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

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

The happy life of teacher librarians: recorded

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

Pecha Kucha: 20 web 2.0 tools in 20 slides

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

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

(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

10 ways libraries matter in the digital age

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

Library website design

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

Margaret Atwood on the future of publishing

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.

Why students should be blogging

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

Bloom's Digital Taxonomy

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

16 things kids should know about social networking

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

Outfitting a teacher librarian for the 21st century

If yesterday's blog entry was lowering to your spirits, here's an alternative view: Joyce Valenza on the skills needed by a teacher librarian in the 21st century:
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/slj/home/888448-312/fully_loaded_outfitting_a_teacher.html.csp

Always handy, lists like these, so you can give yourself pats on the back for the stuff you know and new directions to explore in the things you haven't yet tried.  Doesn't just apply to teacher librarians either, but all teachers...

Cheers

Ruth

Are school libraries nearly obsolete?

Some food for thought in these two blog entries:

• http://www.teleread.com/library/2010-summary-libraries-are-still-screwed-by-eric-hellman/
• http://doug-johnson.squarespace.com/blue-skunk-blog/2010/12/31/2010-the-year-of-the-cloud.html

Cheers (perhaps.  perhaps not) (I would note that there are some perspectives in these that reflect the US reality, rather than the worldwide one eg. in relation to digital rights).

Ruth

A dozen ways to teach ethical and safe technology use

Read this excellent blog post from Doug Johnson's Blue Skunk blog.

http://doug-johnson.squarespace.com/blue-skunk-blog/2010/12/26/a-dozen-ways-to-teach-ethical-and-safe-technology-use.html

Cheers

Ruth

How to learn? from mistakes (Diana Laufenberg)

To start the new school year*, an inspirational TED talk about teaching



Her three key points (and please do watch the video, don't just clock these and click on in your travels - it's a great ten minutes) are:

• experiental learning
• student voice
• embracing failure

Page URL if the video doesn't work for you:
http://www.ted.com/talks/diana_laufenberg_3_ways_to_teach.html

Cheers

Ruth

*Yes, the Australian school year follows the calendar - we've just finished our summer holidays and are back for a new school year.

Historical Facebook: and more links that you thought possible.

The wonderful SLAV blog, Bright Ideas, has a brilliant entry today about how to use the format of Facebook (not the site itself) for a biography task; and links to a freely-available template.

Find it here.

Another blog that is a constant cornucopia of wonderful links is Anne Weaver's Reading Power.  Just toddle over there regularly and you'll find roundup after roundup of links, ideas, inspiration.  She's the blog I've featured on our school's (internal) staff blog this week.

Find Reading Power here.

Will Richardson (Weblogg-ed) offers in his most recent blog entry some thought-provoking and challenging ideas about Unlearning Teaching.  Worth reading and thinking about, and talking about with colleagues.

These blogs are in my blogroll (over in the right hand column).  Don't forget to check this regularly, as it shows the most recent entry for each blog - always something good to be found there.

Tagxedo (tag clouds With Style) was one of the Web 2.0 tools I mentioned at the WeSSSTA conference presentation I gave last night.  I've been amused to see the Sydney Morning Herald use Tagxedo to create graphics related to the election - eg. the party leaders' launch speeches.

Cheers

Ruth

The past may come back to bite you...

There's a sign on the window by my office door that points out that I'm not young enough to know everything (kids read it sometimes, and go, well, of course...)...and yet sometimes you see the bulletproof young heading towards disaster - or at least, problems - assuming they're teflon-coated, when you know they aren't.  Internet privacy's one of those problems.

In The Web Means the End of Forgetting, (NY Times) Jeffrey Rosen discusses how publication of information about individuals can influence present circumstances, future prospects, eliminate opportunities.

We’ve known for years that the Web allows for unprecedented voyeurism, exhibitionism and inadvertent indiscretion, but we are only beginning to understand the costs of an age in which so much of what we say, and of what others say about us, goes into our permanent — and public — digital files. The fact that the Internet never seems to forget is threatening, at an almost existential level, our ability to control our identities; to preserve the option of reinventing ourselves and starting anew; to overcome our checkered pasts.

