacher during roll call to ensure all her class had books (and buried the 'lost library card' excuse) - we had lots of great books out on the tables and they all found something to read. One in particular was very happy to get a brand new copy of I am Number Four - film out soon.
helped a teacher set up the digital projector
introduced a Year 8 class to adventure fiction book possibilities and found novels for individual students
met with the Principal and SAM regarding library SASS staffing and discussed same with my head teacher
discussed a future lesson combining adventure fiction and film study with an English teacher, revamping a lesson I created last year for her class, which she liked and wants to repeat this year
bought fundraising Valentine's Day jellybean bags (and gave them away to eager students)
because I'd baked Valentine's Day chocolate brownies for my staff
copied the file of last year's school photos for the computer co-ordinator (who ate a brownie with considerable enthusiasm)
discussed a work issue with another colleague
ate lunch with my library staff colleagues (we also ate brownies)
watched a short "Batman safety video" that was an obsession of one of my students. You must watch this, Miss! Hmm, I still prefer the so-bad-it's-good shark scene from the '60s Batman movie
was the recipient of three sheets of perspex from a staff member who knows I was after some (I'll show you why in a later post) - she found a cheap source and only wanted a can of Coke in return - and then was more than happy to settle for a brownie (brownie diplomacy is fine fine work!)
added a Jeff Kinney article to the display cabinet with book and film reviews (usually of books from films - I added a bunch of new pieces there last Friday)
lent and reserved and discussed books with students
helped some lost Year 7 kids out with a late note
calmed down an agitated Asperger's kid who was worried about why the book he wanted had gone from where he left it on Friday (it's called borrowing, honey, but we can reserve it for you...)
asked the general assistant to trim a couple of pieces of MDF for our new bookcases
admired the bookcase my school assistant had assembled (will show you soon when all three are done, they're FABBOBANANAS! - photos soon!) and helped put it in its planned location, where we all admired it again
reminded seniors of the distinction between 'study periods' and the no-go concept of 'free periods'
organised a student who's doing a short volunteer project with us for his Work Studies course (will post about that, too - it's a very very handy list!)
discussed the senior study skills program with one of my colleagues, saw her presentation draft and helped with image/Flickr/Powerpoint advice for slides with impact
organised the duplication of study skills materials
planned the worksheets needed for my study skills presentation on Thursday (topic: Ethical Assignments, a revision/reminder of HSC All My Own Work)
discussed/demonstrated Hipstamatic (iPhone camera app) with several people
shared some brownies with our wonderful cleaner
got to the end of the day and wondered about how fast the day had gone!

Today, I am sure, this list doesn't represent everything I did; but it's a reasonable, representatively varied and busy if inevitably incomplete, day in the life of a teacher librarian. And tomorrow will be different again. All the fun of the fair! I wasn't at school during the sixth round of Library Day in the Life (I'm number 93 of about 250 on the wiki here), but figured I'd get to a reasonably representative day sometime.

How did your day go?

Cheers

Ruth

Water for Elephants: film / movie trailer

2011-02-14T15:53:00.000+11:00

As a lot of teacher librarians have probably read the book...

If that doesn't work, find the international trailer for Water for Elephants by clicking here.

Happy Library Lovers' Day!

Cheers

Ruth

GIFSL* no.56: Valentine's Day 2011

2011-02-11T06:04:00.002+11:00

What's a teacher librarian to do to fancy up the library for Valentine's Day? (note: as ever, not just for pretty's sake, but to change the space, add excitement and buzz and encourage reading, to get them through the door.)

Cast your peepers over this idea:

That's made from free stuff, folks. Catalogue/magazine pages. The tutorial (and source of the picture) is here but it's not at all a hard idea to play with. Is it? Maybe you've got kids who'd like to help? Maybe you could have some with the names of favourite books/characters on them? Maybe...

Go play. Have fun. Make your library special for your kids, so they say WOW and love being there. Isn't that how it should be? And won't that be fun for you too?

Cheers

Ruth

*GIFSL = good ideas for school libraries

So what are they doing better in Finland (in education)?

2011-02-10T06:50:00.001+11:00

Teaching less and learning more. Read an excellent overview with handy graphs and a video in Less is More. Teach Less, Learn More by David Truss on Connected Principals.

“This creativity aspect is very important because in Finland we believe that risk-taking, creativity and innovation are very, very important for a society like ours. And particularly working in this global and globalized world it is more important than what you actually know and remember, it is more what you are and what you are capable of doing.” ~ Pasi Sahlberg

Worth reading the whole piece - click on over. We seem, here, to be using the UK and US as our educational models, far more than places like Finland, even though the Finnish approach is more successful.

Cheers

Ruth

The Joy of Statistics

2011-02-09T06:31:00.002+11:00

For all the dross and muck and pointless stuff on YouTube, there are also gems. Here's one to share with your colleagues in Maths, Science, Social Science, and anyone else teaching students about statistics - a one hour BBC documentary with Dr Hans Rosling. Free and available on YouTube. Bargain.

EDITED: Hmmm. YouTube playing games; this seems to have gone 'private' since I drafted this blog entry.

You can find the video embedded here:
http://www.gapminder.org/videos/the-joy-of-stats/
and it played when I just checked it. Other related videos on that page, too.

Original YouTube link here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOOmqHzkkOo

Remind your teachers to load this ahead of the lesson, so they're not waiting for it to load as they show it.

Found via the Laughing Squid.

Cheers

Ruth

What is a Library? (1)

2011-02-08T06:17:00.004+11:00

Libraries are about books, but they're also about much more than books. They're about ideas and invention and imagination and play and curiosity and wonder and hope. Yes, libraries are all about hope. They are houses of possibilities.

