Create an infographic – share ideas visually: Try easel.ly

Here is yet another way to present information. Students at Broughton have been learning to present information using Glogster, Prezi and Voki and here is yet another idea.
Easel.ly provides visual themes ready for data insertion. It is in early design stages so try this out – and give them feedback.

21C Skills for teachers and students

The following link to the blog post from Educational Technology and Mobile Learning provides access to various tools for 33 different skills. It is wonderful to have such a varied and pertinent list including the tools needed to succeed in each skill all in one place. Both teachers and students shoud be aware of skills they need to keep up with digital learning in the 21Century. Here is a great place to start!

The 33 Digital Skills every 21st Century teacher should have

TED-Ed: Turn a video into a lesson… and share

Early in March the new video channel TED-Ed was introduced. The platform is now more than just a repository.

Within the growing TED-Ed video library, you will find carefully curated educational videos, many of which represent collaborations between talented educators and animators nominated through the TED-Ed platform. This platform also allows users to take any useful educational video, not just TED’s, and easily create a customized lesson around the video.

This facilitates a new trend called “Flip Teaching” where students watch a prepared video lesson at home and class time is devoted to discussion, building ideas and creative responses.

TED-Ed enables shared lessons via Twitter, Facebook or email with the ability to check who has viewed your lesson and how they progressed in any activities within the lesson – with their permission.

Maurice Saxby – A real inspiration to all Teacher Librarians – and to this Nanna as well!

Maurice Saxby spoke at the Awards Night for the School Library Association of NSW on 30 March held at the Children’s Bookshop at Beecroft.

In 1955 Maurice Saxby was the second Teacher Librarian ever to be appointed to a school in New South Wales. He has inspired teachers and Teacher Librarians for many years and his book “Give them wings” impelled many to offer exciting opportunities for children to experience literature.

He spoke of his own encounter with books and reading as a young boy and told us of the influence of the special teachers he had as a child – who inspired in him a love of literature simply by reciting a poem or leading a discussion.  Teachers, parents and even ‘Nannas’ still do this today but we now have at our fingertips so many rich resources to extend these experiences even further.

Maurice told us why reading literature is important: “Apart from what we see about human beings when we read and what we find out about life, we’re attuned to story and to the shape of story and to the way words work.”

The night of the awards I went to stay at the home of my son where I regularly read books to my two granddaughters and we make up and enact imaginary stories. With renewed energy to instill a love of literature and reading into the lives of these two little girls, aged two and four, I seized hold of opportunity and here is what enfolded the next morning.

As usually happens, the four year old commandeered my iPad to open a folder full of books and activities selected for her. The younger two year old went for my iPhone where she too knows how to open relevant folders and spends a lot of time looking at family photos and videos of herself in particular! This photo was not “set up”!

 

 

 

 

 

Miss Four had, on a previous occasion, asked me to get the “Playschool App” as she had seen it advertised on Playschool and it had cool puzzles in it! I had done so and she now was looking at a previous episode of Playschool she had found on the app – streamed live from the ABC website. She was watching the reenactment of “The Hare and the Tortoise” and we discussed the meaning of the fable and the saying  “Slow and steady wins the race”.

 

 

I was a little dismayed to find there was no print copy of the story in this home to read to the girls – Nanna will have to rectify that!

 

 

Later I took the girls outside to play.

“Lets play races”, said Miss Four…

”I’ll be the tortoise and you can be the hare,” she said to her little sister.

“Well, we’ll need a washing basket and some ears,” I said.  So she ran off and came back with some ears out of the dress-up box – left there from Easter bunnies last year. The washing basket was emptied and straps were attached to it by her mother.

With very little help from Nanna the story was enacted – again and again! The little hare asleep on the mound of the basketball stand was just beautiful… then she awoke just in time to see the Tortoise win the race!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Later in the day when the technology was again “picked up” Miss Four asked if there was a book app for the Hare and the Tortoise. I found a traditional version with original pictures as well as a more modern version. Both offered read-a-loud support and some interactivity. A couple of dollars later we read both versions together and Miss Four mastered all the activities – while Miss Two once  again watched herself in family videos on my phone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An exhausted Nanna was sure by the end of the day that both girls had encountered literature in many engaging ways – a day we will all remember! Thank you Maurice!

 

 

 

 

Zygote Body: 3D body systems

This free tool allows a 3D view of the human body and it’s systems – from any angle and any size. It is necessary to use a good browser such as Firefox or Chrome. Similar iPad Apps are available but are expensive and for the average student with only computer access this free tool is certainly adequate.

Apps plus SMART Board – ‘switched on learning’ @ Broughton

This morning one of our teachers used an iPad App to teach her PDHPE class about the human heart. The IRC’s new SMART Board attached to an iPad had the students enthralled – as of course did the teacher’s excellent demonstrations,manipulation of the App and her questioning techniques! It was a wonderful example of quality teaching and switched on learning!

Scoop.it! – Educational topic links

This new tool allows people to gather online resource links to issues in one accessible place. Here are links to some created by Teacher Librarian colleagues who curate in a number of relevant educational topic areas.

The Value of Twitter – Linda Weeks

Web 2.0 tools for English Teachers – Linda Weeks

Digital Citizenship in Schools – Judy O’Connell

Social Networking for Information Professionals – Judy O’Connell

Graphic Novels in the Classroom – Di Laycock

New Year… Clean up and safety check

‘The Daring Librarian’ has posted a great list of things to do to smarten up online presence.

  1. Change Passwords – Click the link below and read her 4 tips for super passwords
  2. Clear Cache, History and Cookies
  3. Clean up and organise Flash Drives
  4. Check out using the Cloud for storage and consider …Dropbox, iCloud, Google Docs etc
  5. Edit privacy settings and ‘friendships’

These five are a ‘must’ to get ready for the new school year. For the rest please visit The Daring Librarian’s Blog:

 

Is the ‘book’ dead?

We are in the middle of a very successful Book Fair where students are pouring into the IRC and dragging in their parents after school – to purchase books!
The success is largely due to the fantastic “Book Talks” by Murray from Scholastic. The books came alive as he spoke about them.
Even more exciting was the new merging of book and web as he demonstrated the “Clone Wars” website where students can interact choosing their own adventure/ending through gaming on the website then reading the resulting text page given to find out what happens next.
Reading books is certainly not dead or even dying at Broughton – but promotion of reading is very important. As technology and books merge an exciting future is developing.
This clip is worth watching: