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

Whose life is it anyway? - a transplant story

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

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

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

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?

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

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???

(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

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?

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

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

(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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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)

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...!!)