BACIRC

Our school registered to take part in the National Simultaneous Storytime again this year. The three Kindergarten classes came to the IRC to listen to and read “The Wrong Book” by Nick Bland at precisely the same time as school libraries and public libraries all over Australia did the same.

Once again the story was brought to life by using an iPad app of the book projected onto the interactive whiteboard. Discussion of the characters and story followed after which students were provided with paper craft activities based on characters in the story. The students remembered the story from last year’s National Simultaneous Storytime, seen when in Prep, and we watched and listened to this book again as well.

Last week the IRC Theatrette was transformed into a party room for the visit of Katrina Roe who both entertained and educated our Prep – Year 6 students about food allergies. She certainly had the attention of all the students as she led them in party games then read her new book Marty’s nut free party. The students went away knowing how to hold parties that could be happily attended by friends with food allergies – and they really enjoyed the story as well!

I remember very well the enjoyment of reading aloud and sharing books with my children – even into their teenage years.
This post by Katherine Stone lists seven good reasons to keep on doing this.

Sir Ken Robinson outlines 3 principles crucial for the human mind to flourish — and how current education culture works against them. In a funny, stirring talk he tells us how to get out of the educational “death valley” we now face, and how to nurture our youngest generations with a climate of possibility.

Creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson challenges the way we’re educating our children. He champions a radical rethink of our school systems, to cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types of intelligence.

The following blog post shares many examples of using Glogster in creative ways.

This should be our goal as educators: To provide tools to discovery and allow creativity and independence in the learning process.

Connected, but alone?

As we expect more from technology, do we expect less from each other? Sherry Turkle studies how our devices and online personas are redefining human connection and communication — and asks us to think deeply about the new kinds of connection we want to have.

Sherry Turkle studies how technology is shaping our modern relationships: with others, with ourselves, with it.

Research into Parents, Children, Libraries, and Reading by Carolyn Miller, Kathryn Zickuhr, Lee Rainie and Kristen Purcell was released on 1 May by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. The findings and report cover:

• Library visits by children
• Parents themselves are considerably more likely than other adults to use library services
• Parents are more likely to be interested in expanding library services and adding future tech-related services
• Mothers stand out when it comes to reading and libraries
• Lower income parents are more likely to view library services as very important

The vast majority of parents of minor children — children younger than 18 — feel libraries are very important for their children. That attachment carries over into parents’ own higher-than-average use of a wide range of library services.

…This report is part of a broader effort by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project that is exploring the role libraries play in people’s lives and in their communities.

The Third International Research Symposium organised by the Center for International Scholarship in School Libraries (CiSSL)is taking place April 26-27, 2013 at The Heldrich Hotel, New Brunswick, NJ.
It will be a celebration of 10 years of CiSSL and 30 years of Dr. Carol Collier Kuhlthau’s research centering on the Information Search Process and Guided Inquiry.

The focus question of the research symposium is: How can schools prepare to deliver a 21st century education for digital youth?

Action Research conducted over five years into the the use of Guided Inquiry by our Broughton teachers and students will be shared at this symposium.

This site is rich in activities across English, Mathematics, Science and History, supporting learning for Australian students in Years K-10

Watch, listen and play videos, audio clips and games. The ABC and ESA have teamed up to bring primary and secondary students and teachers world-class Australian resources.

Social Media Explained Visually by Say it Visually! This entertaining, well constructed explanation of social media is worth a visit.

In explaining Social Media :

“Its basically this unpredictable worldwide network of conversations that’s just exploding! They cover big topics like news and events and the little things that mass media missed and all that mass media content is getting pulled into these conversations. We are getting more and more information and entertainment from each other.”

Our Reading Room has a new popular piece of furniture and teachers are often seen reading aloud to their Primary classes in here. The ‘Dewey’ mat is also a great hit!

This site presented in book format by Google with illustrations by Christoph Niemann answers a lot of questions about the Internet; the ‘cloud’, browser cookies, phishing, open source and other things that students need to understand.

What’s a cookie? How do I protect myself on the web? And most importantly: What happens if a truck runs over my laptop?
For things you’ve always wanted to know about the web but were afraid to ask

There has been a very noticeable shift for Secondary students to search YouTube for resources. TED, TEDEd, Vimeo and other sources are also searched regularly by our students.

Google Education have provided interactive lessons for Secondary Students to assist in teaching responsible digital citizenship particularly in the use of YouTube or other online resources.

Teacher resources of videos, slides and summaries for each lesson are available. The topics include:

YouTube’s policies
How to report content on YouTube
How to protect their privacy online
How to be responsible YouTube community members
How to be responsible digital citizens

The first step of Guided Inquiry is to Open the topic area to the students with a wide range of experiences and information. They go on to Immerse themselves in this broad topic area then Explore and finally to Identify an aspect of personal interest.

This site has an large variety of interactive activities for many topic areas and could be used by the teacher on an interactive whiteboard or individually by students on personal devices. The activities would be very beneficial to students in the early stages of inquiry learning.

Select the subject area

Select the topic area

Select and explore the available activities

This very moving poem with added animation highlights the effects of bullying.

“Shane Koyczan makes spoken-word poetry and music. His poem “To This Day” is a powerful story of bullying and survival, illustrated by animators from around the world.”