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

GIFSL* 64: Cheap Bookmark Week (Friday)

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.

GIFSL* 63: Cheap Bookmark Week (Thursday)

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)

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* 60: Cheap Bookmarks Week (Monday)

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

Habits and senior students

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

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

GIFSL teaser: what's this for?

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

Library Disaster Recovery Resources

ASLA has a page with a bunch of useful links - ways to contribute, affected schools, dealing with sodden books.  http://www.asla.org.au/schoollibraries/disaster-recovery.htm

A number of creative people are setting up auctions of handmade items with the proceeds going to the flood relief fund.  Find out more here (and read the comments for more, as well as the blog entry): http://bit.ly/eXQz1P

Cheers (and best wishes to all those affected by flood and fire this January)

Ruth

Have you discovered Instructables?

Recently, I needed origami instructions for a dead simple box (a Year 7 class assignment had the class members voting on each other's work, and so each kid needed a box for the raffle ticket 'voting slips').  Googlegooglegoogle and this box from Instructables is perfect - simple, fast, works with any rectangle of paper/cardboard.

Instructables (Make, How-To and DIY), if you haven't come across it, is an almost inexhaustible supply of how-to, from the sublime to the Unusual, and every byway in between.  Here, for example, are some of the links from the home page when I looked at it recently:

• Vertical Garden
• How to make your first real robot
• Iron Man - how to make various kinds of gear from the recent film/s
• Easy origami
• How to make a dog bone shaped cookie cutter
• Mobile veggie garden
• Turn signal biking jacket (with light-up left/right arrows)

And so it goes.  Usually step by step pictures with instructions on the tools and materials you need, sometimes video tutorials as well.  A cornucopia of ideas.

One to share with a whole lot of faculties - Science, Industrial Arts, Design and Technology, Agriculture....

Once again, no pics because Blogger won't play nice.  Sigh, again.

Cheers

Ruth

PS The science teacher who points out the absence of science-y entries on this blog can note that's two science-relevant entries in two days...!!

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