Phil Shapiro, Towards a National Transition Plan for Libraries, in PCWorld
So, each one of your working days you and I walk into a house of possibilities. So what can you (and I) do today to make it so, and make it better?

Think I might find a way of displaying this quote in my library (could be handy for one of my library pieces in the regular school newsletter, too). I notice, on reflection, that some of the words are in my word walls already - imagine, wonder, hope. Good.

In this article, Phil Shapiro is canvassing ideas about public libraries in the future - what they're for, how they might look, design considerations. Worth reading.

Cheers

Ruth

I was NOT looking for this website!

2011-02-07T17:48:00.001+11:00

...I swear to goodness, I wasn't looking for this. It came up quite incidentally when I was researching something else entirely. But when, at 5.45pm after a long day at school when you tried (and failed) all day to compose and send one (long/comprehensive/program-planning) email (although a whole lot of other unplanned things were sorted out/helped with/encouraged etc); when you trip over this site, and you end up snorting Diet Coke because it's funny and sad and OMG-worthy...

...well, there's nothing to do but share it.

Click here. Enjoy. Be appalled (or inspired?!). Maybe even snort Diet Coke too, as you chuckle.

Cheers

Ruth

PS One of the last examples includes Hamlet's "To be or not to be" soliloquy, in a font that's already old hat, if not old old antique hat. But it's there forever. I liked the accurately snarky comments about it....

Quote: Mark Twain

2011-02-07T17:11:00.000+11:00

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

— Mark Twain

Found this one today. Not sure how I might use it in the library, but it has potential for sure...

Cheers

Ruth

GIFSL teaser: what's this for?

2011-02-07T06:19:00.005+11:00

Just why did I utter little cries of joy and invest in this fabric at Ikea (it's one colourway/design of Monalis, item no 70175082) to the tune of 5 metres @ $9.99/metre? For my school library?

The colours are perfect! Look, bird houses, and subtle pink birds, and tree trunks! Squeee!

Guesses in the comments welcome! (I'll answer, and show you, soon...)

Cheers

Ruth

Rap: I'm reading a book

2011-02-04T09:54:00.000+11:00

Forwarded to me by one of the senior executive at my school:

Find it here if the above doesn't work for you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuRuwR2JSXI

Which I'm sure I'll find an opportunity to show!

Cheers

Ruth

Hunger Games film news

2011-02-04T06:43:00.001+11:00

The Hunger Games and its two sequels, Catching Fire and Mockingjay (how often was I asked for this before it came out???? - a gazillion times!), are rarely on our shelves, and when they are, their thumped and thumbed appearance (we have multiple copies) shows the popularity of this trilogy by Suzanne Collins.

Don't hold your breath just yet, but a film of the first book is in production. Release date for the movie is 2013. The director is Gary Ross, who directed Pleasantville, one of my favourite films. There's a bit more news about the film here from the Wall St Journal, and this is the IMDB page for The Hunger Games.

Think I might put the WSJ article in my wall cupboard, to alert the kids.

Cheers

Ruth

Measuring your use of time

2011-02-03T06:34:00.001+11:00

Toddling about the internet, collecting resources and ideas for the senior study skills program, I came across this article: "I shipped in 2010 - you can too" by Doug Johnson on his Blue Skunk blog. While his main focus is on the extras he did related to his work, such as conference presentations, papers and articles, one sentence jumped out at me for its use with students.

I personally measure my days not whether they were happy or unhappy, but whether they were productive or unproductive.

One aspect of my work as a teacher is talking with students about their work. They sit in my office and tell me their successes, failures, concerns. Sometimes, tissues are involved. It's always been part of my work, not only through mentoring programs etc but also just because I'm findable, there, a listening ear. Thinking over what they say, often enough it is about happiness - "I feel terrible" "Nothing is working" etc - stuff related to feelings/emotions.

The rest of the paragraph reads like this:

Did I have a fruitful conversation or meeting? Did I get something finished? Did I write something worth sharing? Did I read something challenging? Did I do an hour's worth of physical activity? Did I clean up a mess, revise an article, or organize something for the future? Did I do something that made my own life or someone else's just a tad better?

Looking at this idea, it's one I plan to try with students, and see how it can be worked into the study skills program, too. Refocusing from emotions (so much trickier to wrangle) to more measurable activities/achievements that can be done/replicated and from which positive feelings can flow seems like a useful idea to play with. I'm not saying that feelings aren't important, but rather that this is a way to get from the tissues/tears/frustrations/sense of impotence/being stuck that some of those students have when they plonk themselves in a chair in my office, and help them onwards. From a study skills program perspective, it also points a way from the emotional to the measurable, helping students to progress.

Cheers

Ruth

Valentine's Day ideas for your library

2011-02-02T08:56:00.034+11:00

Click on the link below for some Valentine's day ideas from our library in words and pictures. I like Valentine's as a start of year theme because it's friendly and happy for our new kids (esp. Year 7). Our SRC or Year 12 also use it for fundraising, so our displays support/promote that too.

The banners are back,

the posters are up (printed on reds and pinks this year),

our entrance ceiling is awash with hearts

and the bookmarks are going out the door with every loan.

I have some pink heart-shaped post-it notes and ideas about using them...more on that another time. Oh, and our bookcase is loaded up with pinks and reds (which includes adventure books and so forth, not just love stories or girl-oriented stories).

Read all about these ideas at the links you'll find here: http://skerricks.blogspot.com/search?q=valentine

Cheers

Ruth