What's New?

• eduTecher: It's a lovely uncluttered site with links, tools, and ideas for teachers who are integrating technology with teaching and learning.
  
  
• Readability: This is an amazing tool from Arc90 Labs -- once installed on your favourites bar on your computer, you can use it to "declutter" any page of online text you like so that reading it is less likely to be subject to the distractions of ads, pictures, and other parallel or inset bits.
  
  
• For more like the above sites, you need to get into Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators from Discovery School. One dimension of her rich website is the SOS Sites of the Week, of which the above sites are the two most recent. She archives these so go here to check back on what she has found. This isn't the first time I have mentioned this site!

• From EducationWorld: Why not share this "toolbox" with your administrator? Administrator's Desk offers lots of timely ideas for thinking about their practice, especially with using technology, including blogging the newsletter.
  
  
• Great TL Cafe at Moberly this week. Thanks, Kam and Gwen, for the organizing and supporting the new(er) TLs. The group moved on to the Elephant Walk for an in-depth look at school libraries in Vancouver.
  


• Andy Hargreaves ( co-author with Dennis Shirley of The Fourth Way) was back in Coquitlam to work with their educators; a number of us from Vancouver were invited to join them. Things work differently in Coquitlam. It's so nice to see Tom in the middle of such a lively learning community, and nice for the morning to be free to think about the great possibilities for education, given the severity and constraints we are facing.
  


• Next week, a group of Vancouver elementary and secondary teachers and TLs will convene at the Ed Centre for a discussion of e-textbooks and e-resources. We have been doing some reading:
  


• Plans are under way for the year-end VTLA dinner. Hope to see lots of our group there, as usual. This is always a fun evening.
  


• Have you signed up for the May Update sessions? 89 have. These Update sessions are the way we keep current on the rapidly changing nature of the work we doo. They are starting this second week of May with sessions for our Annex and for French Immersion TLs. We are bringing customized materials and do need to know which one you will be attending.



• The last TL Studio II (now called Digitally Yours) is to be held at Gladstone next week. The focus, building a simple website for your library. This focus has come in response to demand at the TL Cafe and will feature Weebly, used by Kam for the Fleming library webpage and some additional Web 2.0 tools, including shutterfly which is the one Ciara uses for Kingsford-Smith's library webpage. We are going to have to cancel the last TL Studio session scheduled for May 26 at Kerrisdale due to a conflict, so we do hope to see everyone at Gladstone on Wednesday this week for it too will be the last session of the year.
  
  
• And while we are on the subject of school library websites, take a look at what Joyce Valenza has to say and show you about school library websites. In her Neverendingsearch blog entitled "School Library Websites Part 1" for SLJ, she explores the instructional capacity of school library websites and suggests that TLs are the instructional CIOs (Chief Information Officers) of their schools.
  


• Do you want to be a "tribe" with a micro-mag? Check out Seth Godin's blog entry. I attended an online conference with Godin this week on the future of education. I am no clearer about what that might look like. It was pretty "quick" stuff recommended by our own MK -- that is, it made me feel slow!