Worth reading.  One to share with colleagues, students and children.

Cheers

Ruth

PS. if the lemon tree in your garden is utterly ignored except when you can pick fruit from it, does that benign neglect qualify it for 'organic' status?  If so, today's lemon cupcakes with chocolate icing had organic lemon zest in them... Hurrah for a cupcake Monday!

Facebook privacy options

While going through our DER laptop student responsibilities with Year 9 last Friday, I touched on social networking and privacy.  At present, they can't access social networking on their DER laptops at home or at school, but this may change in the future; and right now, they certainly are using social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook.

Facebook Privacy: a bewildering tangle of options is a New York Times article with a detailed graphic illustrating just how many privacy options there are - and where - in Facebook.  On the one hand, it's complex enough to make lots of people (including students) toss up their hands and run in the other direction.  On the other hand, if you do, then the choice is letting far more information than you may wish or realise become public.

One to share with students and staff.

Added later, from Twitter:

• Will Richardson: Teach. Facebook. Now
• Are your Facebook privacy settings doing their job? Here are two tools and a slideshow to help you: http://bit.ly/cfbvDH  

Cheers

Ruth

A vision of 21st century teachers

YouTube URL for this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4g5M06YyVw

One for staff meetings/professional development?

Found via Lowden Clear blog.

Cheers

Ruth

DER laptops Year Two & Digital Citizenship

After a delightful time at the Mantle conference in Newcastle, it's been full steam ahead at school on the technology front, as our Year 9 Digital Education Revolution laptops are being distributed this week.  I've fished out my seven things to try week 1 list and will be going through that and the revised Student Responsibilities part of our school's laptop policy at a staff meeting.  Tomorrow, with the Year 9s, they get to Experience my PowerPoint on Student Responsibilities in period 1, before the handout begins.  I wonder if their eyes and ears will function? - they can't wait to get their laptops.

Word is that the NSW DER team are preparing teaching materials on digital citizenship which will be available next term, so if that's an area your school is looking at, it's good to know that resources are on the way.  If you need resources now, there's LOTS of digital citizenship material around on the net: eg. the nine elements at digitalcitizenship.net, BrainPop's animations and activities, and the Australian Government's Cybersmart website.

Cheers

Ruth

How to link/embed YouTube videos into PowerPoint 2007

Our DER laptops for Year 9 will be distributed at the end of the week, so I'm busy putting together the PowerPoint for the first period, on school rules/policy reminders.  The laptops will then be issued, period by period, and in the last period of the day, I've been asked to address the whole year group (200+ kids...)again, on 'stuff like copyright and things they need to know'.  So that's another PowerPoint, with the slightly more formal title of "Digital Citizenship".  (Rumpestilskin, where are you??? - two major PowerPoints to prepare in under a week...).

However endlessly entrancing I may find my own voice, and however utterly brilll-y-unt I may be at holding an audience of 200+ year nine students for nearly an hour... (twice in one day!) I know that there must be some great things out there on digital citizenship, cybersafety, copyright and so forth to add different voices/change the pace/keep their interest.  And there are.  I'll share some of them this week on the blog.

Having found some useful YouTube videos, my next challenge was working out how to put a YouTube video into a PowerPoint, because I haven't done that before.  Google google google and here's the most useful set of instructions I found.  It's from Clay's Blog, and specifically refers to PowerPoint 2007.    The Captivate animation to show you how has a broken link on the above page (it's his new site) but works on his old site - click here to see how-to, step by step.

My one variation is that I paste the original URL into the Note section of the PowerPoint slide for future reference, then paste it again to edit it as the instructions outline (I can delete this second one once it's in the Properties - the Properties Movie window where it has to go is teenytiny).  If this makes NO sense, read his instructions/watch the Captivate demo and then it will.

You still need to have the computer showing the PowerPoint being connected to the internet during the presentation - this links rather than embeds.  It still means that you don't have to clunk out of the Presentation and over to a browser, but just instead click on a Play button.

Hey! Something new I've learned how to do, and something to share with colleagues and the kids.

Cheers

Ruth